echo park & kc accidental

alternate title: saturday in detail

i've been logging a lot of hours at work. long, long days and weekends spent sitting at the editing console. when a day off rolls around i do my best to do as many things that i love as possible. as this is the beginning of autumn, the quality of the sunlight and the color of the sky are particularly striking. a couple of weeks ago i had a couple days off (in a row! novel!). i was feeling particularly open-hearted and wanting to connect with anyone in the same mood. on that saturday (the one listed in the last post with the photo of the zapatista cyclist) i wrote this letter to my pal l. in kentucky.

*****
10.8.11
l,
i'm just off my bike, sitting in the breezy shade of Fix cafe. we had rain last week and he temperature dropped for a few days so the sky today is that amazing clear, vivid blue we see when there is no haze.

i'm in the midst of one of those days when i've got - not a crush, but a mad affection for the neighborhood. riding through town on a gorgeous day listening to broken social scene will do that. (BSS might cast the same enchantment over I-5 between LA & SF. they've got that knack :) ) some days i maintain a pretty solitary body language when i'm out. i just want to be in my head. but today is a day for fleeting moments on social connection with people on the street. maybe it's the weather. more likely it's the coffee.

there are murals along retaining walls along sunset blvd. btwn silver lake & echo park. today i saw a plaque under the paint that stated the wall was built by the Works Projects Admin in 1940. thoughts in response: 1. it's still standing and in great shape; 2. most of the retaining walls on that stretch of sunset were probably built by the WPA, putting people to work.; 3. why is the idea of a contemporary version of the WPA decried as socialism & folly? what perspective point do people have that they forget the intent of public education? the US post office? solid infrastructure? gah. you can tell the BSS ended. :) point being: i took a photo of the plaque. i'm far from being a architecture nerd but am a fan of good work & stuff built-to-last. do you remember the stamps in the concrete sidewalks from the neighborhood? there are a few on Rowena from 1926. men, because they were assuredly men then, poured that concrete, leveled those walks, and 85 years later they've still there. that is badass.

i attribute part of this glowy-saturday feeling to my decision to not go into work today. i may regret it by next weds. or so, but today it was the right way to go. :0 the job is going very well, as well as i could hope reall. my work has been well received across the board, which is a relief. i'm not up to the speed of the seasoned editors, so i'm putting in some long days. before i turned in the Editor's Cut for my first episode i worked 12 days. the last one ending at 5am with the director due in @ 10:30a to watch the cut. i got 2 hours of sleep & did my best to talk myself out of throwing up from the nervousness. as it turned out, the director loved the cut! he made some changes then 3 hrs later called the exec producer in to watch a couple of scenes. they elicited some big laughs from the EP and nice words of confidence voiced to the man who wanted to hire me (my mentor/editor dave) woo! and whew!

i just started getting footage for my next episode. it was in the interest of preventing those crazy hours that i considered going in today. current plan: go in early on monday. we'll see how that works out...

oh! did you know that hugh laurie recorded an album? i was surprised when i first saw it, then remembered all the singing & piano playing he did on "jeeves & wooster" and "bit of fry & laurie". turns out the songs are all new orleans blues-based songs and the album was produced by joe henry. i love joe henry. he may be my favorite song writer out there and his band is always stunning. so his working on the album gives it some cred. what i wanted to tell you pre-tangent was that hugh l. did a show at the Mint (!) last week. the crowd was 1/2 great, 1/2 chatty people but the show was great fun. hugh l. was witty & charming (natch) and getting his sea legs performing as a musician. early in the set he noticed that he'd been introducing every number by saying, "we're going to play a song..." so he worked at finding a variation. :) the highlight of the show, though, was during the encore when hugh l. introduced his guest: Tom Jones. really. at the Mint. bananas. they performed a song together from the album, the tom j. sang 2 jerry lee lewis songs w-Hugh l. on piano. riotous! by that point the chatters had stopped conversation to sing along. the closer ws "great balls of fire" of course. unreal. science fact: tom jones has pipes. boy howdy no diminished tone or verve on that dude.

i'd intended to write you a note in re: finally getting around to sending you the old letters i told you about but got off topic early on. :) are you doing much writing? do you write at home? from your posts it sounds like you go out. i can't work @ home. sooo many distractions. there was an announcement in the newsletter of skylight books that a YA author was doing a reading there and i thought of you. shapes of things to come, l!

i'm sending you more of these letters than i'd planned. each of them had something in it, maybe just one or two lines that i thought you'd find funny or interesting.

the really angst-y letters are from my jr. high days. the high school notes and letters are funnier. those jr. high days must have been the first whiff of boys, wanting autonomy, pot, etc. lots of "i didn't know you liked him" type missives. i went to an all-girl high school, so there is none of that drama in later letters. just the standard parents-don't-get-it content. :)

i'll put a note on the letter stack to give you some context.

ok. time to wrap this up. i've got to bike home (30 min maybe) and get this stuff in the mail.

i'm seeing nick lowe @ largo tonight. not a bad saturday. :)

hope you're fab!

ps. did you know that the knit nook in the highlands has shut? last time i was in town i saw that they'd called it a day.
alas.

*****
post script: that nick lowe show was fucking fantastic! thanks to flanagan for the rad poster, too!
and more context: in my continuing efforts to keep myself from out-growing my apt i have shedding stuff when i can. i'd told L. about the box of letters i've been posting about here. i sent a small pile of the old letters to her. sociological interest, don'tchewknow.
follow up: a couple weeks after the hugh laurie show, joe henry perfomed at largo. (he has a new album out and it is a stunner.) hugh l. introduced joe. cross-pollination!
HEY! joe henry is doing some shows, including 2 nights in NYC!!

while posting this:
beverage: stone pale ale drunk from a chilled mirror pond ale pint glass.
audio: mitch hedberg: "mitch, all together" until it got too distracting then i put on broken social scene "you forgot it in people" which is what i was listening to the day i wrote this letter. <3

last bit: when BSS ended, brownsville station's "smokin in the boys' room" came up on the itunes. it starts like this:

how you doin' out there?
you ever seem to have one of those days when it seems like everybody's gettin' on your case
from your teacher all the way down to your best girl friend?
well, you know i used to have them about all the time
but i found a way to get out of it.

when i was a kid i had a 45 of this song that skipped right after the line, "but i found a way to get out of it." it would play that groove over and over. i had to stand by the record player so i could tap the needle past the skip. even now when i hear this song i still hear that skip.

and this: i hung a couple of posters tonight: a my morning jacket poster from a show in salt lake city from january 2007, the other from their radio city show in june of 2008.