Another day in L.A.

So, this morning I had a gig in Claremont, which is near Pomona, which is where the County Fair is held. I explain it in this way because it is the only way I know how - my internal map has one thing situated in Pomona and that is the fairground, and under "Claremont" the entry in its entirety reads "near Pomona". As for how far away these are, these locations all read "about an hour". Thanks for visiting the inside of RDB's brain.

As I was saying, this morning I had a gig in Claremont, and on my way home I passed signs for the L.A. Arboretum, which signs I have passed before (probably on my way home from the County Fair - which is in Pomona, have I mentioned that? I love County Fairs). I didn't have anywhere to be for a while and I had a book with me, so of course I got off the highway and followed the signs and decided to explore. This is what I do, what I love to do.

I may have snuck in without paying. I say "may have" because I'm not actually sure that's what I did and it's certainly not what I meant to do, but when I got there I reallllly needed to pee, so I sort of ran into the visitor center and asked where the restrooms were, and when the girl pointed the way I just went. I never really stopped to take note of the ticket prices, but it did register that there were ticket prices posted... maybe they were just for tram rides and things. If I accidentally used this ruse to slip in without paying, I hereby apologize. My mistake.

As I was saying, the first view of these unbelievably beautiful grounds (after the restrooms) was breathtaking: a peacock in full spread. Now, I have lived with peacocks for months on end, and either the ones I know are never in the mood or I was never around during the right week or I don't know what, but I have never seen even one tail display like the one that greeted me in the Arboretum today and in fact, as I walked around, I saw peacock after peacock all fully laid out. It was amazing. For example, here is my friend in a little back-side-front action (click to biggen, of course):



This may be my favorite shot of him (pretty good for cellphone pics, no?):



I had a lovely time wandering around and checking out the waterfall, the rose garden, the ponds and trees...



...the sun's rays warming the ducks:



and on my way out, yet another peacock in full regalia, but a mini-version:



Lovely, lovely, lovely.

PebbleSimiBeachValley

See, the funny thing about this video is that the place it shows, particularly the building in the beginning, is in Simi Valley, CA, not Pebble Beach. I mean, I used to *live* there. (And I will again, for 10 or so weeks, starting mid-June...) Pebble Beach is, like, somewhere else.

It's "like a little prayer" because your name is MADONNA, woman.

Madonna in concert in LA at Dodger Stadium, November 6th.

I am not ashamed: I really really really wanna go.

Buy tickets with me?

"I am 31 years older than Israel."

So, on Saturday night I performed in this amazing show at the Kodak Theatre, which show included Kirk Douglas among its performers and presenters.

And... tonight I went to see a show at the Kirk Douglas Theater. Ha!

It was two (unrelated) one-act plays by David Mamet, and one of the one-acts starred Ed O'Neill (you know, Al Bundy). Clearly next week I'll need to see something at the Ed O'Neill Theater...


(Yeah yeah... file this under "Things That Are Interesting Only To Me". I know.)

Israel at 60 - Unbelievable show. AND I'M IN IT!!

RAMI KLEINSTEIN ACHINOAM NINI (NOA) KIRK DOUGLAS

IDAN RAICHEL KESHET CHAIM HABANOT NECHAMA

The most amazing show ever!!
The Kodak Theatre, May 10 2008, 8:45pm.
You only turn 60 once.
YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS SHOW!!

My friends, let me make something clear: I am not just performing in this show, with all these amazing performers, at the Kodak Theatre. I actually CHOREOGRAPHED PART OF THE DANCE!!! Please come. Please come.

Only a few more days - tickets still available as of this posting so hurry up and get in touch to buy some!!!! If you go through me rather than Ticketmaster, you save a lot of money in fees.

Click here to see more details including prices and seating.

Welcome to The Oneness-Heart-Tears and Smiles International

I find the whole Sri Chinmoy thing kind of fascinating. I've read the article on him and his ultramarathon in Harper's and I've eaten at the Sri Chinmoy restaurant Jyoti Bihanga in San Diego.

But here's the question: why isn't there a Sri Chinmoy restaurant in Los Angeles? And where can I buy some of his bird drawings or other art? I really want both of these things.

But it's probably about not-wanting, isn't it?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, neatloaf.

It's Transportation Day in RDB's Neighborhood

So, yesterday I brought over my (cheap-shit) bicycle to the bike shop near my house, and I left it there so they could fix it up for the summer (I pretty much only use it during the summer, so it sits outside and cries most of the rest of the year, and so every almost-summer I spend $25 or so, nearly as much as the bike cost me in the first place (told you it was a cheap-shit bike), and have the nice guys on Ventura clean it up for me).

And then today, I drove my car to the shop and left it there so they could fix my brakes. Then I leisurely walked from the mechanic's to the bike shop (which took me about an hour), dropped off the bike at home, and walked back to the mechanic's to get my car (another hour? I'm not sure, because I didn't pay attention).

And now, thanks to all the click-to-add-destination-drag-to-change-route goodness over at google maps, I can tell you that I walked six miles today. Yay me.



But I still don't have anyone to accompany me to Says You tonight (except for one friend who lives 3000 miles away (too far even for me to walk) and one who is 13 and is going tomorrow with his parents. Love you both, though!). Sad, lonely, sweaty RDB.

Oh man: said 13-year-old boy just informed me that walking 6 miles is equivalent to running 1.5 miles. And that yesterday, while I sat around and read a bunch of dumb blogs, he ran a half-marathon. Sheesh.

The soundtrack for this post is Kate Micucci's "Walking in Los Angeles". But who does it?

Says You

I'd really, really like to go to this. But you know, with someone.



(For completeness, I kinda want to go to this too, also Friday night. But I won't.)

Proof I live in Los Angeles, item #57

Cholula is fantastic, even necessary, for many foods. Tapatío is a reasonable second-best. Tabasco is completely unacceptable.


(Yes, I know there is no hot sauce in that picture, but I took it on a weekend trip to Mexico with my friends who live in San Diego, so that's maybe Proof #42. Plus, I have a special fondness for the name of that little store.)

360; Or, the View from Stanley Mosk

So, here's the kind of girl I am: every day during the trial, we get a few breaks. As I've mentioned, I'm LOVING the part of this ordeal that I get to spend running around exploring downtown, and that is pretty much what happens every day at lunch time. I've gone to a new amazing place almost every single day at lunch so far and it is fabulous and more blog posts will come about those. But that's not the point of this post.


This post is about how we also get these small mid-afternoon recesses and other little breaks like that, and generally if we only have 15 minutes or so I don't leave the building but I also don't sit directly outside the courtroom door and wait like many of the jurors do. What do I do? I take the elevator to a random floor and walk around, of course! One of the first days I took the elevator (or escalator, to be precise) (or to be even more precise, escalators) to the top floor, the ninth. Turns out there is a cafeteria up there, and an outside patio from which you can look out all over downtown. From the Southwest side you can see the Walt Disney Concert Hall (above picture, right), where I park every day: From the Northwest, the Music Center (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum, etc) (picture to left). From the Northeast side... OHMIGOD I JUST REALIZED MY PHONE DOES VIDEOS!! LOOK:

What a day.

(Those little photos aren't great when you blow 'em up, but they're pretty good for phone pix, no? I love my Treo, Dad, thank you! And Adar :)

Part 3a-c of Many

So, remember “Read.Dance.Bliss: The Day” ? Here’s the story of items 3) a, b, and c from the handy outline, from my first full trial day, last Monday (and, I think, the first time ever that someone (me) posted "more on this later" or similar and then actually wrote more on this later.)

The background is this: at one of my many jobs, I teach dance in an elementary school. One of the administrators told me recently that she’d signed up our fifth graders to participate in this Children’s Music Festival that would be happening on April 1st, and that part of the festival included taking the children to see a dance performance and that after the performance, all the students who had come (many thousands of them) would all go out to a big plaza and do a little dance together. The Music Center people had sent along detailed instructions on how to do this dance, along with a CD of the music and a DVD demonstrating the dance. All the dance teachers at all the schools were asked to teach the kids the dance ahead of time, so that they’d be able to recognize some of the steps in the professional dance performance they were going to see and so they’d be ready to perform the dance after the show along with everyone else. A lovely idea, well-explained in the instructions and the DVD, etc. I happily learned the dance and taught it to my students. The only problem for me was that I really wanted to accompany the school to the event on April 1st, but it was a Tuesday, a day that I teach at a different school.

Well, as time got closer to the festival, I realized I’d really only have to get a sub for one of my classes and maybe I could go with the fifth-graders and then go straight to the high school to teach for the rest of the day… kind of a crazy plan, but maybe it would work. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t really fair to miss a class just because I wanted to go to this thing… I wasn’t sure what to do.

Well, then it turns out I have jury duty. All my schedules are thrown into disarray and I’m getting substitutes and canceling classes left and right anyway; I certainly can’t lose any more teaching time than I absolutely have to.

Well, then it turns out that I have to be in court at 10:30am on April 1st, the day of the festival. So I’m missing all my classes that day anyway. And it seems that the show is supposed to begin at 9:45. Which is all interesting, but it obviously won’t help me be there unless the festival were, like, in the courthouse parking lot. I mean, I have to be ready to walk into my courtroom on the sixth floor at 10:30.

It’s super inconvenient anyway that I’ve been assigned to jury duty downtown. I mean, of course because I am who I am, I’m thrilled that I get to spend some time downtown that I wouldn’t have done on my own, but I talk to other people and they’re all like, “Oh, yeah, I had jury duty in Van Nuys,” (ten minutes from my house) or “I had to go to Encino,” (halfway between my work and my home) but for reasons unknown, I’d been summonsed to go all the way downtown, to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

Which is directly across the street from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Which is where the Children’s Music Festival is.

WOW.

So: that day, I drive myself downtown and meet the kids at the theater. The other teachers have saved me a seat on the aisle, so that I can leave whenever I need to in order to be in court on time. The show starts at around 10am and I get to see about two and a half numbers before I have to run across the street to arrive, perfectly on time, for court. Plus, my students all get to see me there and feel that I am a part of this experience I have been telling them about. I go to court, and we get some instructions from the judge, and then he tells us that opening statements are going to be postponed until after lunch because they have some more things to take care of first, so we are dismissed at about 11:00. 11! I rush out of the courtroom and dial my cell:
“I’m on a break already, are you guys still there?”
“We’re on the courtyard, about to do the dance. Come!”
I run across the street and see all 3,000 fifth graders and their teachers reviewing the dance. I hear my name called, but it is not my school; it’s a teacher from another school in the Valley who has brought her students to this huge event also. Wow! A couple hundred kids over I spot my own crowd and run over to them (heels in hand!). My students see me coming and cheer for me! We do the dance all together and I walk them to the buses and see them off. How utterly fantastic.

I wish I’d gotten to see the whole thing, but the Festival seems pretty awesome. You can see the official information about it here at the Music Center website. Yay!

Part One of Many; Or, Is it "empaneled", "empanelled", or "impaneled"?

This is going to be a post in installments, a multi-part message. I have so many things fighting for space in my brain and my fingertips right now! My post of last week was part zero. This is part one. First, Department 64-style, a brief outline of what is to follow:

0. Introduction; Background reading
1. RDB gets empanelled after a looooooooooong jury-selection process which she finds fascinating.
2. Trial starts; RDB is endlessly fascinated.
3. Read.Dance.Bliss: The Day.

a. Dance; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
b. Trial begins, is prematurely recessed.
c. Dance; Music Center Plaza
d. Read; RDB explores downtown and falls in Love.
e. Trial continues, is endlessly fascinating and again, is shortly thereafter recessed.
f. RDB explores the courthouse.
g. Trial continues; is endlessly fascinating and is, once again, prematurely recessed.
h. RDB explores USC.
i. RDB explores WeHo and finds The Perfect Café in which to sit and blog. Happiness persists.

Ok, now: Jury Selection. The whole voir dire process was really interesting for me, both externally in listening to what the judge and the lawyers asked and how people responded and acted but also internally in the sense that I was very much torn about whether I wanted to get chosen or excused. On the one hand, of course I knew I'd enjoy being on a jury and watching this whole process and ya-dah ya-dah and on the other hand, it is disruptive enough to one's life to have jury duty for a day, never mind getting empaneled on a trial that may last until April 22! So I fought with myself. On the one hand, I would lose money and have to cancel a lot of classes at two of my jobs and I'd have to impose on other teachers to get subs for many of my classes at another job.
On the other hand... I certainly don't qualify for a financial hardship like some others, like the women with small children at home or the cashier at Smart & Final or anyone else in a much worse situation than me. They deserve to get excused much more than I.
On the other hand... my missing the specific days of school that I'd miss would mean a need to re-think THE big show I put together every year for Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) at the elementary school. That kind of sucks.
On the other hand... I get to not work without it being my fault, really, and spend all these lovely spring days in beautiful downtown LA with an hour-and-a-half lunch break every day during which time I'd walk like mad and explore the world - yay!

I came in during jury questioning day two. I listened to 16 people answer the same questions and have the same conversations, and then I saw about half of them get excused by one or the other of the lawyers. I saw this process repeated with the new 8 or so potential jurors, slightly shorter this time. The next day I have to go back (but this time at 10:30 instead of 7:30am, so I'm already happier), and I watch as 4 or so are asked to leave and 4 new names are called. Still not mine. I'm just sitting in the audience, trying to stay awake. These iterations continue and the numbers get smaller (Zeno?) until finally only one seat is empty and they call one name: mine.

They ask me approximately one question; they are so tired of this long process. Everyone accepts me and we go home. That was day two, last Wednesday.

Magically, the court happened to be not in session on Thursday or Friday, the two days I had doctor's appointments I would have had to cancel had I needed to be in court. Thank you, cosmic-scheduler. Similarly, I was in court all day today and will be tomorrow, not the worst days for me, and then we're off again Thursday and Friday, days which I am supposed to be away on the ultra-important annual all-school retreat. Thank you again, omniscient scheduler-in-the-sky. Next week, in court Monday through Thursday, days on which I have no special extra appointments that would conflict. As inconvenient as this can be, it's being pretty convenient.

And just wait until you hear about the magical scheduling issue that happened today, the cause of the all the "Dance" (items 3a and 3c, above)!! But this post is long enough. More to come and please stay tuned!

Famousssssssss!!

Could I possibly be more excited that I was quoted on Metroblogging Los Angeles?

I WAS QUOTED ON METROBLOGGING LOS ANGELES!

First of all, I've known for a long time that blogging.la just rules and you should read it. That's why there's that handy link to it over on the right (you should check out all the other sites listed there too, duh. Think I just like making lists for my health?? Ok, I do kind of just like making lists, but seriously, the lists over there are for you). But now, man, now I am truly in love.

Hooray!

(and, of course, thanks to Follow That Ostrich for noticing!)

Yeah, I voted. I think.

So, yesterday I got an email from the LA County Democratic Party that contained the "official endorsements" of the party and a "click here to find out where to vote", which is exactly what I needed. Perfect - I clicked and I found out that my polling place was, like, on my street. Like, steps away. Awesome.

So, after teaching at job number one and before teaching at job number two, I drove home, and I voted. I think. I say that because the people staffing the place were unbelievably incompetent. Like, I almost thought it was a joke. They messed up almost every single step of the sign-in look-me-up give-me-a-ballot process. I finally got one, as well as a little tutorial on how to do the InkaVote thing, and I went into my little booth... which of course isn't a booth, it's like a podium with no curtain or divider or any of that old-fashioned privacy stuff. I filled out my ballot... sort of. More on that in a second. After filling in my little circles, I folded the thing the way I understood the directions to say to fold it (though I wasn't sure I did it right) and brought it over to the guy. He basically opened it up and looked at it (!!) and then handed it back to me to stick in the little slot. No scanning, no receipt, no nothing. I mean, yes, I got the sticker. But do I feel like I DID something that will COUNT for something? Do I feel at all confident that I did things correctly and that the pollworkers did things correctly? Faaaaaaaar from it.

Question number zero: Is this sloppier because it's a primary, or could I expect exactly the same situation in November?

Question number one: Thank god I could see the ink come out and I wasn't one of those CA voters who were told THEY WERE WRITING WITH INVISIBLE INK WHEN IN FACT THEY WERE "WRITING" WITH A STYLUS MEANT FOR A TOUCHSCREEN!! Or was I?

Question number two: Was I one of those voters who misunderstood the confusing "if you are not registered as a Democrat, do not not fail to not fill in this question. If not, don't not skip ahead to the next." first question?

Now, why do I say I filled in my ballot, kind of? Because: I voted for a presidential nominee, and then I burst into tears at the sight of the questions. I mean, I didn't, but I could. I got the sample ballots ahead of time. I got the explanation/argument packets in the mail. I tried, I tried to read and understand these things, and in all honesty I have to say: I could not. I could not. Now, I think I'm a fairly smart girl. I don't think I'm as smart as *you* guys seem to think I am, but I do agree that I'm reasonably smart. Literate; educated; even, dare I say, erudite. (Yes, I dare. I even pronounce it correctly.) And I could not separate the fact from the rhetoric or the meat from the hype or the bull from the bullshit. I failed to memorize all the Party's official positions, the no-yes-yes-no-maybe train that came in my handy email (not that I believe in blindly following that anyway) and I had to just leave a bunch of 'em blank.


I threw away my sticker.

[Though I'm not sure if California has been officially tallied yet or not, it currently appears that Clinton has won all four of the states I've ever lived in. Interesting? On the Republican side, McCain won three of them and Romney won MA, of course.]

Who says LA isn't safe?

So, tonight I went to the Thursday edition of the best yoga class and after it was over, my friend and I decided to grab something to eat at a place across the street. She was parked in back, I was parked in front; we said we'd meet over there.

So I go to my car and realize the place is literally across the street so I might as well walk there. I open my trunk and take out my jacket and walk across to the diner. We have a little something to drink and a little something to eat and we catch up on the two weeks since we've seen each other and about two hours later, we say goodnight and she drives off. I walk to the crosswalk and go to take out my keys... only, they're not there.

It's ok; I keep my valet key in my purse separately and I have a spare house key in my car. It's not ok; the valet key is with another friend who let me park my car at his place while I was in Florida last week.

Then I realize what must have happened - I bet I left my entire set of keys in the keyhole of my trunk. For two hours. On Van Nuys Boulevard. So forget the question of will the keys still be there - how about the question of will my car still be there?

Shit.

I see brake lights from the general area where my car is and I book it down the street. Some people are getting out of THE SPOT DIRECTLY BEHIND MY CAR. THEIR HEADLIGHTS ARE SHINING ON... my keys, still dangling from the lock.

Who says LA isn't safe?

On Not Posting

I. RDB takes a sabbatical.

A. But why?
B. No one knows.
C. Not even RDB herself.

II. RDB has posts lined up in her head, but doesn't post them.
A. But why not?
B. No one knows.
C. Not even RDB herself.

III. For example?
A. Another post about signs, possibly being environmental and recycling the title "Signs and Portents; or, The Importance of Signs" to include:

1. Fantastic local Egg Salad: there is a sign on Ventura Boulevard at Pierce College that advertises a fun fall thing they have there every year, a maze. Made out of corn. IT'S A MAIZE MAZE. OH YES.
2. There is a sign on Burbank Boulevard that says, I kid you not, "We buy dental gold." Um, OUCH??? EW??? UGH??? Worst and scariest sign ever.

B. A post about writing and about not writing, to include a link to 101 Reasons to Stop Writing and that story about Ann Patchett I never told.

C. A post about how I don't do a lot of community-service type things, but I strongly believe in donating blood and did so today, for THE THIRD TIME THIS YEAR. I AM AMAZING. BOW DOWN TO ME AND MY WONDERFULNESS. Or don't, but give blood yourself instead, before 2007 is up. Check out the many convenient options at Give Life.

D. A post about how I hated "Knocked Up" and "SuperBad", whether I want to admit it or not, but how I COMPLETELY FUCKING LOVED "Juno". I want the soundtrack NOW. What do you mean, it isn't out until January? WTF??

Close to home, so to speak.

Sitting in my cafe (admit it it's a bagel place) (but I don't eat bagels) (it's called "NY Bagel & Cafe". It's a cafe! They serve coffee!) (but I don't drink coffee) on Van Nuys Blvd, reading A Year in Van Nuys by Sandra Tsing Loh. I can't get my bluetooth keyboard (hand-me-down) to connect to my fancy Treo (hand-me-down), so I take out my notebook to write in, as usual. I read the following line (p198):

"I am not even packing a (crutch of the literati/crack cocaine of the chronically self-involved) Writing Journal."

Wow. Ouch. Wow.
And this:

"How about your friend Jolene?" Ben shoots back. "The Blocked Novelist/actress/lyricist/playwright/whatever. Maybe she should move to New York."
"Actually," I say, "Jolene originally came from New York--or perhaps the word is fled."
"And now she lives in Santa Monica. Practically rent-free."
"Exactly. A musical based on Los Angeles bohemian life would be called not Rent but Rent Control."

Wait a minute. I originally came from New York. My apartment is under rent control. Wow. Ouch.

Oh God, now this. Page 215. I actually clasp my hand over my mouth when I read this, here in the cafe bagel place on Van Nuys. She rants on and on about the life of a writer and how it is drudgery and not romantic and absolutely soul-sucking and ends with:

"Do you guys hear me? I've had purer 'highs' off paying my bills with Quicken!"
"'Quicken!' they murmur. Apparently they like Quicken too."

WOW. OUCH. RDB, this is your life. A quick look at statistics from the past six months or so of my journal, in which I write nightly (see "chronically self-involved", above) -

Number of instances of the word sex: 2

Number of instances of the word Quicken: 19

Apparently I'm not really an Angelino yet.

Isn't it great that it's so overcast?

No. No it is not.

Guess I need a few more years.

Lights Out LA; Or, RDB is unclear on the concept

Tonight is Lights Out L.A., when everyone is supposed to go dark for an hour to show what a huge difference in saving energy one small concerted effort can make. It's 4pm and I don't even know where I'll be or what I'll be doing at 8pm, so I can plan to participate but I have no idea what that will mean. Am I supposed to sit in my apartment in the dark? I have no trouble with a "TVs Off L.A." plan, since my TV is never on... but it's hard to read in the dark. I suppose I can blog in the dark - does "lights out" mean "computers off" too?

I still don't get the bit about the "Tina Turner trees"

Everybody has their thing. I mean to say: there are so many people, and so many things, and each one has his own. Early on a Sunday morning at the Santa Monica Pier, earlier than the tourists and the hot dogs and the shopping bags, there is the man doing tai chi and the woman doing yoga. There is the group on the uneven parallel bars and the fat white lady running up and down the wooden steps in time to the barked commands of the big, big black man with the whistle. There are the bikes, the rollerblades, the recumbents. There are almost no skateboards; they come later in the day. There are the treasure-seekers, the metal-detectors, the diviners. There is the man lifting weights - how has he gotten them here? There are the gymnasts and the boxers and the sit-uppers and the push-uppers and the pull-uppers. I mean to say: there are the sitters-up and the pushers-up and the pullers-up. And today, there is a lost, lonely girl, walking slowly, thinking quickly, wanting much. I mean to say: today there is me.