Civility

The thing that's awesome about the Huntington Gardens is everything. It's more awesome when you go there to celebrate a friend's birthday -- and awesomer still when that friend has a pass that allows her to bring friends in for free.

We arrived about 10:00 Saturday morning, before it officially opens to the rest of the public. Members can go in early and enjoy the grounds before they let the rabble in. This is, no doubt, the way Henry Huntington wanted it.

Even after the rabble come in, it's still an uncrowded, quiet place to enjoy manicured nature.

We also had reservations for high tea at noon. The back room, where they seat the cool people... not crowded.

I don't think anyone has ever moved to Los Angeles just to be nearer to the Huntington Gardens. But it is one of the reasons people stay.

***

In the Japanese garden. This photo was taken by a security guard who claimed no less than 26 security personnel worked overnight to keep the property free of campers, vandals, pranksters, and vagabonds. I think he was lying. He had this detached, disinterested subtext that sounded like, "What am I? A goddamn tour guide? Yeah, 26. And the ducks play water polo with pine cones, brainiac."

 

Ducks waiting for us to offer food or pine cones, no doubt.

Watercress finger sandwiches, salmon canape, and other stuff at high tea.

Patty (the birthday girl and membership-holder) and I on her favorite bench. This was taken about five minutes after us college-educated grown-ups stopped at this quiet, idyllic spot and began goofing off. Note the girl in the background picking up her stuff and leaving.

 

Stefan and I on Patty's favorite bench.

Amazingly, they did NOT carry this in the bookstore. But they did have an Abe Lincoln 3D picture book. Abe Lincoln in 3D??

I believe people stay in L.A. even for THIS:

Not the art. I mean making fun of art. L.A.'s a great place to make fun of crap. Don't ask me how I know this.

Honestly...

Outside my apartment. This photo was taken on March 10.

March??

"I Am Happy Here"

The dear Dale & Julie had another party last night. Julie celebrated a birthday at the local bowling alley (this time with a murder mystery), complete with buffet and drinks. The food was provided by George, the chef at the bowling alley's coffee shop.

Before you start judging....

The phrase "bowling alley coffee shop" doesn't exactly connote haute cuisine. But you have not eaten at the coffee shop at the Canoga Park Bowl. Chef George is not some parolee flipping frozen burger patties. He makes dishes. And for the party, he brought in lamb, meatballs, Greek salad, hummus & pita bread, and these little slivers of zucchini with some kind of sauce over them. This intrepid reporter was too gluttonous to bother asking what they were. But the whole thing was damn good.

In fact, dare I sound judgmental, it was too good to be bowling alley food.

During one of George's trips into the party room, I called him a wizard to his face and told him he should have a restaurant in Beverly Hills.

He backed away and waved his hands at me like he'd overeaten. "I am happy here."

I mean, isn't that just the damn secret we're all trying to figure out, if we were smart? Getting to the place that makes us happy, not the place where we think we're supposed to go where we'd be happy?

Go to George. Eat his food. Learn from George.

And if I can brag about L.A. for a moment, another satisfied customer in the city known for crushing dreams.

Question on Oscar Day

What was is the best L.A. movie? (I've asked this question in blog form in the past, but got little response.)

For me, I'd say L.A. Story. All the embarrassing things Steve Martin had to say about L.A. were essentially true.

Also, the L.A. sequence in Annie Hall.

And your favorite? I wanna know.

100th Birthday -- and no cake?

Today, Van Nuys, the unincorporated center of the mostly unincorporated San Fernando Valley, turns 100. Like most 100-year-olds, it looks a little worse for wear.

I wish I could say that I was anticipating this day, but I didn't even realize today was the day until I chanced across this story yesterday:

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_17446497

(Note that the Daily News has it under "Breaking News.")

My opinion: The town's biggest improvement, if the article is correct, is that Van Nuys is no longer a dry town. Could you imagine?

This Saturday, there is apparently a celebration of sorts at the Orange Line stop in Van Nuys, which is just about in the heart of what we called BVN as kids, or Barrio Van Nuys. It says a lot about a neighborhood when its blight is somewhat ameliorated by the presence of government buildings and car dealerships.

In fact, a little research has revealed that the party began six months ago, or was at least scheduled to start then:
http://lovemytown.org/

For those of you who don't read the press releases, I'm from Van Nuys. Born, raised, and latchkeyed. So this whole 100th birthday should mean something to me. I'm having a spot of trouble finding the excitement. I think that's indicative of one of the facets of L.A.: There definitely is a sense of community among Angelenos, but it takes more work to realize it than it does in other parts of the country.

Or maybe I just don't care about my hometown that much. I mean, I can go home again. Hell, it's only about 10 minutes from my apartment. I suppose the urge to go home has never materialized because I've kind of never left. Also, Van Nuys is still in its economic downstroke; the redevelopment hawks haven't swooped in yet. It won't be cool to visit Van Nuys again for about another decade, I'd guess.

I also can't go home again because it's not home. And I don't mean because my mother moved out of town. I mean because communities, in L.A., anyway, have a temporary quality to them. If the people cycle through Los Angeles as often as it seems, is it any wonder communities here don't feel the same as they did even five years earlier?

Makes me wonder what the next generation is going to think when Van Nuys celebrates its 125th anniversary. "Doesn't feel like home to me -- ever since the guppies (green yuppies) came in and turned the fast-food joints into lofts. The economy turned around, and all those quaint check-cashing legalized-loansharking places went out of business. Hell, the billboards aren't even in Spanish anymore."

Jury Duty coda

Another aspect of the courts that works. This came in the mail about a week later.

Jury Duty, part three

(If you missed part one and part two, click the links.)

I was actually looking forward to the second day of the trial, namely because I wanted to visit Disney Hall's "hidden park" at lunch. But before I could, I had to endure another morning of Mr. Hart eliciting inane testimony like an armless man steering a laden tugboat.

The plaintiff's absent witness from yesterday showed up for day two of the fun. It was her chiropractor, another Korean woman who was good at offering evasive, meandering answers. It took over an hour for Mr. Hart to get her to tell us that in her medical opinion, the plaintiff was in 7,000 different kinds of pain when she moved her arm, but thanks to her expert application of the chiropractic sciences, the woman was much better now.

A word about the defense counsel. This guy, I liked. He clearly had his shit together: kept his interrogations quick, made his points, never stuck for a question or an answer. And maybe this is all part of Litigation 101, but he kept making faces and inflections that clarified his positions. His unsubtle interrogation of the chiropractor, for instance, implied that since she provided services on a lien basis (i.e., the plaintiff hadn't paid a cent for any of her fifty-one visits), she'd padded the bill so as to collect a fatter cut of the inevitable judgment. "Twenty dollars for applying an ice pack?" followed by a look at the jury with his Whoopi Goldberg face: eyebrows raised, noticeable frown, chin dropped in disapproval. It made me want to be a lawyer. A little. Barely. For a nanosecond.

After a brief confab with the judge, Mr. Hart borrowed a witness from the defense. The witness was the defense: the restaurant manager, a nice Korean man who, after about an hour of testimony, barely told us a goddamn thing that we didn't already know.

At about 11:00 a.m., we were asked to excuse ourselves into the jury room again. By now, some of us, chiefly me, were having a hard time hiding our boredom with the whole thing. Since we weren't allowed to talk about the case, and since we'd already exchanged notes about the morning commute, we were stuck for topics. This may have been the time (we were sent into our chamber so many times that they've since blurred together) when I talked to a juror from Winnipeg. She said it gets so cold there that people have to use block heaters, these special appliances designed to keep car engine blocks warm enough so cars can be started the next morning. Or maybe so engine blocks don't contract to the point of cracking. Either way, it was like real-life science fiction to a boy from Los Angeles.

We moped back in a few minutes later, whereupon the judge began to explain to us a court procedure called a "directed verdict."

I knew what that meant.

As soon as I heard the words, I restrained myself from doing a little fist pump.

A directed verdict is something the judge issues instead of letting a jury decide a case, essentially because the case is so one-sided that no jury with its head out of its own ass could possibly see things any other way. It's like the ten-run rule in little league, where one team is slaughtering the other one so badly that the ump calls it. In this case, the defense was winning by a score of about 29 to zero, because the plaintiff had proven essentially nothing -- at least, nothing the defendant could be held liable for. Judgment for the defendant. The end.

We were thanked for our service and we left. I was so grateful for the no-nonsense way the judge had conducted the whole trial that I decided to send him a thank-you card as soon as I got home. (And I'm gonna. Soon.)

In the jury room as we gathered our things, I forgot to conduct a mini-survey about how we would have ruled if given the chance. But based on the chatter, we did not appear to have our heads up our asses.

In the hallway, Mr. Hart and the defense attorney stood there to soak up whatever feedback they could get from us. I didn't hear much of it because I was too intent on getting some satisfaction out of this whole farce. I'd been harboring the determination to let Mr. Hart know to his face what a clown I thought he was and how this cost me wages and was a waste of taxpayers' dollars and maybe even that he should take up a new line of work.

But I had only remnants of my original outrage. All I said to him was, "No one's happy this woman's injured. But she didn't look where she was going, period. It's a simple case of common sense. I'm sorry, but you had nothing." He stood there, taking it all graciously enough. Even his client stood there with a polite grin on her face. I don't think she knew she'd just lost. Mr. Hart was so nice about it all that I'm not sure he knew he'd just lost. 

In an instant, I no longer cared about exploring downtown. I didn't even care enough to ask if the plaintiff was going to be liable for the defendant's legal bills. I wanted to get back to my life. I stomped out of the building and down the block for the nearest subway car, which I ended up sharing with three other jurors. We exchanged variations on our amazement that Mr. Hart and his client somehow thought they had a chance. One noticed, sadly, that not only had Mr. Hart worn the same suit every day, but his coat was fraying. The conversation made me not want to be a lawyer anymore, not even a little, barely, for a nanosecond.

We seemed to run out of trial crap to talk about just as we were hitting our subway stops. We finally introduced ourselves -- and said our goodbyes.

I Wasn't Even Wearing Axe

Jamal: Women will sleep with you if you write a book?

Forrester: Women will sleep with you if you write a bad book.

--Finding Forrester

World traveler, all-around fabulous babe, and mayor of parties' asses, Janice MacLeod has mastered this whole writing thing.

She's written TWO books -- and hers have actually sold a bunch of copies. She's been blogging a helluva lot longer than I have and is better at it than I am. And as for a career as a writer, she's conquered that and recently walked away from it, in search of bigger challenges. (I find that incredibly admirable. My writing career, at present, couldn't afford me a middle-class lifestyle any place nicer than Burundi.)

I don't want to risk babbling, so let me end by saying that yesterday, she honored the shit out of me with this:

http://aftertheartistsway.blogspot.com/2011/02/in-bed-with-joe-dungan.html

Valentine's Day in Los Angeles

I've decided that if I were mayor or Eli Broad or whoever is in charge of Los Angeles, I would make Valentine's Day illegal within city limits.

Nevermind its obligatory aspects; those are universally regarded as repellant. I'd outlaw it because this town is already filled with alienated, lonely singles who are too proud to ask for company today and too mentally ill to ask for help. The last thing they need are public reminders of all the happiness they think they're missing out on today and strongly suspect they won't have tomorrow.

As an alternative, I'd devote 24 hours of public access cable to true-life video clips of couples who are miserable: public fights, recycled news items of celebrity divorces, reruns of Cheaters, all the evidence I can come up with that the grass is sometimes browner on the other side of the fence.

If anyone wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day, they'd have to do it privately, in a certain room, like that one room at parties where people smoke pot.

I'm not saying this out of bitterness. It didn't even occur to me until I checked my facebook page this morning that today is VD. (All these years later, I still take juvenile delight in its initials.) I'm saying this because the isolated misfits of this town need all the help they can get.

I'm also saying this because I'm no longer an isolated misfit. Yes, I'm single, but I'm rather proud of the fact that I'm pretty damn immune from lapsing into the dark side every time there's an invitation.

It'd be easy for me to tell miserable lonelyhearts some witticism like, "The greener the grass, the more fertilizer it's marinating in." But that's bitterness in disguise. Happiness is a state of mind -- whether you're in a relationship or not, whether it's February 14 or not, whether your dreams have come true here or not. For you see, Los Angeles, like money, does not make people happier. Our weather simply makes life easier.

Jury Duty, part two

Mister Hart, here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.

The above line was spoken by John Houseman, playing a law professor in The Paper Chase. He was addressing a student. I think that student was the plaintiff's attorney in the case I was on.

By late afternoon on the jury selection day, the defense attorney was done questioning prospective jurors because he was satisfied with the jury. Mr. Hart was done because he had run out of turns to cast off prospective jurors. The 14 of us were told to show up at 8:45 the next morning. All I could think about was how this goddamn thing better be worth it because every day I was stuck here would cost me a day's pay, save for the daily $15 the city so magnanimously offers jurors.


The next morning, we were treated to the story of the case: A woman tripped in a restaurant in Koreatown and was suing the restaurant owner for medical bills, pain, suffering, misery, anguish, humiliation, croup, colic, bad hair days, a burning sensation during urination, the war in Iraq, and anything else she and her ambulance chaser could think of. She claimed it was due to unsafe conditions in the restaurant. We all knew it wasn't. We all knew it wasn't because there was surveillance video of the event, which they played in court. It showed that a corner of a rubber mat accidentally got turned over, she didn't look where she was going, she stuck her foot under it, and took a header onto a wooden chair. While we felt bad for the woman, we would have felt worse if her own adult daughter hadn't been the one who accidentally flipped the mat over just a few seconds earlier.

We also would have felt worse for the woman if she weren't such a pain in the ass. Right after the opening statements, she took the stand, and her lawyer asked her how she was doing. She pointed to the defense attorney and said, "I'm still shaking over those rotten things he just said about me." She admitted she'd been to the restaurant about 50 times in the past, but on the night in question, it was the first time she'd sat at that particular table, as if that made a difference. When the video was played in court for all of us to see, she said that the fact that the mat wasn't perfectly aligned like the others contributed to her fall, clumsily tacking on that bit of keen analysis as if it had just occurred to her. Her version also included spilled liquid on the floor and maybe poor lighting conditions. But it had nothing to do with her not looking where the hell she was going.

Mr. Hart wasted a hell of a lot of time asking about all the pain she was in. This was compounded by the fact that she was Korean and needed an interpreter, making every question and answer take twice as long. They took even longer because she wouldn't answer questions directly, which the judge had no way of realizing because her ramblings were in Korean. (The judge did cut her ramblings off more promptly, however, when she'd been asked a yes-or-no question.) They took even longer still because her lawyer didn't know how to phrase a question. The defense attorney objected literally every other time Mr. Hart tried to formulate a question: "calls for speculation," "hearsay," "hypothetical," and so on. The judge sustained almost all of the objections. Then Mr. Hart would rephrase and make the same mistake. Objection. Sustained. Sometimes, it'd take him three or four tries to get a question right.

Mr. Hart didn't even know when he could object. At one point, after the defense attorney asked a witness an objectionable question, there was a pause, and the judge looked at Mr. Hart and asked, "You gonna let that go?"

Sometime after lunch, the plaintiff's daughter took the stand. All she succeeded in doing was admitting to the defense attorney that her mother could have looked where she was going.

At about 3:00, Mr. Hart's last witness wasn't available, so in the interest of time, all parties agreed to let the defense begin its case. He called a rep from the company that rented the rubber mats to the restaurant owner. "Yes." "No." "Yes." "No." The best witness I've ever seen in my life. He was in and out in 15 minutes, cross-examination and everything. I speak for the entire jury when I say that we wanted to run up and kiss the guy.

***

Our city's downtown is textured and layered and rich, and I talk about exploring it like most people talk about exercise: We don't do it enough. Being forced to show up downtown indefinitely under threat of arrest by the sheriff's department, I figured I'd make the best of it. During lunch, I used my free court-issued-in-lieu-of-mileage-allowance rail pass to go one stop northeast to Union Station, whose architecture rivals that of any in the country. It's the 1930s all over again in there. The chairs are these capacious, wood-and-leather affairs, reeking of old money's den. The interior design remains uncorrupted except for a few modern food stands and rail timetables. It's the kind of place that you'd want to arrive in when arriving in Los Angeles for the first time. In fact, if you've never been to L.A. before, might I recommend flying to Ontario or San Diego, then taking the train the rest of the way. Union Station makes our international airport seem like Ellis Island, minus the hope.

I wandered two blocks up Alameda Street to Philippe, the Original French Dip sandwich place, which has been in business since 1908, which is the Pleistocene as far as Angelenos are concerned. The portions aren't as I remember them, and the prices aren't what they used to be, except for coffee, which has been nine cents a cup since 1977. (Decaf is 60 cents. Go figure.) Even though I was only making $15 a day, I splurged on a seven-dollar lunch: beef sandwich with sweet dill pickle and pickled egg. Then I scarfed it on one of the benches in one of the doorless chambers upstairs, walls and flooring reminiscent of a school cafeteria. Couldn't eat here every day, but I'd take it over a chain restaurant any day.

The walk between Union Station and Philippe is not a throwback to anything. It is hot and dirty, clogged with cars, victims of signals that are impossible to synchronize in these parts. A DASH bus stopped by. I considered improvising my way back to the courthouse by jumping on the bus and figuring out where to get off later. But a flock of tourists jumped on and filled it. I took the train back and arrived outside the locked courtroom door with half an hour to spare, the afternoon of aforementioned thrills still to come.

The halls of superior court are clean but undecorated since at least the 1960s, an interactive museum of hard-boiled civics. The benches are hard, featureless, simple things. Half the drinking fountains don't work. Still mid-lunch, few people were walking around. It took me a while to realize what I found so strange about it all: It's the first place I've been in a long time where I've had to wait that didn't have a television. Maybe it's an elementary observation, but the exclusion of TV and all other things unrelated to the business of justice gave me a sense of peace. All trial business happened behind thick doors, never in the hallways, and any potential tension my role entailed hadn't manifested. This made the antiseptic hallways of superior court relaxing -- and comforting, knowing that my city's court was uncorrupted, at least outwardly, by commerce and its related postmodern crassness. For all its distasteful elements, court appears to be working.

My thoughts were not placed, however, on how swiftly justice's engine could turn.

Next: the verdict.

Jury Duty, part one

(My first instinct was to make a play on the word "duty" with "doodie," even though actual poo is no part of this story. Just so you know what kind of writer you're investing your time with here.)

The groans of anguish that are emitted when one gets a jury duty summons aren't unique to L.A. Although, I remember reading an article years ago that in-the-know celebrities could call a certain number and weasel out of service. I believe that practice has been eliminated. A crude google sweep shows a few who've had to serve recently.

I had to show in October, but when the jury pool clerk offered forms for people to delay service, I filled one out and gave a flimsy reason just to see if they'd let me out. Sure enough, they did. Perhaps I was hoping that they'd forget to summon me again. But if A-list celebrities can't evade service, marginally successful authors sure as hell can't. I don't know what I was thinking, actually.

Which brings us to last week. After receiving my summons two weeks earlier, I was instructed by a very nice phone prompt to appear at the superior court in downtown L.A. Tuesday morning for possible jury selection. Naturally, I took our subway down there. Traffic to downtown eats ass in the morning, but for $1.50 you can get a ride there in about half an hour and arrive at a station that's about a one-minute walk from court. I hear it cost $300 million per mile to build the subway. If you ask me, it was a goddamn bargain. The 101 freeway between Hollywood and downtown should be shot.

When you arrive at the superior court,  you have to go through a metal detector. And this is civil court, not criminal. Then you go up an escalator and walk about four miles to the jury pool room, where a woman explains the ins and outs of what you are doing there today. I've decided that unloading the same speech every morning to a room full of strangers who don't want to be there is probably worse than any job I've ever had and I wouldn't want it, even with government benefits.

Part of her spiel goes on about how all citizens have a duty to do this, regardless of status. Why, a sitting judge showed up in jury duty just last week, she explained. And on the wall are a grand total of four pictures of celebrities who've served: Harrison Ford, Camryn Manheim, Weird Al Yankovic, and someone else I don't remember. I'm thinking the fourth pic may have been of our mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, but I may be confused on that count because I was still kind of tired -- and we always see him all the damn time anyway. Angelenos see Antonio Villaraigosa's maniacally happy grin more than Orville Redenbacher, Paul Newman, and the Quaker Oats guy combined.

After a couple of hours, about 30 names were called for the first group to go to a courtroom for possible jury selection. I was one of the 30. We headed up to the fifth floor and were treated to several hours of lawyers asking us questions about frivolous lawsuits, looking where you're going, and rugs with corners that get turned up. But the lawyers were not allowed to mention particulars of the case. Gee, I wondered, what ever in the world could THIS case be about?

The judge admonished potential jurors for trying to get out of service merely by saying they couldn't be impartial if they didn't mean it, and I'm the kind of person who's easily cowed by such things. So when my turn came, I answered some of the earlier questions the lawyers had with as much brutal, one-sided honesty I could engineer: I think we have too many frivolous lawsuits, I think we're a nation full of finger-pointers, I'm a big believer in personal accountability, I look where I'm going, and I have a rug in my bathroom so I don't slip when I step out of the shower. Naturally, the defendant's attorney had no objection to me being on the jury. I figured the plaintiff's attorney would bounce me off if (a) he weren't an idiot, and (b) all the other jurors weren't declaring the same things. I lost on both counts. I was on the jury.

Closing Night

Closing night of a play moves actors deeply, since they are all about emotions in the first place. "It's been glorious." "Will we see each other again soon?" "This has inspired me to do greater things." Truly. Be an actor once, just so you can experience it.

Tonight, friends, is one of those nights. Expressing Motherhood, the show featuring monologues about women raising children, the show I got cast in playing the husband of a woman rapping about motherhood, will turn its lights out tonight. It is going to be stirring and profound and touching and sweet and wonderful.

And I won't be there.

In the days leading up to the show, Susanna, the singer/writer/star of the song/scene, kept making adjustments to the song. Certain lyrics, the actual playback to which we would be singing, a bit of stage business she and I had.... Not many things, but she was having a spot of trouble getting it to a point where she was happy with it. Perfectly understandable. And last Friday night when the show opened, the aforementioned rap song went over like Lenny Bruce in rural Kansas. Susanna missed a couple of lines. And she and her microphone weren't loud enough. And we kinda screwed up the part where she was supposed to kick me in the goodies. I reacted too soon and it looked like she pantomimed kicking me in the chest. And we went first, so maybe the audience wasn't ready.

So that night and well into the next day, Susanna made a brutally honest assessment of what was wrong with the scene and shrewdly decided that the whole husband part wasn't working at all. She called me up at about 4:00 Saturday afternoon, just a few hours before I was supposed to be at the theatre, and gently broke the news to me that my services were no longer needed. I took it well, wished her luck, got off the phone with her, and laughed a little of my ass off.

This means that MY closing night was the night before: last Friday, which was also opening night, which made it economical if nothing else. My experience leading up the moving goodbyes -- after the song tanked -- was as follows. I got off stage and crammed myself into a little L-shaped dressing room with about a dozen other women. The way the theatre is laid out, there wasn't any place else for us to go. And the audience could hear us if we spoke above a whisper, so we had to be very quiet the whole time. For nearly two hours, I had polite, quiet conversations with a few of the mothers in the show. Some of them kept showing each other pictures of their children and complimenting each other on their shoes, while I read in whatever empty chair I could find. At intermission, I thoughtfully sat in one of the far corners of the L with my back to everyone so one of the mothers could pump breast milk.

After the show was over, there was no place for me to change into my street clothes, so I left my black suit on. The moving goodbyes were a couple of "See you tomorrows" and included me verifying the call time for Saturday's show. I waded through lingering audience members, none of whom gave me an obligatory "Nice job." I walked out the front door and went down the street to my car. It was at that moment that I realized I still had my cup on over my privates. I was about to reach in and take it out, but two women were walking down the sidewalk, headed my way. The last thing they needed to see was some guy in the dark on a street in Hollywood cramming his hand down his trousers. So I drove home in my black suit with my cup on.

The next day, after I got relieved of my duties, I emailed the producer to say farewell. She emailed back her thanks for my efforts and informed me that the show had been promoted in one of the community newspapers. Its website had this picture:

You'll notice that in the caption, I'm listed as W. Joe Dungan. The reporter and photographer covered the story during a tech rehearsal. I guess these things happen when you take notes in the dark. (As I write this, on closing night, the paper's website still has this story up -- with this picture and this caption.)

No W. Joe Dungan in the show. No Joe Dungan either. And tonight, during their closing night, they'll be bonding and having emotional episodes. I'll be having grilled cheese sandwiches and soup at a grilled cheese sandwiches and soup party, where I won't get written out after the first course and I won't get kicked in the cubes. But it will still be, in its own way, meaningful.

Kind of an Acting Gig for Kind of an Actor

You've really got to love acting if you're willing to endure its drawbacks, which is why I quit acting permanently (the first time) when I was 27. I had felt like all my self-promotion efforts were descending into expensive drudgery. And back then, most of the plays I ended up in were turkeys anyway. Plus, the discouragement got to me. There is no shortage of people in Los Angeles to tell actors, tacitly or otherwise, that their acting talents mean nothing to them. Another reason I quit was because I thought I was a writer, although there have been no shortage of people who've tried to discourage me of that, either.

And so it is in Los Angeles that if you have any kind of a reputation as an actor -- or even if you don't -- you get offers to act in people's projects. Now, it's one thing if they're making a short film. People making short films need all the help they can get, particularly if they need people to fill the background. In fact, it's kind of what we do out here. In some parts of the country, people help people raise barns. In L.A., people help people make short films.

But appearing in a stage show is something else. It's not an assignment that's handed out lightly.

Usually.

This Friday, and running for two weekends, a show called Expressing Motherhood opens at a theater in Hollywood. It's a series of scenes and monologues about, well, motherhood. A talented stage veteran named Susanna Brisk is doing a scene in it, and she approached a friend of mine to costar with her. My friend couldn't do it, but for some odd reason, he suggested casting me, and for some odder reason, she did. She'd never seen me perform before, but based on my picture, my friend's recommendation, and my writing, she decided I was perfect for it.

I'm not sure I agree. You see, I'm helping her sing a rap song.

Now, my friend who referred me did not do so by chance; he once wrote and directed a one-man show for me in which I, among other things, sang a rap song. A cappella. But that was different. It had a meter that was easily recognizable even to a musical short-busser like me. This song, this one that I'm learning for the show that opens in just a few days, is a droll parody of an Eminem song that has a rhythm that can't be explained.

During rehearsal on Saturday, Susanna recognized my musical handicap, further divining that I can't even walk like a rapper. So she mercifully cut down my part to include as little singing and walking as necessary. I will spend a lot of the time on stage doing nothing but keeping one hand on my crotch. Anyone who's read my book probably figures I've had plenty of practice at that, but apparently, I still need to work on it.

An assignment taken must be honored, so I've been doing my part. I've been listening to the song repeatedly and have been practicing walking and standing still as if my junk weighed five pounds. I bought a suit -- actually, a black jacket and black pants that sort of match if you're not looking closely -- at a thrift store for ten bucks. And since the scene may involve me getting kicked in the dick, I spent sixteen bucks on a cup and jock strap. I'm not a total idiot.

All told, this should be a good show, and my modest role in it should be fun once I figure out the beat of this song for the four seconds I'm actually singing some of it. Plus, during rehearsal on Saturday, Susanna kept telling me I was perfect for this, despite the fact that I can't do half of what she initially asked for. On the one hand, I'm a damn funny guy. There are only a small minority of people who can do things like walk on stage with their hand over their crotch and get laughs on purpose, and I'm one of those people. On the other hand, Susanna may have just been blowing smoke up my ass. To many actors, getting smoke blown up one's ass is one of the joys of acting, even if some of them won't admit it -- to themselves or anyone else.

As for me, I hadn't had smoke blown up my ass about my acting abilities in a while, and I realized I didn't miss the feeling. Since my early retirement from acting, I have slowly developed a little thing called security. Plus, acting does not make my heart sing anyway, although it does make my heart hum once in a while, so I'm looking forward to this.

Now, if I could only get more people to blow smoke up my ass about my writing.

Another "Nuts" book... by an ELECTED OFFICIAL

 
Yeah, happy new year's eve, hello 2011, blah blah. Thank you.

Someone else has written a book about eccentrics et al in L.A. It's none other than city councilman Greig Smith, reflecting on his three decades in city government, with a special emphasis on the more colorful employees of and visitors to city hall.

At first, I was a bit piqued. I'd like to think that I thought of Angeleno make-funning first. But I've since realized that there's plenty of room for other books on the subject. THAT'S how many eccentrics we have here.

All of this has reminded me of "Reminiscences of a Ranger," a semi-autobiography by Horace Bell, a lawman who looked back on the do-badders he encountered during his tenure.

The book was first published in 1881.

Ah, shit.

There's really nothing new, is there. Except 2011. 

Happy new year.
 

A Very Different Kind of Author Interview

I love when I get to do shit like this and they print it:

http://www.sellingbooks.com/joe-dungan-l-a-nuts

Dec. 11: Author Sort of Reads from Book

In this case, the author is me and the book is mine. But it's so much more than a reading:

• An installment of "Suspenseful Moments in L.A. City Council"
• How to make friends in L.A.
• Clyde Langtry does improv
• An original song -- the idea of which is even funnier if you already know me

The Last Bookstore in L.A.
400 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Saturday, Dec. 11
8:00 p.m.

FREE

(Not) Bitching

Maybe it's just human nature to complain about shit, but whining seems particularly endemic to L.A. For every person who praises L.A., we have 10 or 20 who are never short of criticism. And I guess I'm one of them, but at least I've tried to make money off it and entertain people with it (prioritized in that order).

The latest prompting occurred this week. Our oh-so-wild, unpredictable weather changed. It's gotten cold -- relative to L.A., I mean. We're talking nighttime lows in the 30s. So at work, everyone within earshot seems to try to one-up each other the instant they miraculously make it through the inhuman climate to the office.

"It was 31 degrees outside when I woke up."
"I had frost on my windshield this morning."

That's pretty much the extent of the commentary. No ruined rose bushes. No frostbitten animals. Just "fuck, it's cold" and similarly imaginative observations. It's actually more pleasant than the summertime heat complaining; since it's hot all day in the summer, the bitching lasts all day too.

This little screed is actually part of a larger problem I've been dealing with the past year or so. I've decided that my lofty position in life (there is sarcasm in that clause) is a direct result of my crap-ass attitude, so I've made a conscious effort to improve it. That alone makes me feel better. However, until I end up as elevated as Deepak Chopra or the Dalai Lama, I find myself downright irritated with the confederacy of bitch artists that claim the space around me. I'm getting better at tuning them out, but it's difficult not to be affected by them.

With that in mind, I'm actually starting to notice more good in L.A. -- as well as people who feel likewise. My friend Carrie won't fuckin' shut up about how much she loves it here. My friend George has lately taken to spending his spare time on hikes, including repeated trips to Mt. Baldy. One L.A. blogger I read yesterday made a list of things he likes, including a charming-looking tavern I'd never heard of.

So here in my unfunny, uncranky way are a random handful of aspects of L.A. that I'm happy about and grateful for:

-- Most of the people I care about are here.
-- Diversity in entertainment, culture, and geography. There are some places I've never been in L.A., and I've lived here my whole life.
-- Intellectual diversity. Could you imagine living someplace where you disagree with everyone about politics and social issues? Or worse, living someplace where you AGREE with everyone?
-- Not having to worry about snow, flash floods, or any of the other murderous weather that's affecting nearly everyone else in the country.
-- A farmer's market every damn day of the week, even if I don't visit them as often as I should.
-- The Foxfire Room, my neighborhood dive bar, even if I don't visit it as often as I should.
-- Lardon, the bacon-themed catering truck, which sometimes parks outside aforementioned bar
-- Occasionally seeing a celebrity: surrealism without hallucinogenics or being subjected to a pretentious art exhibit.
-- Invites from really talented friends to see their play, band, or whatever their talented asses are doing.
-- My below-market rent, which not only affords me luxuries like cable and occasional travel, but makes me feel like I'm in on some secret, which is important in a city where alienation is an easy trap.

I think above all else, I'm drawn to the same thing that others are drawn to: the endless sense of the possible that you can experience here. It makes me optimistic that my next book won't suck, seeing as how I've apparently turned into one of those glass-half-full pests that until recently made fun of such people.

***

I wrote all of the above during Thanksgiving weekend, then sat on it for a couple of weeks just so I could go back and re-read it.

Didn't change a word.

Anchor go "DUH"

Last night on Channel 9's "news," they ran a story about Bob Newhart being honored at the Paley Center for 50 years of show business success. The news item featured clips of some of his shows, including the one in the 70s that costarred Suzanne Pleshette.

At the end of the story, the two anchors, one of whom was Sharon Tay and one of whom wasn't, waded into the dangerous waters of banter. The other anchor said he'd always liked Suzanne Pleshette.

Sharon Tay: "She was beautiful. She still is."
Other anchor: "Well...."

After an inscrutable silence, the weathergirl threw it to herself, acknowledging the incredibly awkward moment that had just been magically created.

Suzanne Pleshette has been dead for nearly three years.

Where does one start?

First, I caught this moment while merely flipping channels, which makes me wonder what other kind of idiocy goes on during live news broadcasts in L.A.

Second, the competition for such jobs must be fierce, because if I think anyone can do it, no telling how many other people are thinking the same thing.

More than that, it makes me wonder what other insincere ad libs anchors make. Clearly, Tay didn't know Pleshette was deceased, but acted in full confidence that Pleshette was not only alive but looked just terrific, as if she'd bumped into her recently at the Chateau Marmont. If she or any other news reader would toss off something like that, what other bullshit do they throw at us without reservation or correction?

If anyone saw this or has any evidence that she apologized, then by all means post it as a reply. I didn't stick around long enough to wait for them to come back from commercial to see if they'd make mention of it.

Also, I wonder if Sharon Tay is easy. Actually, I've wondered that about her for years. After all, before she stuck her foot in her mouth, she was beautiful. She still is.

Liberal Outrage

As a town full of lefties, we're usually happy when our Democratic president visits, whether it's Obama or Clinton or... whatever other Democratic presidents we've had lately. But last night, we flipped our shit.

Obama blew into town to attend a fundraiser. Okay, fine. Politicians do that. And his motorcade and security detail slowed traffic here and there. Again, that's the sort of thing that accompanies presidents. But the key phrase is "here and there." Last night, for reasons no one quite knows yet, "here and there" became here and there and there and that other place and way back there and so on. In some parts, it was a nightmare of apocalyptic proportions. Bloggers on laist.com report that they couldn't get home for hours. Some abandoned their cars to walk home. Some couldn't even do that: Pedestrians weren't allowed to cross some apparently president-free streets. (If this sounds like lame-ass, secondhand reportage, it is. I live and work in the Valley, the New Jersey of the L.A. metro area, where traffic was completely unaffected by all of this.)



It would be easy to say something like, "I'm all for fundraising, Mr. President, but let's use some common sense and better planning when you visit a traffic-heavy city." But that's not how I feel. MONEY IN POLITICS IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WE HAVE RIGHT NOW. It's the source of all corporate-friendly legislation and court rulings that have allowed the BP disaster, Wall Street corruption, the real estate crash, and pretty much every other large problem we have. Cap campaign financing, and you'll not only see real grass-roots reform take hold, but you'll see the true emergence of third and fourth parties.

Then Obama will visit L.A. and tie up traffic for other, more important reasons, like attending the Oscars or going to Disneyland.

A New Sign of the Old Apocalypse?

People sometimes like to disparage L.A. by citing our palm trees in their invective. Good call, shit-slingers. As trees go, palm trees are generally ridiculous.

Most trees have unique combinations of turns and knots and bark patterns and branches pointing in random directions. Palms have none of these. It’s as if some pretender strain of tree decided to do as little work as possible to become a tree: a denuded trunk and a top featuring a heap of fronds not unlike the hairstyle of a rebellious teen. Palms provide little shade. Rats nest in them. One species in particular is simply very tall, as if craving attention. Most are transplants from other regions and most are lacking in character—just like some of the people here.

All other trees are unique in their own way. Spiritualists who tell you to observe the uniqueness of everything in the universe tacitly exclude palm trees. Within each species of palm, every example is a cheap imitator of the one next to it—just like some of the people here.

The thing with palm trees, however, is that they never fall over. Every winter when we have (use finger quotes for the next word) storms, a few trees around town get uprooted and block a street or crush an occasional car. None of them are palm trees. We have—or had—mighty oak trees that surrendered to Mother Nature during strong winds or heavy rains. Since palm trees seem to be thriving in our brown air and nutrient-free dirt, it would follow that they’re impervious to extreme weather. When the wind blows, palm trees just sort of wave back and forth. They’re either laughing or too stupid to know that they should be afraid for their lives. Actually, they’re the only tree that looks better after a good storm; they’re the only ones that hold onto old fronds unless given a compelling reason to shed them.

Finally, a few weeks ago here in back of my Valley palace, I went out to my car to see this:

Lest you think that it was some poltergeisty event, no, the chairs and table at right did not arrange themselves like that. A neighbor thoughtfully arranged them like that so residents wouldn’t accidentally hit their heads on the tree. And that's the same Orange Cone of Nearby Hazards that he puts next to his 15-foot ladder when he sets that up.

Nonetheless, it has happened. One of the countless indestructible, ridiculous palms of L.A. has had enough. The wind hadn’t even been blowing.

What does it mean when our hardiest trees start committing suicide?