Speed Kills

Someone stole my moped. A 2005 Tomos ST, it had less than 200 miles on it. I was too greedy for speed.

I bought my first moped last summer. A 1986 Tomos "Golden Bullet," it ran great. On a level road I could hit 35 mph, but I got tired of putt-putting up hills at under 15. So in April I traded in for more torque.

It was great for bopping about the Valley when I needed to get somewhere fast although I had to endure horns blaring from frantic Wiley Coyotes enraged at me for once again foiling their attempts to catch the Roadrunner. Equally common, I provided a source for male bonding ridicule. One time while riding down Victory in Woodland Hills, two guys with long hair and tobacco stained teeth pulled beside me in a Chevy Suburban with jacked up struts and Raiders miscellany in every window.
"Hey You!"
I try to ignore them as they laugh.
"Hey you! Where you from West Hollywood? How fast does that go? Wanna race?"
"This gets a hundred miles a gallon. How much does it cost you to fill up?" I ask.
"At least we can afford it!" He replies.
"It doesn't look like it." I later think to reply. L'occasion perdu. For a couple of potheads, they sure had quick wits.

Riding a moped in L.A. gathers almost as much scorn as riding the bus. In European cities where Mini Coopers crawl through crowded streets averaging under 30, a moped is a jack russell terrier weaving through an agility course. In U.S. cities, designed for young men in their F150s to barrel by at 55, that jack russell is just hoping to escape being the next clump of flesh and fur, turning to dust in the crevice of a curb.

For a brief time in the 1970s, when the cost of gas first took a spike, there was a moped craze and multiple makers to choose from. Today most people confuse mopeds with scooters, and the only maker left in the U.S. is Tomos.

Since then urban flight became suburban flight, as every American family sought its divine right to a mowable lawn, and commuting to the new developments in exurbia became a three hour tour.

No I don't plan on buying a new one. The thief sent me a clear message: stick to the bus. More importantly, I didn't have comprehensive insurance, and I can't spare one month's rent.

Meth Mouth

Woodland Hills hit a record 119 degrees on Saturday, and I was there. The 150 Ventura line broke down at Corbin.
"Can't go any further." The driver says casually. "It overheated."
"What if you let it rest and try again?" asks a woman in her 70s.
"Well, do you want to wait an hour?"

Ironically, I was waiting for the 750 express but hopped on the 150 because it came first. Now I am five blocks from the nearest express stop at Winnetka. I step out into the full sun, and as I walk there I feel strangely fine. This isn't so bad. But when I arrive at the bus shelter and sit down, my forehead becomes a fountain of sweat. I look down to see a dark circle spreading from my belly as if I've caught shrapnel in the gut.

Meanwhile, due to storm caused power outages, the Southern Illinois district of John Shimkus slogs in the heat without even a fan to cut the steam, making a comment by his colleague on the House Energy and Commerce Committee tragicomic. After a hearing on the so-called "hockey stick" increase in global temperature, Michael Burgess, representative for suburban Dallas states, "It's false to presume that a consensus today - exists today where the human activity has been proven to cause global warming, and that's the crux of this hearing. I would point out that simply turning off the electrical generation plants that provide the air conditioning back in my district would not be a viable option."

One wonders how the native people survived for thousands of years without electricity and millions in the global south continue to live without it. If these white people can't handle the climate, why don't they go back to where they came from?

The equivalent of a bad SNL sketch, chaired by oil company consultant/stooge Joe Barton, the hearing brought in a statistician to question the minutiae of mathematical methodology that created a particular graph. Of course, the committee failed to invite the author of the report being questioned since lively debate is a threat to evangelocracy.

Not surprisingly, the oil sucking pundnuts have leaped on this statistician and started peddling his study as a way to keep humping the earth dry. These "rocks for jocks" flunkies ignore the broader point the study makes that the overall claims of global warming theorists are quite on target. One felt somewhat sad for this number cruncher Wegman from George Mason University when Representative Jan Schakowsky asked him a question about the role of carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere:

Prof. WEGMAN: Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in the atmospheric profile, I don't know. I'm not an atmospheric scientist to know that. But presumably, if the atmospheric - if the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the earth, it's not reflecting a lot of infrared back.

Representative JAN SCHAKOWSKY (Democrat, Illinois): But you're not clearly qualified to...

Prof. WEGMAN: No, of course not.

Rep. SCHAKOWSKY: ...comment on that.

Still Barton smiled triumphantly like a proud parent who just saw his son mumble through an elementary school performance of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

These guys have the minds of meth dealers, the drug of choice in rural Republican heartland--electric power pushers--telling addicts they have a beautiful smile as they watch their teeth rot to black.


(Frontline map of meth's spread across the U.S.)

On the way back from Target, all the breakdowns transform what normally would be at most an hour long trip into an afternoon Journey, whose 1981 hit became an anthem for the 2005 World Series Champion White Sox:
"Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin anywhere...
Dont stop believin
Hold on to the feelin
Yaaaaa!"

The Heat is On

"Sprawl is good." That's the essence of Robert Bruegmann's July 9 editorial in the L.A. Times, justly ridiculed by fellow valley blogger Andrew. Yet Bruegmann's assessment of L.A. history is dead on. Drivers universally embraced plans for a freeway city, imagining it would transform their cars into personal jet planes. It is no coincidence the Jetsons emerged when Interstate construction was at its peak.

(Image from Van Eaton Galleries)

Back in '99 when I lived in a deep frier called Tempe, Arizona, I saw Bruegmann speak at the Phoenix Public Library--an architectural jewel amid a downtown of shattered forty ouncers and crushed potato chip bags. Jaws dropped in the audience of architecture students, as if they had come to church and heard a sermon explaining how Jesus taught "Greed is good" and "If your enemy slaps you, kick him back hard in the balls."

His slideshow contrasted postwar housing in Europe--drab modernist apartment buildings--with postwar housing in the United States--single family homes with attached garages. The point was simple: sprawl is good because any normal person would choose postwar U.S.A. If you could choose between a McDonald's "premium" chicken salad and an Outback Steakhouse Steak, naturally you would choose the steak.

Americans love their beef, even if it means our flabby beef eating bodies consume more than a third of the world's resources and per capita more than three times the global average. Of course the apartment living losers in NYC, the ones who somehow survive outside suburbatopia, are not responsible for this piggishness. As pointed out in the beautifully photographed new series from PBS, design e2, the dense transit dominated city makes its residents the skinflints of America.

I was reminded of this recently as temperatures in the valley topped 100, causing peak rates of consumption and scattered blackouts in the L.A. area. I wondered how we lived without air conditioning? So I try. By using a thermometer measuring indoor and outdoor temperature, I keep track of when it is warmer inside than out and vice versa. In the morning, as soon as I notice the temperature is warmer outside, I shut all windows and close all the blinds. At night, when the temperature becomes cooler outside, I open all the windows and turn on the fan, repeating the process each day.

Of course, the real alternative to cranking the AC is relaxing in the park under the canopy of trees or having an espresso at the local café--but that sounds so European--why don't we just grab a Frappuccino® and head down to Zuma in your new Honda Element?
--Yeah, just like in that TV ad, man those chicks are hot!
--Yeah, just like the baby chicks dad fed the hogs when Tyson killed the independent chicken farmer and raising fryers became an economic loss.
--What?
--Yeah, just like that.

Rule 3

Pay attention to the ring of the stop signal. Once someone has pulled the cord, the signal will not sound if pulled again. Usually the sign above the windshield will say "stop requested," but sometimes this is broken. If you are really worried about missing your stop, politely ask the driver, "Has the next stop been rung?", and if s/he says no, gently pull the cord.

Above all, if the bell does not ring after you have pulled the cord, do not pull harder and harder. It doesn't help!

What a sad sight it is to see everyone from a spiky haired punk to a 70 year old women with groceries on her lap jerking the cable as if it's an emergency brake and we are hopelessly barreling toward a fireworks factory.

This is why you occasionally reach to pull the cable only to grasp air--like the Southern Steelhead Trout drained of its habitat by our suburban lifestyle--a signal cable can only take so much abuse before it dies.

Don't panic, recalling skills honed on the playground playing TV tag, dive to the other side of the bus and with your long finger give the cable a quick tug. Or if you are out of shape from too many years of drive through moments, just ask someone on the other side of the bus to do it for you.

Tigger

"If I was married to her I would slit my throat." He draws his hand dramatically across his neck, apparently referring to a homeless woman resting at the bus shelter. The redheaded man is sitting behind the driver with one arm stretched across the seats as I step on the bus. He seems engaged in a conversation with other passengers, but I quickly realize it is more the performance of a bad stand-up comic, with an audience that squirms and grimaces rather than laughs.

As I head to a seat near the back, he continues his routine, accented by rough voicings that might be chuckles. He peers over his mirror shades as if challenging the voyeurs to respond. A green bandana, spike leather wrist band, mustache, ample tattoos inside a muscle shirt give the appearance of a Harley man, but he probably can't afford a bike.

A grizzly bear Straight Outta Van Nuys, abandoned when Busch Gardens closed in '79, he now survives on the fumes from the brewery and dull sexist remarks that remind him of his manliness.

At the stoplight he suddenly turns and starts pointing at people in cars. He chortles and holds both arms high with the peace sign--or more like the classic Nixon victory wave--triumphing over those poor schmucks in their Landrovers with surround sound and leather seats. His disc player may be scarred but his earphones work and at least he can look down at you and stick out his tongue.

The electricity running through his limbs won't allow him to stay in one place. He moves about the bus eventually settling down in the seat directly in front of me. His shirt is frayed to near nothing, but I decipher "House of Pain" above a series of tour cities and dates. The tattoos might have been done by an equally hopped up friend after the dates. One reads "Rock N Roller" as if he looked down at the beer soaked floor, saw a chewed up pen and asked someone to scribble on his shoulder to remind him what he was. Another is some sort of animal wrapped in a spider web. Is it a tiger or perhaps a tigger, Straight Outta Winnie the Pooh?

He pulls the cord for the Noble Av stop, gets up and snaps the door open. Walking down the street with his chest thrust out, Matthew McConaughey's brother heads out to meet his fans.