Home on the Grave

(Image from Santa Clarita realtor Anna Riggs)

A green plexiglas half wall stands three feet behind the B of A ATM at Magnolia and Laurel Canyon, forming a little alcove of privacy and shade. After my first time using it, looking down at my receipt while turning around, I walk directly into the wall. Shaking my head, I curve around to the sidewalk. Two guys in a moving van are laughing and pointing at me. "Hey buddy, watch out!" I give them an embarrassed smile and walk on.

The poison of stigmatization seeps into the skin with prickly irritation pushing us to normality. In L.A. the normal don't ride the bus.

David Zahniser of the L.A. weekly reveals the absurdity of MTA self promotion by expressing the Angelenos revulsion toward a bus rider's daily indignities--turtle speed service, blaring infomercials, the odor of passengers who haven't bathed for months--which haunt the journey through angel city grime.

A nondescript corner in North Hills now sours your vision with the image of an anxious one hour wait on the way to a nursery for orchid food, trying to sustain a strange house warming gift for the horticulturally insecure.

Visceral annoyance at dysfunction brought by the swarming infestation of urbanity propels flight to spacious Castaic homes on cul-de-sacs filled with miniature basketball hoops and battery powered Barbie Jeeps, where domestic joy conceals a landscape of blight. A recent Audubon Society survey found California bird populations decimated by loss of habitat, some species declining 80 percent over the past forty years.

Forty-four years ago Hitchock told a story of nature's apocalyptic revenge. Bird beaks peck out eyes blinded by the quiet.

Beggars Banquet

The Stigmatization of St. Francis, Albrecht Altdorfer

The process of moving forces a confrontation with the burden of accumulation. Like the mealy bugs that droop the leaves of my schefflera arboricola, leftovers--two jars of caraway seed, a cerulean paisley suitcase torn and frayed, maps collected from European and American travels--wilt me.

Packing and unpacking the years of residue momentarily clarifies the gasp of eye watered joy expressed at thrush rattled branches by Francis in Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio.

At a time when we try to smother our collective malaise with the commodified sparkle of a 40 inch plasma screen or BMW Z4, this bliss of dispossesion strikes the viewer as utterly bizarre.

To link spiritual beauty with being thrown to wallow in mud from the pouring rain after begging for alms so disturbs popular perversions of piety--from the Trinity Broadcasting Network's claim that gold plated limousines reveal God's blessing to the bunksters of "The Secret" who tell us thinking we own a Lexus RX 350 is owning it--signs of destitution require relentless extirpation.

Thus, last Sunday afternoon when four police officers grabbed a homeless woman, kicked her up and down like a Bozo Bop Bag, and roped her four limbs as if she were a rodeo calf, they merely acted to "serve and protect": serve as surrogate thugs and protect our hands from the slightest smudge of guilt for the daily butchery on the streets.

Pass that 24 year old bottle of Bordeaux to wash down 100 pounds of seasoned ground flesh: the 6000 dollar combo meal, exclusively in Gladys Park.

hit me

Rather than the deep wheaty aroma that drifted over downtown from the Taystee bread factory, where Dad and I would pick up a dozen loaves of day old white from the outlet store to be put in the basement freezer until T and I would load chocolate chips between two slices and stick them in the microwave for a midnight snack, perhaps the scent of lilacs from the unpruned bushes that hung above the tall wood panel fence bordering Mom's backyard garden rushed through me with the head pain and lost wind when the car struck on Grand between Larry's Grocery, where Ramsey kids would buy candy from the extra wide bellied man who'd flash his baseball bat if he saw trouble, and Ace Hardware, where Dad had been buying supplies for his never-ending interior constructions. So full hands could not grab the five year old who didn't look both ways.

It would not be the last time I was hit while crossing the street but likely the most memorable. Second most was the time, some 14 years later and less than four blocks to the east at Snelling and Grand, when a sedan took a right turn smack into my left leg. I rolled myself up the curb and onto the sidewalk, grabbing my cramp and shouting "what the hell!" as I tried to walk it off. The sedan stopped and backed up. The driver, who I noticed through tears of agony wore the collar of a cleric, glanced over his shoulder at me. Then, apparently satisfied it wasn't serious, he peeled off.

The piercing stink of rotting carcass grows in the nose as I walk down Burbank Boulevard toward the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. A lump of dusty fur, sunken eye sockets that form crosses, sags into the dry grass.

Blessings cat...Blessings...

Stir it Up

The MTA executive loves numbers like my four year old nephew loves chocolate cake batter, except one time, when uncle wasn't looking, he used a big wooden spoon to start slurping it down like it was soup, so at dinner he had a tummy ache, and when daddy asked "Do you gotta go potty?", he shook his head no--too much raw egg.

The following is a letter I sent to the MTA board:

I teach at California State University Northridge and am the author of Watching the Traffic Go By, a book on urban transportation history published by the University of Texas Press, and I am writing to urge you to vote no on the MTA's proposed fare increase.

Our Mayor has admirably put forth a climate action plan to address the ecological disaster created by our city, but raising fares would do devastating harm to this plan.

According to the Texas Transportation Institute Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion in the nation.

At the same time, U.S. census records show we are number 34 in the percentage of people who commute using public transit--less than 11%.

According to the American Lung Association, L.A. has the worst pollution in the nation, causing thousands to die from heart and lung disease and catastrophic rates of asthma and other health problems for children.

Just as bad as L.A.'s environmental crisis is its horrible conditions for the working poor.

Bus riders do the work that makes this city run--they are cooks, janitors, construction workers--but living in L.A. is increasingly harsh.

A study by Runzheimer International shows L.A. is the third most expensive city in the nation, just behind New York and San Francisco.

And according to the Demographia International Housing Survey, L.A. has the least affordable housing market in the world.

It is no surprise that we have 90,000 people living on the streets, a large portion of them families with children.

In short, raising fares would do tragic environmental and economic injustice.

(The official hearing on the fare hike is this Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM at the MTA headquarters--Vignes and Cesar Chavez.)

Numerical Severity

Screen capture from Telemundo, May Day 2007, MacArthur Park

"There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay."

In a stunning scene from the documentary China Blue we see a designer jean buyer negotiate with a Chinese factory owner a unit cost below 4 dollars. Matching this cost by deadline requires all-night shifts where workers, mostly teenage girls, clothespin their eyes open so they can stay awake. Wages, which account for about a dollar of the hundreds paid by the mad urban chic for our ripped denim, barely cover the cost of the 12 to a room dorms and bowls of rice eaten in stairwells.

This logic of corporate gangsterism is manifest in the MTA executive caw: "Other cities charge 2 dollars a ride, so we must keep up."

What is this, a competition to see who can most brutalize the poor?

Will Minneapolis start converting low rent flats into million dollar condos, pushing more families onto the street so they can experience the garbage picking lifestyle of slumopolis?

Will Boston spend millions more on police to better terrorize youth of color and cut funds from counseling, parks and job training?

Will New York cops start randomly whacking heads of immigrant workers?

Will our city be a model for the nation in fighting for the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the despised, or will it be cruel city U.S.A.?

Did we elect a progressive administration, or is this urban revanchism West Coast style?

"The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live."
--Gil Scott Heron

There are two public hearings on the fare increase, both at the MTA headquarters (Vignes and Cesar Chavez).
Saturday, May 19th at 10 am
Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM--Official hearing, board members must attend.

King for a Day

Golden Evening Primrose/ Titus Canyon

Waiting for the Reseda bus around 9 pm is a man with a short white beard on a softly sunken face. A small rainbow colored sack hangs from his shoulder.

"You a student?" he asks.
"No, I teach."
"Oh, wow. How'd you get to do that?"

I give him a 15 second summary of my academic career.

"Man, that's great."
"How about you? Did you just get off work?" I ask.
"You really wanna know?"
"Did you just get off work?"
"You really wanna know?"
"Sure."
"Just got outa prison."
"Oh, wow."

He nods at me intently.

"Hmmm...So, where were you at?"
"Corcoran."
He looks off at the stoplights as they cycle through. "2 years. I was into heroine. It got me in trouble."

He turns back to look at me. "But I'm clean now, with God's help."
"That's great. So... do they help you, y' know, when you get out?"
"200 dollars and see ya."
"What about a place to stay? Isn't there some kind of transitional housing?"
"Yeah. Right now I'm on the street, but I'm working on it."

The stoplights cycle through again.

"They have programs... I might even go back to school." He smiles, "I just have to get through each day--one at a time."

The bus arrives.

"Well, good luck."
"Hey, you're bringing me positive energy!"

I smile and look into his eyes blooming desert flowers.

Punishment

Ron Mueck Dead Dad 1996-1997

The lifeless prose of Seung Cho undermines the friendless man's
effort to embody Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, but the media creation of a hacker film mega-star succeeded with pathetic enormity.

"Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off" evokes numerous B movie scenes of furious skin scrubbing after rash acts and, two days later, the scene of a bomb wasting 140 lives in a Baghdad market.

Just as the chain of hurt can't be cleansed from Raskolnikov's soul until he speaks his guilt, so our mitigation of global terror can't begin until we account for our crimes.

New York took a first step in this accounting when it released a carbon inventory as part of a climate protection plan agreed to by 678 cities across the world.

Although Los Angeles--leader in death by breath--has signed on to the plan, one wonders if the reckoning will ever happen. The notion of a collective burden runs counter to the neo-Reaganite drive of the urban cowboy whose "highway rights" are God given.

God Bless America.
God Bless L.A.

the hiss

Hey Jude
Come on, Joe
Don't make that sad song
Any sadder than it already is
Hey Jack, get back
Get yourself together
Come on, come on
I know you’re thinking of your nervous love
I know exactly what you're thinking of
Hey Cid, no matter what you did
It can work out, work out
No matter how you feel right now
Hey George, do your chores
Don't feel sore
I know it's a lot more than just being bored
There's a heaven and there's a star for you
There's a heaven and there's a star for you
There's a heaven and there's a star for you
--Daniel Johnston

A ringing, like the high hissing pitch from a shower head, is in my ears. As blackberries bring a wave of weakened thumbs, ipods bring the cyborg ill-adaption of tinnitus.

Our addiction is to the simultaneous transcending and dividing of space. A podcast from Britain, a text message from Glendale, take us beyond our immediate surrounding and separate us from those in our presence.

While walking we no longer worry about whether to nod hello to the strangers we pass.

And the bus rider can close off surrounding sorrows.

I sit near the front of the Orange Line bus. My ipod is paused, but earphones remain in. At Van Nuys Blvd riders cram through the front door. A college kid stands to let a very large man with a rattan cane and dark shades sit down. "Thank you," he says.

I close my eyes and let conversations dissolve into engine's hum.

"Stop leaning on me!" shocks me from my stillness.

The man with the cane changes from feeble to ferocious.

In a crowded bus, jostling and leaning is the norm, but the scars inside this lion are deep, and he looks ready to break his cane over someone's head.

"Get off me you faggot!"

The target of his inexplicable outburst weaves through twisting arms and legs toward the back door while others give the wrath its space.

"Cocksuckers... I cant stand 'em... They all need to die..." The rage, like a homophobic sewage line, explodes, soaking us with a fecal stench. When I arrive at North Hollywood station, with bloodshot eyes, I'm gasping for breath.

The hulk of hate limps off and continues his seething, punctuated by cane stabbing cement.

Climb Every Mountain

The march by some 50 hikers to the Hollywood sign last Saturday as part of the "Step it Up" campaign to cut carbon emissions beautifully stated the upside down nature of Los Angeles life: walking to gaze over the ecological sacrifice to driving.

Yet, perhaps to the surprise of Angelenos and non-Angelenos alike, the streets below, packed with quirky taquerias and 1920s bungalows, offer the walker a delectable feast for the senses--rose pedals, buttered corn, barking dogs... Even our Chief Planner, Gail Goldberg, delights in walking to the hardware store or movie theater from her Larchmont Village home.

Reading her profile in Saturday's L.A. Times, I smiled: she endorses higher densities and links planning to social justice. But the needle scraped across vinyl when I came to this: "she's still driving to city hall."

I felt like those diners at the Lake Forest Souplantation--one minute enjoying the health boost from garbanzo beans and carrot shreds, the next minute in a hot sweat bent over a toilet seat.

This administration pledged a "radical new urban vision." Right now, it's more like DiGiorno--sorry, you can still tell its frozen.

My Dear Chief Planner, Mayor and all of City Hall: start taking the bus! You can live in L.A. without a car today. All we need is exclusive lanes for express buses and frequent service--every 5 minutes peak hours, every 15 off-peak.

Step it Uppers: What can you do?
Get on the bus!
Get on the bus!
Get on the bus and fight with us!

Bis uns der Tod das kranke Herze bricht

Anselm Kiefer, "Midgard", 1982-1985
Milwaukee Art Museum

"You're a fucking asshole!"
In the Longs parking lot, a man in his mid forties stands besides his old red Mustang and yells.
"Go fuck yourself! You're a fucking asshole!"
He wears a thin grey beard matching the color of his t-shirt.

The target of his rage is a taller but older man wearing a safari style cowboy hat, light blue golf shirt and khaki shorts.

I continue toward the bus stop, a queazy mix of voyeuristic fascination and dread in my stomach. Neither the Mustang nor the tall man's Kia Sedona appear to be damaged.

The bearded man gets back in his Mustang. The conflict seems to reach its end, but I am not 50 feet away when the shouting peaks again.

A small audience develops. Everybody keeps a distance.

The Mustang is now pulled parallel to the Sedona. The man roars from the driver seat through the passenger door window.
"Get the fuck out of here! What are you fucking talking about! I'm not going to jail! Now just get the fuck out of here!"

The Kia owner writes something in a note pad as the Longs security guard--a small, weeble shaped man in his 60s--ambles toward him.

As a kid I would pack garbage with my feet into an old green incinerator found in our junk laden basement furnace room. A few hours after turning it on, nothing remained but ashes collected in a bottom drawer.

In the passenger seat of the Mustang, a boy of about 10 sits ashen-faced.

The suffering parent is the suffering child.

Feed the Birds

The lead article in last Thursday's LA Times Calendar section celebrates the art of the Metro and asks the astounding question: why don't more people take the subway in L.A.?

Why don't more people go dumpster diving at In n Out? Everybody knows it's the Dom Perignon of the fast food burger--not that pink champagne you used to buy at Walgreens to wash down the hot sauce soaked through two slices of white bread and fries underneath a half chicken from Harold's.



People don't take it because most Angelenos live, work and play more than a half mile from the nearest stop. And even if a stop was convenient, if you plan on going out in the evening, plan on taking at least 3 times longer than going by car.

This is not the Met--it's not even the 7 line to beautiful Jackson Heights.

This is the Red Line--NoHo to Skid Row.

Oh, but you can have the rest of my fries.

Bon Anniversaire

What better celebration of mass murder can there be than the road movie.

As we mark the fourth year of crushed villages, mutilated bodies and over 650 thousand killed, the number four film at the box office is Wild Hogs, where we laugh at the reconstruction of masculinity through the roar of burning gas.

The biker adventure may remind one of the no less misogynist Easy Rider, but at least that film revealed the national sickness that provokes brutal imperialism.

Also immersed in 1960s misogyny, Godard's Week-end of 1967 remains unsurpassed at depicting the driver's indifference to slaughter.

Mangled vehicles and corpses appear everywhere as anti-heroes Roland and Corrine complain about the traffic.

For Iraq, it's not just that the invasion never happened--as our recently passed prophet Baudrillard said of the Gulf War--it's that the denial brings jubilation.

Hey Mr. President, thank you so much for not laying waste to a country so I can continue to drive my...
"Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaah!"
A woman wails in agony as flames spew from a three car wreck. A man, shirt soaked with blood, crawls on the ground.
"Mon sac! Mon sac est Hermes!"

Playtime

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Remorse of Orestes (1862)

"Shwu shwu shwu shwu baaaaAAAAAh," the sound is between the raspberry lip imitation of a Harley and a crow squawk. Clapping hands add to the improvisation.

In the late '80s I saw Maria Joao vocalize her sparkling guts out to a small crowd in a Chicago loft. She would jump from a tender melody of scratches and hisses to blasting a note of operatic dimensions--the call of Eumenides must be heard.

"BeeAch BeeAch zzzzz Bzzzz eyoyoyoyoy yip yip hsssss," the sharp and constant changes rattle the ears of the riders, but most resist turning around.

We play the avoidance game, like an opposite polarized magnet, our heads repelled by the back of the bus.

But today there is an accompanying ballet.

Short blonde hair, dressed in a hooded winter jacket, grey sweatpants with black stripe, torn at the calf, and battered running shoes spotted by white paint, he squats on the seat in front of me, sticking one leg out and then the other, like a Russian folk dancer. He turns toward me, still squatting on his seat. Now I am too close to the stage.

One spring afternoon, while my friend and I eat lunch on a bench around 77th and 5th Avenue, a group of elementary school children pour off buses from a private Hebrew school. They surround us, staring with wide eyes as if we were the latest edition to the Central Park Zoo.

The dancer becomes a track and fielder as he moves off the seat into the aisle covered with tootsie roll wrappers and begins doing long thrusts, preparing for a sprint. Next, he's a surfer, balancing the bus as it swerves from lane to lane.

Most ignore the show, but one guy with a bundle of papers and pen in his hand turns around and stares.

The avant-garde ensemble in the back continues--vocals, clapping, knee slapping and window rapping--going silent at points but rising back to mad cacophony again.

The audience is getting restless--as if they intended to see Beauty and the Beast and stepped into Avenue Q by mistake. A few begin shooting annoyed glances at the entertainers.

Now Andy Irons has become Alexander Popov, squatting with his hands pointed forward about to launch himself. He turns one way, then the other, checking out his competition. When the bus screeches to a stop, he uses the momentum to launch forward.

"Sorry buddy," he says after bumping a rider huddled in the clam position, his recognition of others suddenly breaking the fourth wall.

It's my stop. As I move toward the back door, I finally look at the back-seat performers. Laminated name tags adorn their chests.

The Dream Life

The brilliance of David Lynch's Inland Empire is found in its unveiling the maggot life of movie stardom.

The Hollywood gloss--tummy tucked, muscle molded, Versace clad icons pouring out of stretch limos for red carpet premiers--becomes indistinguishable from the Hollywood real--sidewalks puddled with urine and laden with cardboard blankets.

When a small intestine ripped from an old man's stomach with a pitchfork in The Hills Have Eyes 3 evokes roaring laughter, we know the viciousness of our city's attack on residents of L.A.'s contemporary Hooverville--skid row.

This viciousness reflects the sentiment of tourists and Angelenos alike scurrying past lepers of The Boulevard with fear of long grime filled fingernails gripping styrofoam coffee cups.

As the 217 pulls up to the corner of Hollywood and Highland, frustrated by a 20 minute wait, a mass of some 30 bodies rush the door. By the time I get on, the bus is packed with standing riders all the way back, but one seat in the second row rests empty.

She has her head slumped completely forward and mumbles softly as I sit down. The kids behind me laugh. The object of aversion is a tree of lightening reds--from maroon skirt, to pink Victoria Secret sweatshirt to ruddy salmon face topped by tangled blonde hair.

Passenger dread no doubt comes less from her appearance than her swaying and strange voicings--she must be ill. I feel unease myself until the bus comes to a sudden stop and her head slams hard against the seat in front. Startled, she quickly sits up straight.

Some of us get nightmares when we go to sleep, others when we wake up.

Patience

"Can you help me?" A woman in her 80s, her body a series of well chewed toothpicks somehow glued together is trying to pull upright with a leash an old chocolate lab lying on the grass. "Come on Sam, Come on," She was saying.
I look down at sad charming eyes and greying snout.
"My dog isn't moving."

As I approach his tail starts to wag, and he looks up in hope. I lean down and start giving his hips a deep massage.

It is 4:30 in the afternoon and I am headed to Target. I have to go home, change and be in Northridge by 7, but I have plenty of time. My Target store is but a 15 minute bus ride to Woodland Hills.

His fur is greasy and dandruff, or the doggy equivalent--skin scab remainder--sticks to my fingers.
"Oh he loves that!"
"What a sweetheart," I give him more rubs.

"He's the best. I know he's very old, but I can't let him go. We take care of each other."

After a few minutes of love, I stand up.
"Bye Sam. It was nice meeting you."

Walking on, I turn back occasionally. She is still tugging at his collar, trying to pull him up.

I realize that, while they appreciated the greeting, I had not helped.
I shout back, "Do you want me to lift him?"
"Oh, could you? He would really love that!"

I walk back to the dog, still cemented to the ground.
Gently, I hug his stomach and lift, as the woman continues to pull on his collar.
His wobbly back legs seem ready to fold, then, like a precariously balanced easel, he nearly falls over. I hold on as he slowly moves his legs.
"Thank you so much. He'll be ok now."

It doesn't look like it. His back legs are crisscrossed, and they seem to just drag along as he pulls forward in the front, with her help.
"We're ok. Thank you so much."

I walk away, looking back frequently. "Come on. Come on," she continues to coax him along.

I arrive at the bus stop about 4:45. A half dozen people are waiting. At this time on a weekday, a bus is scheduled to come at least every 7 minutes. Knowing I have to be back at my house by 6, I start getting a little anxious when 5 rolls around. 5:05, 5:10, 5:15. That's it! I turn around and head back home.

It is getting dark as I pass the little plot of grass where my old friend lay. The warmth of a dog smile rises from crumpled oak twigs.

The Beauty of Grunge

There must be fifty people waiting to board King County Metro route 194 express from SeaTac to downtown Seattle. It's an articulated bus, but with the luggage and overloaded backpacks, it's still gonna be a squeeze.

As I step on a woman with a large wheeled upright stands near the front asking, "Does anybody have change for a ten?"
I now recognize the wisdom of bringing small bills.
"I might." This forces me to quickly find a seat since I am dragging a large duffle and shoulder bag myself. So I slide next to a woman who has taken one and a half seats with an overflowing cotton bag.
"Do you have enough space?" She asks.
I'm not sure if she is being sarcastic, but I reply, "Yes, thanks."

As I dig through my bags to find the cache of small bills, another man--a Somali immigrant who drives one of those electric motor carts shuttling the elderly and disabled from one terminal to the next--has already given her a dollar.

Just gives her a dollar? Where are we...Seattle?

I finally dig out my bills and discover that, yes indeed, I have change for a ten.
"Ma'am, would you like me to break a ten, so you can repay that man?"
"Yes I would."
I change her ten. She turns around and pays the man, who smiles shyly.
"We're all here to help one another."

The fare on this express bus, which takes about a half hour to arrive downtown, is 1.25. I can't think of a better bargain for airport transportation. Once you arrive downtown, don't worry about getting around since the bus is actually free.

Wow, what a concept! Actually encourage riding the bus and getting out of the car by keeping fares low...Hmmm who doesn't understand that--oh yeah, the LA Times and MTA.

Almost 1/3 of Seattle residents commute without a car. That's twice as many as in Los Angeles, and it's actually quite a beautiful city to live in as well.

The thing is that for Seattleites riding the bus is almost a source of pride. In contrast to Angelenos, who have a shocked and worried look when I tell them I ride the bus...

A twenty something once asked me,"Isn't it dangerous for women...especially good looking women?"
I thought, "Uh, I don't want to push you to more rhinoplasty, but..."
I said, "Yes, attractive women do ride the bus."
She looked doubtful.

Perhaps she is picturing the grungy looking women who reside in Seattle, with their NorthFace waterproof jackets and hiking shoes--women who get their exercise from walking the steep inclines of the city rather than the steep inclines of the latest thousand dollar elliptical trainers--micro greenhouse gas generators--in front of TVs showing Al Gore's post Oscar interview--these Angelenos thinking, "Damn, I wish he was president."

"Here we are now
Entertain us"
-Nirvana

Nascar Nature

The following is a letter I sent to National Public Radio:

Listening to the February 18 Weekend Edition Sunday, Arlynda Boyer's description of Dale Earnhardt conveying the essence of bodhicitta strained deeply my own buddha nature.

This is like saying Ronald McDonald conveys bodhicitta--sure he has a kindly demeanor and people feel happy in his presence--he even gives millions for families of chronically ill children. But he is also the smiling face behind enormous suffering, only one small part of which is to inspire addiction in children leading to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes.

NASCAR embodies the antithesis of Buddhist compassion for all living things. It generates divisive triumphalism and negates interbeing. It teaches children to delight in the massive plunder of our planet brought on by the automobile.

Coastlines and wilderness, ecosystems on which millions of animal and plant species depend, are poisoned by the oil drilling, metal mining and chemical manufacturing that feed the speeding monstrosity worshipped at the asphalt temple.

Earnhardt may indeed have shown a humility and even a love towards others uncommon to sports celebrities--moments of the divine found in us all--but why not look for bodhicitta in a woman who rides the bus three hours each day so she can live with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren in a one bedroom East L.A. flat and dust furniture in a Westlake Village office park. This life of less means her smile reflected in the bus window blesses us all.

valenTimes mess

Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times sparked a blaze of suggestions for what to do about traffic in this city of sigalerts. In response to city plans to explore possibilities for the expo line, Lopez invited readers to have their say and over 600 responded.

Reading through the suggestions, what is striking is how often there is a blame the other guy attitude: "What if every car on the road maintained two car lengths in front so that others could easily merge on and off the freeways?", "Make it illegal to circumvent traffic by using an exit lane and merging back in at the last moment," "Require drivers to follow the laws and keep to the right except when passing. Drivers in the left lane impede traffic cutting down efficient use of the highway"--it's as if all we need to do is send everybody to driving school for rumbling bumpkins.

On the other hand, even among people whose knowledge of buses is likely being annoyed when they are stuck behind them, a large number recognize the need to improve public transit. A few even recognize the fast and inexpensive solution of bus only lanes, proposed by the BRU several years back. One writer suggests, "Make Sepulveda Blvd. through the Sepulveda Pass a bus only throughway during peak traffic periods with no private vehicle access unless you are a resident or carpooling."

Meanwhile, in a January 26 editorial, the LA Times calls for higher fares and reduced service! Why don't they just call for a tax break to coal plants that increase emissions? They must be living in the other dimension that string theorists hypothesize, where traffic in L.A. is no more a problem then ice cream on the face of your three year old niece. Just lick it off.

Why not go to the MTA, 1 Gateway Plaza, on Valentines Day, February 14, and give the board members a message at a special meeting on fare hikes. L.A. needs more bus service not less! No fare hikes!

We love you but this is L.A. not Mister Roger's Neighborhood. Wash your face.

Auto Crimes

"What gives a torque wrench its power?"
I'm still on the plane. Two San Gabriel Valley guys in their twenties sit next to me talking cars.
"What?"
"You know, how does it get its power?"
"It doesn't have any more power than a regular wrench," he says with condescension.
There's a clear hierarchy in this relationship--the master of auto and his wide-eyed apprentice.
"Oh, I mean how does it work."
"It's just like a regular socket wrench except you can set how tight you want it to tighten, and it slips when it gets to the desired tightness."
"Oh"

I tune out as they continue talking about the merits of different tire treads, mufflers and cooling systems, and then my ears perk up again.

"Do you think I'd lose my license if I got caught doing 140 in a 70
zone?" asks the apprentice.
"Hell no," says the master.
"Oh."
"I was once caught going 127 in a 50, and I didn't lose my license." He chuckles.
The apprentice laughs lightly, "yeah?"
"So, I mean that's, lets see, that's more than twice the speed limit, that's like, that's like two and a half times the speed limit. And if I didn't lose my license for that then, you know, 140 in a 70, no way, because, you know, that's only twice the speed limit, you wouldn't lose it for that."
The apprentice nods at the wisdom.
"Yeah that's my highest 127 in a 50. Damn that cost me a bundle. Shit, I'm gonna lose my license for sure next time."

Siphoning the rebel rage expressed here is the top selling Playstation 2 game, Grand Theft Auto, a triumphal combination of high velocity and pillage.

And since the February 2 release of the IPCC report, who can describe this rage as anything but a rage to pillage?

And who now can doubt the need to make private automobility exponentially more expensive?

This week the EU proposed legislation requiring new cars to reduce emissions by 18%, likely increasing vehicle price and adding to the already high cost of driving in Europe, where gas taxes are typically 3 times what they are in the U.S.

Once again Europe is way ahead of us.
On the other hand, while they have Paris, we have Paris, Las Vegas.

Suck it Up

(image from www.babyminestore.com)

...and the snow came.

I was in the cities for a week and we had rain but no snow, until
the day I was to leave. One would think that of all airports
MSP would be well prepared for a little snow, but we were
delayed 2 hours. No big deal except that I was making a connection
in Phoenix and that plane was long gone by the time I had
arrived.

Oh that's not a problem, the helpful person at the counter said,
we can guarantee you a flight in two days. In two days??
I asked to be put on the wait list for the last flight to
LAX. Well sure you can try, there are only 50 people
waiting ahead of you.

I thought fast. Next to the LAX flight I noticed a flight to
Ontario. The wait list was small, but I would have to give
up my space on the LAX list. I gambled, and I was the last
person on the list to get on. How I get to the valley from Ontario,
I do not care--at least Im not stuck in Phoenix for two days.

As you can imagine everyone on the plane is relieved. The high
tensions untensed. But that doesn't stop the jackasses from coming
out of the woods.

If you're not in first class, the exit row is the best seat
in the plane, with the luxury of extra leg space. The only
burden is listening to a series of short questions from the
flight attendant about your ability to assist in an emergency.
But some men in their early thirties are dumber then a corn
tassel.

The guy in the window seat across from me is yaking on his
cell and the flight attendant politely but firmly asks if he
could take a minute to answer a few questions. He ignores her
and keeps rambling away. She looks at him with annoyance and
says, "we can wait." He does not move his cell from his ear but
stops talking and looks back at her as if he was in junior
high school and his English teacher just threatened to
send him to the principal's office.

This attitude isn't unusual. It is the same "the world is here
to serve me" air found among drivers on the streets and freeways of LA.
Their cell phones are their binkies--when not stuck to the mouth,
the face of these toddlers scrunches up and elephant tears foretell
a screech of elephant rage. Their leather interiored Tundras are
strollers--"push me mommy push me, I don't want to walk, WAAAAH!"

After the flight attendant gives her short talk, binkie boy says both
to his neighbor and his cell,
"Someone's a little pissy today!"
They all laugh like frat boys who just did twenty beer bongs, went on
Riddler's Revenge and puked on everyone so the ride had to be closed
for a 15 minute spray down.

The techno-bubble propels the cyclical vomiting syndrome
it attempts to shield.