omnipresent

These are the weekends where my school girl crush on LA grows. Weekends where there is so much to do that you become dizzy with all the possibilities.

Cinespia- My favorite summer thing starts tonight with an homage to Liz Taylor with the film "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Bring a blanket a bottle of wine gather your closest friends and watch a film with Rudolf Valentino's headstone and some strange likenesses of some deceased Armenians.

LACMA is showing "Days of Heaven" tonight. Which will be the first time on the big screen for me since it came out when I was 3. (rhyming not intended)

You could always see "Art in the Streets" and go to Wurstkuche like everyone else. Because sausage & graffiti goes so well together.

Sunday is "Taste of the East Side" at Barnsdall park. Which will be an amazing mass of local restaurants. Should I eat ground beef and pickle tacos, Bun Thit Nuong, Forage's Jidori chicken, try Little Dom's for the first time? Good thing it starts at 1 so I can fast until then.

And sunday hotel cafe be there or be square.

I'll probably do a couple of these things and then go and have French bartenders chat me up and somehow convince me that buying an $18 glass of wine is a good idea.

soft rain

Do people here get nostalgic about rain? Does it happen enough to make an impact?

This is one of my favorite rainy day songs. There is something about rain and Chet Bakers voice that goes so very perfectly together.

spectator sport

The area I live in is basically apartments and then apartments and more apartments. There are probably more people living in the 5 square block area than in my hometown. (population 2,645) We are all young and single and not from around here.

Lately on Sundays I have taken to getting up early, sipping my coffee and going outside to watch my new favorite spectator sport I like to call "The Synchronized Walk of Shame"

at 10:32 a.m.
they come out of buildings simultaneously
couples
staggered
guy with girl, guy with guy,
one of the pair ruffled, hair pulled up and back, make up a little farther down the face.
One of them a little too dressed for the night the other comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt.
awkward goodbyes
"I had fun last night"
"me too"
"sorry but I used some of your toothpaste"
"I'll call you"

and turn and reach and open car door and wave

I am in lala love w/ a blogger

We met at a party on meadowbrook.

She came up to me and asked if I were Kitty. I said "yes" and she said "I read your blog and it is funny", and I blushed because that is my instant reaction to any compliment, but what she didn't say is that she is a blogger too and writes thisislalaland . I think we have a few things in common only she is more funny and a lot less...sardonic, I guess that is a way I would describe myself.

I do have to say though that you "hill and valley" crowd call it Fryman over here we call it Coldwater or Treepeople. Just saying.

Meeting talented, interesting, hungry, musically minded people is commonplace at meadowbrook. (that name makes it sound like a sanatorium,but I am hiding people's identities, but we are all just a little bit crazy)Every time I go there my inner circle grows exponentially. I'd like to think that it is my charisma, but I think it has more to with them vouching for my character a little a side that says "once you get past the shy part, she is really amazing"

They remind me of my family artists, actors, writers with big personalities that always made you feel loved. (My family started the first Finnish language theater troupe in the town I was born in but I digress.)

I always leave there with my ideas running and my belly full.

If I were you tomorrow

I would brave the Obama traffic go to the 5th and Sunset Galleries to see I Spy With My Plastic Eye, 2. A plastic camera art show.

I am very excited...and I will be there with my plastic Mini- Diana in my purse.

this is how I knew I was back:

Or "call LowFace he'll hook you up"...

I knew I was transitioning back to Los Angeles when I was sitting in terminal 2 in Minneapolis. I knew that my flight was cheap, but seeing a homeless man in the waiting area was rather shocking. He looked like a bear, hunched over, hair white-yellow and matted, reeking of smoke, red swollen faced and sputtering. I had a hard time convincing myself that he was real sitting there. More like a premonition of things to come.

He of course sat right behind me on the plane. (I wish I were making that up for effect, but I am not) The pregnant orthodox girl and I share a glance and I know what she is thinking immediately

"please do not puke"

We arrive in LA 3 hours and 20 snoring minutes later. I pick up my bag head to the pick up area and there he is waiting outside smoking and sputtering. He is picked up 20 minutes later in a candy apple red Porsche.

I am definitely back in LA.

It is planes trains and automobiles back to my apartment. I wait patiently for the 720 along with 30 plus other tired Angelenos. I can tell it has been a while and mta is trying people's patience, especially since there is a Mayan woman on the corner trying to save our souls. She screams at a man smoking a joint on the corner, about marijuana being a gateway drug to hell. "READ YOUR BIBLE!" she screams at him, I think she is trying get a few of us sinners in her tirade as well.

I just want to get home.

And of course, she gets on my bus and sits just a little bit behind me and when someone laughs she says:

"We pray for those who laugh because only sinners laugh in the face of god."

She speaks in tongues for a while between stops all I can gather from this rambling on are the words "final year" in Spanish.She continues to try to save each one of us leaving us with a final message, like a fortune in fortune cookie.

Mine was "Remember Jesus loves you and he would never give up on you and you should never give up"

I guess it is a nice sentiment, to never give up. I decide to take her advice and file the rest away as nonsense.

What a way to be welcomed back, I missed you Los Angeles.

untitled

Today is the Oscars. My friend calls it the LA Senior prom which totally fits. To prep myself for this years event I strolled over to LACMA to catch the Larry Fink show at the Resnick. The thing I was most puzzled by, other than the interesting area of focus for each photo, was the fact that a quarter of the 30 or so pictures are untitled. I think naming something "untitled" is a total and complete cop out. Names of art do not have to be profound, they can be very simple. I had a friend in art school who once named a piece:

"I worked really hard on this so like it, okay"

Which was great. The piece was funny, that name was funny. I think a name helps you identify with the art. It is hard to come out of the Fink show and have a friend ask you what is your favorite.
"Well, it is the untitled one."
"Which untitled one?the one with the tired girls curled up in chairs and the one gets the stolen kiss?"
"No."
"Is it the one with the girl that is wearing a satin dress with the side boob and cellulite"
"No, but it is the untitled one on the next wall"
"The one with the two purses"
"No, it is the one where the woman looks like she is bearing her breasts to the paparazzi"
"Oh that one, I had you pegged for the one with the woman from the neck down that looks really bored"

See, unnecessarily confusing.

If I could take a sharpie and go back and name things without getting fined for public defacement, I would name them.

"clutches"
"unfortunate dress"
"the kiss"
"just a little bit bored"

Never "untitled".