The Bus Bench

MTA Art. Aviation Station the Green Line. Westchester.

At the Aviation Station in Westchester (Wikipedia has the zip code as 90048. It's 90045. That's about a few hundred thousand dollars difference in real estate world. Looking at the economy, probably about half a million dollars difference currently. Wiki can be wrong. And no one pays over one million dollars to live by the airport.) The Bus Bench went down to see specifically the quote by William Burroughs, but his quote had disappeared. We assumed the death of that quote was owing to vandals, but in his place we saw pieces of poetry by Kerouac, Ellison, Hughes and Ginsberg.

 

This Week's Triptych—07 March 2008

It is a weird mix, this week's triptych—more weird than what I imagine future ones will be. We shall see.

1. Could this be where reformed taggers retire? Or am I merely desperate to get a laugh?

2. What better to get your girl than candy and condoms while she is waiting on-line for the fabulous burrito and corn chips dinner? Good thing this East L.A. eatery has it all within a few feet of the express bus stop. (If you can name the place, and gimme yer mailing address, I will send you a box of Condom Candy!

 

3. Does this bunny have the measles?  Scroll down for the answer.

I had to pass up loads of lines and just be straight up with this one. No one obvious quip would have done: "They really DO get it for the articles!" "How big are the bumps in the photos?" "How can blind folk possibly masturbate if they are reading with their fingers?" and so on.
Yes, I am a sad little man. . .

-BusTard

Caravan Books

Caravan Books, a book store I have patronised for some 11 years now, is a book shoppe that is on the required reading list for those recently removed from the West side and Valley to downtown. (And yes, by this I mean those folk looking to cash in on telling their friends how they live in downtown—oh, so dangerous!—even as they actively pursue changing it into the car-crammed, chain store-laden, flavourless middle class mecca of the places from which they emigrated.)

But enough of my kvetching (for now).

Caravan is one of the two booksellers to go to get great books as well as rare and odd titles on the history of Los Angeles. (The other is El Pueblo Gallery over on East Olvera; more about that in a later post.) For those of you wondering how downtown Los Angeles used to be before Bunker Hill was raised, before Dodger Stadium—or even the Dodgers—existed in L.A. or why the freeways and other major thoroughfares were laid out as they are, this is a damn good place to start.

550 South Grand Avenue (btw 5th and 6th Streets)
Los Angeles, CA 90071-2602
213.626.9944

 

-BusTard

What about Wanda Coleman? Watts. 12/20

What about Wanda Coleman?

What about Wanda Coleman. The literary community of LA has forgotten a very valuable person in it’s community. A person who actually sells books to people who aren’t her students.

I don’t think she has any students.

And let us be honest, most poets that are alive sell because they teach and have their students buy their books.

Especially the poets in LA.

Most poets in LA want to be actors.

Nothing worse than an out of work actor type trying to write…

Even Hollywood won’t let that breed type for them and the bar in regards to artfulness is pretty low in La-La Land.

Wanda Coleman a LA poet who actually is from LA. She didn’t move here as a child. She is traditional urban LA.  Her mom didn’t go to Spelman. She’s not a middle class black person stealing the poor black person’s experience for fame and glory. She writes about what LA is like. She actually worked as a writer, not a model or in advertising or as an actress and happened upon it after failing at everything else. She is a writer through and through.  She is a poet that understands LA.

A Los Angeles poet who is now living in Lancaster.

Fucking Lancaster.

They throw her a bone every once in a while at the LA Times and various small events, but they throw people who haven’t dedicated their life to writing bigger bones. Why doesn’t Wanda have a column somewhere? At the LA Times, the LA Weekly, City Beat?

Everyone else from her time period has been given a mercy steady gig. Wanda is still hustling.

I assume because she didn’t play the game and kiss enough asses. Now she has been relegated to Lancaster.

I remember hearing things about Wanda before I met her.

I heard things like “She has a bad attitude. She shouldn’t demand to be called 'Dr. Coleman' since her doctorate was only honorary…” all kinds of not so nice things about her. By people who claim to be her friend. Not so nice things by people who were pretty well established in the LA poetry "community" and I use that term loosely.

If she’s a piece of shit and you’re published, why are you going out of your way to tell me fucked up things about her?

But as soon as these same people would see her when she would randomly come down to LA to pick up mail, they would kiss her ass.

No I shouldn’t say kiss her ass, but try to suck the life out of her through her ass.

Using her to say, “See we have a person of color.”

Using her to say, “We have Wanda Coleman in our crappy chapbook, she was on the same press as Bukowski.”

Using her to sell crappy poorly produced DVDs.

I’m going to bet none of these assholes paid her what she was worth, if they paid her at all.

Wanda was raised in Watts and lived for a long time in the area that is now being rechristened East Hollywood (hipster types can't live in a section of LA that is just called LA unless it's prefixed with a west or downtown, because living in LA, just LA, equals scary minorities, which isn't very hip at all) and then she moved to the Westside.

Every time people talk about LA writers, they seem to forget to bring up Wanda. At least forget to bring her up as much as they should. People outside of LA actually know who Wanda Coleman is. That is something that no other LA poet other than Bukwoski can say.

But Wanda suffers from having a reputation of being difficult, but why should she be easy? She grew up poor. In very segregated pre civil rights Los Angeles. Yes Virginia LA has and had racism. She has accomplished a lot writing wise, yet she still has to deal with jerks who feel that they are better than her. Why? Because they have a degree and she doesn't. Not understading that 45 years ago it was very hard for people of color to get degrees, jobs, lots of things, hell, it's not that easy now. I work for myself, because no one will hire me, even with a degree. So I guess in some ways racism and sexism has worked for me - insert smiley face.

• Do you know that Wanda Coleman as a little kid wouldn’t have been allowed to go to Disneyland?
• Her parents wouldn’t have been allowed to buy a house in Santa Monica. Yes liberal Santa Monica.
• That up until the 1960s people who looked like Wanda Coleman weren’t allowed to have drinks at the Biltmore’s Gallery Bar.

Her honorary degree is real and is valid, because I doubt that the average 25 plus year teaching tenured upper middle class white professor at USC, UCLA, or Stanford would have survived what Wanda has survived.

Considering everything, she's actually rather pleasant.

Maybe she should republish her work as an upper middle class white person.  It’s odd how if you are ethnic your recounting of an event is viewed as suspect by publishers.

It’s viewed as suspect by everyone.

"Browne, I think possibly you are viewing that refusal of entry into a free event as way more than what it was, it could have been a variety of things. Did you cover up that 666 tattoo on your forehead?" Browne's suspecting 'friend'.

They would probably think Wanda Coleman was trailblazing or groundbreaking if she were white or a man.

I remember the head of a writer’s organization that is run from New York (but has a LA office) who is not Latina wrote a book that seemed to be a biography about a lesbian Latina. Her CalArts ass got that thing published (and I think an award too) with a quickness and got a bunch of readings around town. Everyone thought that was ok, or at least pretended as if it were, because she is the head of an important literary organization.

We all have to pretend that mediocre people with power don’t suck in the arts, especially the literary arts.

I thought that was kind of not ok, because that’s kind of stealing someone else’s experience because their cultural experience happens to currently be popular to the mainstream media.

I think that is kind of artless. No, I’m sure that is artless.

If the book had been very good, then I wouldn’t bring it up, but it wasn’t good. It was just right place, right time, but that should have been a break for a Latina writer. Not an artless rich person, who knows how to market themselves and a product.

Maybe Wanda Coleman isn’t full of shit enough to be recognized. She needs to develop an addiction to crack and die on skid row and then maybe people will recognize her.

They would use her as “don’t let this happen to you” tale for cocky people of color types.

People like Frank Chin, who lives in Echo Park. Who for some reason is also forgotten when people say the only LA writer is Charles Bukowski.

An “acceptable” stereotype back story in writing seems to be very important, especially if you are working class or poor.

I think if you’re working class you have to have a flaw (an accepted flaw) that people can point and laugh at in order to “make it”.

We can’t let the secret out that talent has nothing to do with the crappy university system in the states. If that secret leaked out people would stop wasting money there. Fake artists who make their living teaching, stealing other people’s identities, and living off grants would have to do something, like work at the phone company or the grocery store.

By Browne

Punk rock writers. West Hollywood. 12/13

In New York during a release party and signing for a retrospective of the rock magazine Creem a fight broke out. People came to blows. People who have books on Harper Collins came to actual blows and afterwards people defended the adult men who came to blows by denouncing the offending party (which depends on whose side you are on, who is offensive and who is not) by attacking their manhood.

That is punk rock right there.

The above are the many reasons I love New York people. Even in the day of chatrooms and blogs and angry 3am emails they will actually take the time to come down and kick your ass in person.

Fuck success.

Fuck money.

Fuck doing jail time.

If your big mouth and cocky attitude wrote a check for an ass kicking a New Yorker regardless of financial status or success will definitely cash that fucker. And they will do that shit in public.

Will a fight ever break out at a LA book signing? Nope, reason being is that most LA writers are gutless ass kissers. Even the badass ones aren’t really badass. They are simply wearing a costume. Like people who dye their hair green from a hair dye they bought at Hot Topic in the mall.

Who goes to the mall anymore?

If you go to the mall how can you be anti-establishment? Dyeing your hair green isn’t even anti-establishment anymore.

Mick Farren is in the wrong city. He wrote for Bomp. The LA version of Creem. I understand that LA has great weather, but I think Mick Farren should have gone to New York. There is no one here to fight with. Of course the women are better looking, Detroit is a harsh place, but in LA the above scenario will never happen.  There is no one that will jump up in the audience and go, “You’re a fucking liar,” or “That shit didn’t happen,” or “What the fuck is this?”

In LA no one will ever say that to anyone that is doing a reading, a concert, an art show because the reason people are at events in Los Angeles isn’t because they appreciate anyone’s work, but to network and kiss ass. Not that they don’t do that in New York, but that’s not the main purpose.

In New York they have an opera. In New York they have an opera that they don’t have to give away almost free tickets, to get people to show up. People care about things other than TV and fighting with idiots online.

Fights are to be done in person.

In New York they have magazines and newspapers, lots of them. Not just one major and two weeklies and glossy shittily produced adwells pretending to be magazines. In New York they’ve got several dailies, dozens of weeklies, and plenty of ‘zines. They have a culture of writing and it shows in the writing and the spirit of the writers.

Writing is a craft that is respected on the east coast.

Maybe the east coast is where the gods are. Maybe the reason that people in LA are such chicken shit, is because they know that they can’t survive just on their words or art alone.

Mick Farren (he’s “punk rock”, but not punk rock, but in spirit, “punk rock”) gave an interesting anecdote at West Hollywood bookstore (a store which needs to fucking have their reading in the annex and not in the cramped front with SIX chairs, what the fuck!!! they used to have eight, but they had to put some cheesy Chronicle Playboy books in the last row. Chronicles you're not Taschen, please stop, seriously you're not helping the print world at all...)  last night about a writer who loved Keith Richards. He paraphrased that this one particular writer (he gave the name, but I can’t remember it exactly), was doing the whole “I know Keith he is my best friend blah, blah, blah…”

One day Keith invited his “best friend” to his house and he put out a giant line of heroin, he took half and gave his “best friend” the other. His “best friend” ended up waking up three days later in the hospital.

I guess the moral to that story is if you want to party with the gods, build up a better tolerance to hard street drugs…or maybe not.

by Browne

Bukowski was an asshole, but that's not the problem

      Though I find Bukowski a piece of shit as a person and I find people's fascination with his writing odd yet understandable. The vast majority of people who tend to like Bukowski tend not to be big readers. Bukowski attracts the "moronic beat genre, MTV, TV, myspace, Scion driving, calling Silver Lake the eastside" crew.

    But postponing the hearing because of questionable character, well that's a bit of bullshit..

    What artist doesn't have questionable characters?

    Those of you defending Bukowski and his character saying things like he wasn't a Nazi sympathizer or a piece of shit, hey you're fucking idiots.

    He was a notorious asshole. Do you guys actually think he was a nice guy or even OK?!!!

    What the fuck, really people.

    He was amoral, probably racist, most certainly a misogynist, BUT that's not why he shouldn't have his little piece of shit house on DeLongpre made into a home for poseur writer types that tend to have no voice, but a lot of technical expertise and the kind of skills  to work the political and social system to get grants.

    The reason he shouldn't get his bungalow made into a place of honor should only be because someone gets a clue and realizes that this guy was not god. His work was ok, but twenty years from now after all of the 1960s  burnouts have gone away, he's not going to be one of the greats.

   Though appealing to the general public can keep a naked emperor type going for awhile...

   But say I'm wrong, say Bukowski is a god. Him being an asshole shouldn't prevent his temple for writing to be created, but you know I still think the whole idea is pretty fucking stupid. The people who want this are pretty fucking stupid. 

   That's why the people who want this writing temple thing to happen so badly are too fucking stupid to fight for his writing, but have instead decided to take up the fight for his character (my deduction is that these dumbasses don't actually read and can't actually talk about his work in any other fashion than, "he was cool..." this is probably why the "he was an ok person" thing started) but the character fight, that's pretty much going to be a losing battle.

   Seriously, the Buk was an asshole.

   There are other LA poets people.

   There is one named Wanda Coleman and she's at least as good as Bukowski. No she's not academic, but if Bukowski is ok, why not Wanda? She was published by the same people as Bukowski...so what's the problem with Wanda...maybe this is the start of another post...

    Only angry white men can be and lauded in death (and life) as ok.

    People in LA can be such bullshit.

Browne

RIP Norman Mailer

A clip that I got from Mick Farren's site. Mick Farren one of the few people who isn't bullshit and there is so much bullshit out there...

Norman Mailer

January 31, 1923-November 10, 2007

Rick James. Cocaine. Book Market. 9/27

I ran across this gem of a book a few weeks ago.

 

The book didn’t come like that. That’s my cocaine on the cover.

Rick James as you know is dead. My friend Glenn did not know that.

“Maybe you could get him to sign it,” Glenn.

I just kind of stared at him.

Glenn is from Costa Mesa, though I don’t think that counts as an excuse per se, but we’ll let it count (just for today.)

All of us (the staff of Shametrain LA) are sort of amateur book “collectors”. We got that LA Rex book simply because we thought the guy who wrote it was bound to get killed since he’s an active duty cop.  After his untimely death that book would jump in price and we would all be rich or at least have enough to order beverages with top shelf vodka for a week at one of the better bars.

One where the kind of people who think beer is an acceptable beverage don’t frequent.

We got three hardback covers of LA Rex with his signature, but you know after I met him I felt kind of bad about that. Will is a cool guy and the book though it has some spots. It is entertaining in a Die Hard/Training Day kind of way.

BusTard will be pissed about me calling it entertaining in a Die Hard kind of way, but that’s not an insult. It is what it is. It isn’t Proust, Camus or Dostoevsky. I couldn’t read Proust all day. Variety is good and Will Beall is a good writer for a diverse library. He is good writer in regards to LA wrongness. His book is modern day literary noir. If he can manage to stay alive and write some more books, he’ll be a force.

BusTard thinks Will Beall is god.

He is, but it’s not his writing that I so much admire at this point and time. He is very, very cute.  He is first date get laid kind of cute.

Sorry let me move on to Rick.

The only way “Memoirs of a Super Freak” would be worth anything at all (still probably wouldn’t have been that much, because people like him are total whores and have already signed lots of stuff, so their signature is usually worthless) is if I could have had Rick James sign it, which would have been impossible since the book came out after he died.

He died as we all know of “natural causes” or some reports say an “existing illness” at 56. He died after years of drug abuse, specifically the various forms that are created with coca leaves. I think considering everything he lasted awhile.

Whoever designed the cover should be shot or given a hot shot (to keep with the theme.)

Three fonts on the cover?

Why?

I’m getting a little tired of shitty production quality in regards to books. I understand the internet has taken over, but if you’re going to be a publisher, please give a damn or just put out ebooks.

Please be artful.

I would liken this book to…how would say this without sounding like a dick. Oh it’s like macaroni and cheese with bacon bits. If you like that sort of thing it can be very good, but it will kill you.

His book is interesting only on the basis that his life was crazy as hell. If he had been an accountant with a normal mom who wasn’t a numbers runner for the mob, then this book would not have been nearly as entertaining, but he is not an accountant. He is Rick James.

Rick James was a person that trouble just seemed to find. I simply look for trouble. He seemed to be the kind of person who was just walking up the street and trouble was just like, “You want to hang out. Play some basketball. You want to see some naked pictures of my sister? She’s real hot.”

It was a rambling mess of a book (that needed an editor, I’m a horrible copyeditor and I was finding errors,) but I did read it all the way through.

While he’s no writer, this book was worth sixteen dollars. That’s one Black Dahlia and a shitty tip.

Rick James was partying I know up until at least 2000/2001. Back when I was in college this woman who I met at a coffee store in Venice invited me to a Rick James party, but I didn’t go.

“He’s not dead,” me.
“No, he’s totally alive. He would dig you,” possibly swinger sex party type girl.

This book is all about drug addiction, sex and partying. If he would have had a real editor or publisher possibly this book with some editing, better pictures…well it could have been so much better.

I don’t want you to think I’m judging his life, because I’m not. I’m simply judging his publisher’s shitty job at the production and editing of this book.

Drugs are great. I can totally see how a person can become a crack whore.

That is hell of a drug.

Trust me.

by Browne

Bill Clinton. When the "disabled" attack. Pasadena 9/18

Ok while I understand there are rules at some point if you have IQ points over that of a parrot you should question the point of a rule.

Now I was standing in a queue to get my Bill Clinton book signed I was told that there were no bag check-ins and that I had to take my stuff to my car. Hey I took the bus there to avoid the traffic.

I inform bookseller of this and she just stares and goes, “You have to put it in your car.”

Fuck I took the bus. What the hell?

What about all of the green shit that is so fucking popular? What about accomodations for the green people who take the bus or ride their bikes, oh yeah accomodations are only made for green people who buy hybrids and have veggie diesel mercedes...fuckers...(oh when I get my license back, I'm in the market for one of those cute little Mercedes, so if you're selling, I'm buying.) What about the people who don't have their licenses suspended owing to laws that say you have to be in a certain state in order to drive? What about those people god damnit?

This is why I had to drive imparied in the first god damn place, because of this kind of bullshit!!! I bet half of the booksellers in that bookstore are vegans or fregans or whatever the crap hippie booksellers are, but do they put their bs green hippie values into place in a real situation other than flipping out when someone eats a hamburger and giving people grief because they have a fur coat, no of course not that would actually entail being relevant.

I understand the reason that they said what they said is that they didn’t want 1000 people checking in their crap, which is the reason they lied. I wasn’t aware that they were lying and I didn’t want to try to second guess and end up being queued up for six hours for nothing, but you know since most people drove there (because people in LA will drive two blocks to go work out and jog at a gym) if one person tells you that they took the bus there, to me logic would point to making an exception.

Also if you know you’re lying and you are just saying what you’re saying so you don’t have an influx of people checking in items why not pull the one person who bussed it or biked it a side and say (I was the only one with that dilemma) quietly, "Just wait we just don’t want so many people checking in items."

That’s just common sense. I don’t expect common sense from everyone.

I don’t expect common sense from people who work at McDonalds.
I don’t expect common sense from people who work at Taco Bell.
I don’t expect common sense from people who work at Los Angeles’ City Hall
I don’t expect common sense from drunken frat boys.

But I do expect common sense from booksellers at Vroman’s in Pasadena.

Owing to the fact that this parrot told me that there was no where to check my items. (Even though it clearly said there would be a spot on the webpage. I read it over and over again, because when you take the bus you think about these kinds of things, so I know exactly what it said I could bring and not bring.) I decided to put my items in a stranger’s car. I thought I had no choice since:

If I just hid my bag in the bushes, someone might have thought it was a bomb due to the whole terrorism thing.

If I just put it beside the wall, someone might have thought it was a bomb due to the whole terrorism thing.

If I had tried to tie it around my waist and use it as some kind of odd accessory people might have thought it was a bomb owing to the whole terrorism thing.

I have big hair. The secret service requested I take my hat off so they could wand my hair, because I guess due to the terrorism thing it’s a place where someone could hide a bomb or something.

Yeah so I leave my bag in a very safe looking stranger’s car, but once we get in I got attacked by queue jumpers. Fake disabled queue jumpers. Yep, lots of fake disabled people faking pretending to be disabled so they wouldn't have to wait.

How do I know they were fake disabled bastards?

First off most disabled people don't have one crutch. Second some of these fake disabled people were people that I KNEW. People that I’ve seen walking around the art walk in downtown. No fucking lie. Yeah so asshole fake disabled people (with their fat bastard of a daughter) jumped in front of me and jumped in front of REAL disabled guy in a wheelchair right before I got my book signed and then walked really slow.

Being old is not a disability and the woman’s whose car I left my book in was the same age as the “old” fake disabled people who attacked my place in line. Yeah I know about the disability that you can’t see, but for some reason I don’t think these people had any of those disabilities, because when they got out the store their limps disappeared and their canes stopped hitting the floor, possibly Bill Clinton’s handshakes have some special healing powers, if so I don’t know why it didn’t fix my bad attitude.

Anyways I lose nice looking stranger who has my bag in her car and I can tell how she was walking she had forgotten she had my stuff in her car (I call it the Bill Clinton contact high) not because she was malicious (she was very cool,) but simply because people forget stuff like that.

So I have to rush to get my book signed by Clinton and I then proceed to hurriedly run down Colorado in my high heels (I wear high heels a lot, even when I’m waiting in line for 6 hours. Just because you’re waiting in line doesn’t mean you can not look fabulous.)

Luckily I caught up with her, but you know I almost lost my shit because people at Vromans don’t understand why protocols are in place. They aren’t there to fuck things up, but to provide order, when your protocols start fucking things up they become petty annoying hoops you have to jump through so mindless drones can feel important.

Thinking, it’s not hard, but it’s becoming increasingly unpopular. Maybe it needs a reality TV show.

Browne

PS unlike BusTard, I'm probably going to go to Vroman's again. They have interesting authors there. I was just a wee pissed about today.

Up the street. Los Feliz. 9/17 or 9/18

We at ShametrainLA often go to Skylight Bookstore to buy books and to hear people of semi-note read. Why do we frequent this bookstore instead of Vromans or Book Soup, because it’s walking distance from our houses and Circus of Books rarely has reading events. Once you’ve seen one porn movie, magazine, book you sort of have seen them all, especially with the internet and all. So we often go to Skylight.

This weekend or Thursday (I’m not quite sure my intake of alcohol has increased about ten folds in the last 12 months,) but some time before yesterday we heard Mark Salerno read.

We at ShametrainLA appreciate Mark Salerno and his contribution to literary Los Angeles via his literary magazine Arshile (which is out of print) and his many books Hate, Method…etc..so when on our way back from Vermont we read in the window that Mark was getting a new book of poetry released (yes we know most poetry sucks, but his doesn’t) we marked out calendars to remember to  roll out of bed to  hear some verse from Mark Salerno.

His new literary art is entitled Odalisque.

Mark was suppose to sit down with us after and have some wine and Italian food, but I think he’s scared of me because I touched him in a special spot once. He probably should be scared of me if I had a chance to molest him properly I would (my current paramour is pretty open minded.)

I told him that he could pretend like I was 40 if that would make him more comfortable, but he’s not nearly as pervy as his book covers might suggest.

If I were into TV or movies my life would be simpler. You can’t just call up a person on a TV show, they are rarely listed. Also actors are dumb. I hate dumb people and most actors are dumb.

If you’re into writers in general they are pretty easy to get in touch with and in general they are pretty easy whether they are married or not. I went out with this Russian writer (I won’t name his name since I’m not a jerk and since he is and was married at the time that would make me kind of a jerk) every time he came to LA he’d come to my house and we’d do naughty things. I have to admit half of the time I didn't know what he was saying. He had this very thick accent, but he was cute and I liked his book. I remember we ran into the LA literary community (don’t laugh there is one, it’s sort of a small and it’s stuck to a piece of gum on someone from San Francisco’s shoe, but it still exists) once at MOCA and everyone was whispering, “Is not that the ‘Russian writer’ guy, whose just recently won all of those awards and isn’t he married and isn’t she some major slut? What's going on there?”

Like I couldn't hear them. I'm amoral not deaf.

Fun times….

Oh and Mark I’ll be your Odalisque, the person who commissioned me has lost their fortune.

Browne- ShametrainLA