revisitation on an old meditation

So what if it is true?

So what if an earthquake comes and cracks off the part of the continent that holds LA. What if you knew about it two months in advance? What would you try to see before it washes out into the sea?

I have another couple friends who are packing it up and leaving Lala land for new adventures and having a hard time deciding what to see before they leave.

So I pose this question to you...
What would you recommend seeing if you knew that you could never see it again?

kcattaraugus at gmail dot com or comment or follow me into the cyber-sea.

LA on the cheap-oil barons really know how to do it up

There is a white city on a hill, a hill you can only get to by taking a train into the sky.

Sounds like the beginning of a puff-esque children's story, but in actuality it is just the Getty Center, which by far is one of the greatest places to see in LA on the cheap. Sure the cost of parking goes up and up, but if you bring friends it isn't so bad.

When you get to see the views of ocean, mountains, city it is worth it. When you get to see the Irises it is worth it. When you see something made by hand in 1100 a.d. it is worth it. The blueberry apple pie is worth it. Then you forget the $15 for a car full of your friends.

I highly recommend spending a couple hours devouring the 200 piece "engaged observers", by far my favorite photo exhibit I have seen and it is so much to digest that it will get its very own post.

This weekend the Getty continues with their Saturdays off the 405 with a free concert from Bomba Estereo

cost: $15 for parking, but after 5:PM it is Freeeeeeeeeeee! (coincidentally the concert starts after 5)
Also on the 761 line, (but this is consistently inconsistent)

make-up and tongues

This is a shameless ploy for my oldest friend. Our friendship has survived jealous girls, moves to cities we both love on opposite sides of the continent, periods of quiet and band camp. He helps me navigate my periods of insomnia with text messages. I need you to help him open for Kiss.

Please vote and put your zip code as 10003 for the dirty pearls.

And read his blog Fucker's Lament

Here's to another 18 years!

skinny

The heatwave is over and that was not televised.

About a year after I was jumping off of cliffs, I moved to Minneapolis, leaving my friends, to finish high school, then I moved away from MPLS, moved back, moved to the deep south and moved back and then moved away again and came back.

When I was working myself through my last two years college I worked at an italian american restaurant feeding the beautiful people of Uptown. It was hard work, I worked with my share of hard working people and those who made my life hell. But as everyone knows restaurant people do not have problems unwinding from the workday, it usually involves stimulants or depressants or perhaps a little bit of both.

So on the hot and humid days of July and August when we closed the place down the BOH-ers would pile into a car at and go to Hidden Beach strip off our restaurant clothes and do some naked swimming, dive into the water without the feeling of drag, play in the mud like dirty little hippies.

We'd meet other clothing optional folks, drink, talk, swim. I loved those nights the best.

The thing is that I can never go back to Hidden Beach. Sure it is there and I can go back to its physical space, but since I left the city has thinned out the trees to try to stop the very act that I was so nostalgic about. I think it was because of all of the drunk swimming/drowning and that it was smack dab in the middle of a residential area and everyone knows drunk have a really hard time lowering their voices.

And as I am writing and doing the research I just found out that the restaurant I worked at closed. I'll let you go so I can shed a single tear.

"Good afternoon, the mud pit is ready!"

Legs and all

The heatwave is in effect and has been televised.

Lately I have been waxing nostalgic on what I would do to beat the heat when I lived in Minnesota. Where it is not just hot, but humid as fuck.

I grew up on the Iron Range, best exemplified in North Country (When that movie came out, "they" said that Charlize Theron was too pretty to play an Iron Range girl. Take it from me we aren't just a bunch of homely girls, "they")

I digress.

Dead mining towns scatter that area, including a couple of flooded ones that my friends and I would frequent when it was too hot and humid. We used to climb up the side of the mining crater, jump from great heights and do that over and over again until our arms no longer functioned. (Which if they stopped you were s.o.l. because the only thing waiting for you was 100 feet of more water.)

I remember when danger wasn't anything we ever thought about, when the only thing hopefully keeping us from dying was crossing our fingers when we jumped. Always a cautious girl I kept myself from jumping the 100' foot cliff because you always had to play your cards right because if you didn't get your timing you would trip over the exposed root and surely plummet 200 feet to your drowning death.

The only rule I remember is to keep your arms in, because leaving them out would leave you an intricate patch work of gorgeous purply bruises and the pain made it hard to swim for your life.

There is really nothing more beautiful than the color that leaching iron ore makes in water.

bus blog- interesting tattoos

I was on the bus yesterday with a charming young man with a tattoo that read "fuck a bitch" on his neck.

I hope he is blessed with many daughters.

a survey of midwestern moms

Even here we flock together.

I have noticed that a lot of the people I spend time with here are from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Why did we all come from there to find each other here? Why is that? We posed this question to a mid-western mom and she replied because people here do not stand by their word.

Mid-western people are people of their word.

If they tell you something that they are going to do, they do it.
If we say we are going to be somewhere, we are. (and will usually call you to say we are going to be 5 minutes late if that is what we think will happen)
We are usually the first to RSVP to any event.
If we say we are going to call, we do.

I remember in my first year of college, I had a friend names Kotoko who asked me why Americans ask how you are, when they really don't care about your answer...or why they say that they will call to set up time to study, when they never do. I never knew it was a cultural thing.

Am I a foreign exchange student in my own city?

I have learned that people don't respond to your events because they are waiting for something better to shake out. That when you tell somebody that you want an apartment and you don't put the money down, they won't take you at your word and give the apartment away.

Have I changed? as I write this I realize that I should call Rachel, a fellow foodie who wants to go and eat.

And Moon I know it has been over a year, but if you are still interested I would love to go to Baazar.

Do you think I am full of shit, I love being humbled, email me.

poll

I was hanging with my soccer loving friends yesterday and we were talking blogs when it came up that perhaps I should change my tag line to something else. What I came up with inspired by their creativity, perhaps some "arrogant bastard" and my acerbic wit is something along the lines of..

"Diary of a mental dominatrix"

what do you think?

If you comment I will change it.

Don't tell me what to do!

be careful you might miss it

If you haven't paid attention which is possible, because it is a very small change, I provided the link to my blog when I was a blogger in Minnesota a couple weeks ago.

I just wondered if anyone noticed or had been reading about my other self 6 + years ago.

Reading back, it makes me miss the people I was blog toddlers with:
Hookers on Stilts, Treat Williams, Scholar of Souled On , who I owe so much of my music taste and the Erebus and Terror.

You might find the voice familiar.

Songs stuck in my head has moved to @cerebraldjitis

Love, LL

Happy 4th!!!

Don't be one of those assholes that drink and drive.

Bus blog-La rubia, la morena, la peliroja

No me mires asi, siempre como chips en mi corset y minifalda con mis amigas bellas. Cual es tu problema?

I love transit tv commercials in Spanish.