The Bus Bench

Bible Thumpers Save Souls at "Unsafe Location" Bus Stop

Repent! lest one be consumed by the eternal damnation of the DASH!

Or so one might surmise from the religious crackpots packing up their signs at this DASH stop on 7th between Broadway and Spring. Even LADOT has formally implied the evil of this particular bus stop: "Unsafe Location" is hand-lettered at the top of the sign.

-BusTard

Margarita in A Bag

Like finding Elvis in A Candy Wrapper, Margarita in a Bag is one of those extraordinarily odd discoveries made while browsing the aisles of the downtown Big Lots.

-BusTard

Films to fuck your downtown state of mind. . .

For the first of three nights of five films to be screened at REDCAT, I missed what I had hoped to be a weekend of jaw-dropping, eye-opening, mind-blowing and highly controversial cinema and debate: All Power to The People: The History and Legacy of The Black Panther Party. (White guy that I am, I opted to see some friends ice-skate while former good friends Leather Hy-, er LISTING SHIP, performed at Pershing Square. From there things turned to a favourite chair that has long known my olde arse at the Biltmore, then quarrelling in the streets and making friends with fellow crazies along midnight on 6th Street halfway to any given mission between San Pedro and Central.)

Anyhow.

So what I missed Friday were three films: "Off The Pigs," "Repression" and "The Murder of Fred Hampton." Three scary films for anyone who understands how things were and, for the lack of daily riotous outbursts, how bad they may well become. Come Saturday and Sunday, however, (and amid all I have to do to get a particular theatre up and running by 21 January), I will be seated to see the rest of this too-brief series.

This could be an epic post, what with my perspectives on anti-statism, violence, mob mentality and rapid change of the world, but I will give it a rest.

-BusTard

Bee Movie.

I have not BEEn keeping up with animated movies of late, but I got a wild hair up my ass Saturday night and decided to pop over to the cinema. I wanted to see “American Gangster,” but for some strange reason the final curtain was at 8 p.m. But “Bee Movie” was showing at 9:40, so I settled for that. It was a great choice.
(There was one other person in the house, and I think he was asleep. I believe he laughed once at an incongruent time. He remained in his seat, unmoving, until the end credits. I am pretty sure he was not dead.)

Anyhow, here’s the lowdown: “bees” are jews, people are WASPs, Italian Vogue is mentioned twice in such a fashion as to brazenly invoke the catholic church’s complicity in the Holocaust, John Goodman as the prosecutor is Clarence Darrow’s evil twin, the military-industrial complex is represented by Honex (as in Honeywell) and Chris Rock’s mosquito, which has about four minutes, is nothing less than brilliant with his bit.

Also of note was the protagonist bee’s father. While explaining how he was chosen to fulfill his position at Honex, he described how as a stirrer he went in there and took hold of that stick with both hands and just started twisting it for all he was worth. It was a great metaphor for how the typical job is a masturbatory experience about which many folk speak highly even as they get little satisfaction from doing it by themselves.

The fluidity and nuance of the animation was superb. No mo-cap creepiness, either.

-BusTard

Kiss and Make Up.

It has been six-and-a-half years since the Angels Flight collision that, with the snap of a cable, bad brakes and a fatal touch of irony, Survivor Leon Praport’s life was ended violently.

It was round noon, and I was at the Market on Hill beneath 3rd. I was having at a heavy piece of pizza, scowling at the sawdust laid down for equal parts nostalgia and vomitorium, when the “THRUMP” from without washed through the feasting area. I was slower than usual to respond to the noise despite not finishing the thick slab of cheese and cheap bread, but I did manage to capture some decent wide shots of the collision of the two cars on Angels Flight.

I was unaware that there was a small, elderly man crushed between the two funicular vehicles; there were also a few folk injured, among them the wife of the deceased.

The dead man, Leon Praport, was a Survivor replete with the numbers on his forearm. Despite having survived the cattle car carnage of the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, Mr. Praport had died on the shortest railway in the world, on a car called “Sinai” no less. (The other is named Olivet.)

The months that followed were terse with finger-pointing between the California Public Utilities Commission and Angels Flight owners. Before the end of the year, L.A. Downtown News was running an ad announcing the re-opening of Angels Flight for late 2001. Toward the end of 2001, the ad copy changed to Spring of 2002; by early 2002 it was some later date. I imagine the ad stopped running shortly thereafter.

The occasional bit of filler in neighbourhood newspapers was all that was granted the still-stark strips of iron that uselessly connect Bunker Hill and the lowlands. But the cars are being prepped for what may well be a return to duty. The rail yards beneath the 4th Street bridge are the current home of the uncrunched and freshly painted cars, as-yet-connected parts and a possibly fresh coil of bloodless cable.

The Olivet and the Sinai in the yards on the L.A. River under 4th Street.

Could this be the coil of cable that killed Leon Praport, an adder ready to strike another victim?

In the meantime, be sure to keep an eye out for the Muerta PSA titled “The Fatal Irony of Angels Flight,” which are available exclusively to the occasional straphanger who happens to find them on public transit throughout Los Angeles.

-BusTard

It Always Begins Badly. . .

. . . and just as the typefaces employed in the title: only the experts comprehend the impending doom.

The above, of course, is figurative at best.

But as one ages, little things take on large meanings; those who are just now taking the reins of what passes for whatever-the-size-horse they are riding would like to think they can ride fuck-all over anything and all—even as they try not to vomit from the bucking force of fuck against their individual crotch—are rough rough and ready. And then come the realisations.

For a majority, it is that mum ain't gonna breast feed you, at least not forever.
For a fair amount, ya won't eat today, but maybe tomorrow.
For a few, what? WHAT?! Like ya ain't starvin'?
For some, it's weird, war, not so bad, except you have to act normal for the rest of your life;
For enough, it's nothing outside a book
For most able to read this, well, there ya go.

I am not sure that my "jumping out" (as they call it in southern California—home of where the WWII internment programme found its black heart, even as I departed Okinawa while the Marshall Plan disintegrated and I was forced via shipping container and the noisiest flying cans of the time—C-47 Gooney Birds—to the United States (NYC, AL, CA, MA and loads of other states within this abbreviated nation) may have made me commiserate with what is happening. But for all I have endured over the last two decades, I must admit that my infection of american attitude is both boon and bane: it has provided a wonderful chronicle as well as other facets.

And yet, I ain't that olde: only 40.

I just like fun, and I am not beholden to wasting time on teevee. No college crap, but books indeed. Good scotch, the occasional orgy, guns, fantastic vibrators, punk rock, Apple Computers, eating worms, and throwing the infrequent waterfount through yer wanna-be wired window, that I and my mates can breathe easily.

Yeah, that's all the life, but we're ready to fight for more.

Kill us if ya doan like it.

-BusTard

Depatterning Societies, Anarchy, Pure Capitalism and The Stench of Semantics

In Naomi Klein's not-so-shocking title titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," the shock is that it seems shocking.
Indeed, one should be shocked that the rest of the world outside the western world, or at least the U.S., wonders why Milton Friedman's desire for a "state of pure capitalism" is merely a gentleman's way of introducing anarchism. To let the market dictate the ways and means would be one hell of a circus about bread, except that the circus-goers tend to pay whatever price those in power advocating "pure capitalism" desire. And it is these same folk what make such a hue and cry about the abominations of violent dictators who wiggle from out of their capitalist control.
To be sure, I am not advocating the abolition of any western government, nor anarchy of any stripe (anarchy, after all, is based in a responsibility to self; "anarchy" is not possible in a western world where even fat crayons are beyond the comprehension of the middle class) or any fashion of new idiocy.
A daily 99¢ burger at the local fast-food joint is a bargain to none other than junkies; the small bit of change saved for the day will be compounded by the dreadful paucity of quickly diminishing health. Milton, were he still alive, would not hesitate to inform such a fool as what thinks a few dollars a day at the local "fry & die" is done in the name of not spending money for "expensive" food, that the health benefits would be well into the red.

Bon appetit.

-BusTard

U.S.A. on Fast-Track to Be Canada’s Bitch

On September 21st, ere the Equinox, Canada celebrated the end of its own long day: the end of the dollar’s dominance over the long-laughed-at loonie. The canadian dollar, which has sat deep in the shadows of the american dollar since 1976, seems to no longer harbour cause for alarm the decades-olde threat of "51st statehood." Now it may be the canadians laughing as the dollar becomes the new "north american peso."
Eleven years after the brief country-wide spate of twoonie-popping (prompted by the easily disengaged centre by merely dropping the damned gaff on concrete or an equally firm surface), the loonie (the basic canadian dollar from which the two-dollar coin took its name) has turned a strong feather and all but eaten the diminishing american eagle. The "parity parties" have only begun to stop. Said soirees might well have continued were it not for the encroaching shopping season that will, I wager, bring canucks streaming south like semi-soused hunters in search of the moose what drank the lion's share of last night's left-over Black Label, eh?
But that is no longer news. What should be news is: why was it NOT news then? The rest of the world knew. Wall Street knew. The Financial Times, the wire services, those with something to lose—they all knew. Hell, pretty much EVERYONE knew—save the U.S.
There is no doubt that with China building its navy in ways that remain unreported in the U.S., the so-called civil unrest in Myanmar (it is not because monks and journalists are being killed; look to the poppy markets in Afghanistan and the oil conflicts round there as well as in east Russia near China) and the on-going money pit in Iraq (who knows if more money is going to Eric Prince/Blackwater/zealous religious right or to the loyal opposition: the equally repulsive albeit brutally effective and no less fanatical facets of islam?) and the financial tide of NAFTA doing what all big waves do (get sucked back out to sea), the U.S. is looking at more fronts than Hitler dared to shake a stick at in 1944 as he marched to Leningrad.
Along with the housing bubble bursting, I can only suggest to those who have not wasted their life savings on the American dream that a small cache of reliable firearms is the best way to defend a large library of good books, decent scotch and any edibles.
After all, you do not want to end up re-living—in real-life—the ending of “A Boy and His Dog,” now do you?

BusTard

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life..."

OK, so maybe the Diane Cordero was not drunk; just replace it with "selfish."

On Friday, 21 Sept 2007, Diane just could not wait the four minutes for the Gold Line to pass, so she ignored the flashing lights, plowed through the lowered crossing gate and slammed into the conductor's cabin. Once the train came to rest, she started screaming for someone to help her dumb ass so she would not be burned alive. Despite her insistent idiocy, someone answered her call, cut the lumpen sod out of her SUV, and dragged her broken carcass out of harm's way. Then the SUV exploded. See the carnage here.

Diane, had that been me with the chance to save your stupid ass, I would have seen to saving you but not until some skin grafting was assured for afterward so you could feel the pain of the driver and other passengers you injured as well as everything you fucked up. (I mean no offence to rescuers Eric Ramirez and Francisco Cornejo, mind you; but if I were you two I would wave off the offer for "anything," let alone Diane's promise that you are a part of their family.) It is hard enough to get the MTA to maintain a decent bus and train system for those of us who have no motor vehicle without fuckwits ramming their new motor vehicles into the exiting infrastructure.

A week later, Diane's fat ass was in a wheelchair, whining about how her life was saved and thanking the man who saved her. None of the victims of her idiocy appeared to be on hand to enjoy the festivities, nor were their names mentioned. Amid all the tears of joy for thanking the man who saved the schmuck from paying for her mistake in a way that would have served her well, there was not one word of apology for the people's lives she screwed up for nothing more than being selfish and stupid. Not one. And yet she goes on for quite some time about god and how she was praying, and how she is thankful that only her hair caught on fire. Well, lemme tell you something, Diane, since what little bit of brainpower you had before you collided with the Gold Line train appears to have been smacked out of your fat head: your hair catching fire may well have been your god's way of telling you, "Hey, stupid, ya shoulda waited for the train to pass."

I have no sympathy for such idiocy, and am angered that the local news would cover the event in such a way as to be a further insult to those whose lives were put on hold for no more than this cow's selfishness. Who will pay for the ceremony in which so many city personnel and vehicles are employed? Who will pay for the emergency services required to respond to one person's unmitigated selfishness that drove her to collide with a train? And why must we have to hear Diane Cordero hog the mike and the camera when it is the heroes who should have the spotlight?

Moreover, husband Rudy vows to purchase another vehicle of the same make and model. Why not ride the fucking train and the buses instead of wrecking them?!

-BusTard

Not Yet Water Under the Bridge. Center of Inquiry. 9/16

We went to see Gil Garcetti at the Center of Inquiry.  The Center of Inquiry has some interesting programs, they hate god and church and things. They say it’s not that, but they want you to think. Yeah sure. Nothing is wrong with hating god, but if you hate god, just say you hate god. Don’t have things early on Sunday mornings and then say it’s about helping people not be addicted to god and to help people think. It's obvious the Center of Inqurity is a bit obsessed with god and his mininions and it's more than just thinking it's stupid.

God and the forces that created him don't want you to think. God wants you on your knees. And I'm sorry while I love the programming of the Center of Inquirty it feels a bit churchy to me and I don't like that one aspect of it. Don't really need a religious alternative. Maybe I'll start a philosophy club on Wednesdays...

So anyway owing to that usually when I go to the Center of Inquiry everyone is old and Jewish and liberal, I got family members in the demographic (marriage, divorce, adoptions…) I knew it was going to be lots of questions, that weren’t really questions but statements of how “ok” everyone was.

“When I was in Africa helping the poor and fly infested I taught 12,000 people to read,” helpful old person.

The book is beautiful. Gil is a great photographer. The exhibit at the Fowler you should go see. I hope what I’m typing here doesn’t discourage you from appreciating his art, because it should not.

As an artist I respect him immensely and will spend large quantities of my not very hard earned money on anything that he puts out.

But he’s into this water thing. Water safety for people in West Africa. When I came in all the old people were like to me directly “He’s talking about West Africa.”

You know I kind of knew that. That’s why I showed up. The Center of Inquiry isn’t some place you just wander into.

I guess it was weird to see a West African (ok, I’m half, but close enough)  at an event about Africa. I’m not saying that in my normal sarcastic way, but in a that’s a real reality kind of thing in LA.

The thing I wondered though is that while this is all great. Why didn’t Gil do anything about the poor people in LA while he was the DA. Skid row was a scary, nasty, crappy place while he was working right up the street, of course this judgment is harsh. But I’ve bought over 300 dollars in books by this guy, so I can think I’m allowed that question.

I know we could all do more. I suppose it’s always a bit easier to do more for people in an exotic foreign locale. If people are in a postcard they seem more pure. Little kids that don’t speak English and carry jugs of water on their head seem a bit more pure than a 16 year old junkie prostitute that will suck someone off for a rock. In person people aren’t so pure and you sort of can’t help but feel that they got in certain situations because they must be evil in some ways. It’s like they are intentionally incorrigible. I sure as hell don’t want to help that bum that wanders around Hillhurst, maybe that’s why. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Or the bad guys in LA have better publicists.

Browne- ShameTrainLA