Of all the talks I have heard at ALOUD, I found Ansary to be the most engaged and fascinating speaker to date.Much of this appeal is personal demeanor, of course.  It was really nice to hear someone speak who spoke so authentically and directly to his audience, above and beyond Ansary’s intelligence and knowledge.  I felt compelled to buy his book after the talk, and it was nice to have the opportunity to get a copy autographed.  On intial skimming, the book also apears to have both depth and accessibility, and I recommend it as well (but you won’t get an inscription… or at least you’ll have to locate Ansary some other time).

Ansary’s book is about what its title says, but he relayed an amusing anecdote of how that title might be misunderstood.  Through most of its history, the Islamic world thought of itself as simply “the world.”  Although the interactions with European civilization (or European barbarity) were ongoing, those contacts were peripheral to the politics and world view of Islamic empires and states.  Ansary related how many Western readers approach him with the assumption that his book might be a history of how the Islamic world has seen the West; the answer there has mostly been that it never really noticed the West.  our Western assumption is something like, according to Ansary, a narcissist who speaks of himself for an hour, only to break by saying, “Enough about me: what do you think of me?”

As you might expect, most of the audience questions that ALOUD devotes a large part of its talks to were about current affairs: what is likely to unfold in Iran, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan.  I should note that these audiences are really smart as a rule.  Ansary and Hussain both had interesting comments on those matters, often informed by their personal childhoods in Afghanistan and Pakistan, respectively (if I heard correctly, Ansary indicated that he was among the Farsi speakers of Afghanistan, which may or may not indicate a deeper understanding or knowledge of Iran; he is extremely knowledgeable in general, regardless of that background).  One question that one would expect to hear, and that deserves an answer, is about the prospect for women’s rights in the Muslim world.  Ansary’s comment was interesting in two elements.  On the one hand, Ansary repeated the familiar observation that in historical context of Mohammed, Islam was progressive on women’s rights; being granted testimony in court of 50% value is a move in the right direction from women being barred from testifying at all (to pick a well known example).  But Ansary discussed that what is required for equality is much more than that fixed moment got to, and that literalism about sharia is a barrier to many rights and democratic institutions.

In this question he also opened a certain doubt that this type of literalism is a deep feature of the Islamic world.  Earlier in the lecture, Ansary had mentioned his own brother, who is a religious scholar (Ansary himself is entirely secular in his beliefs), but whose research urged for what sounds like consequentialist ethics.. His hope is that a look at the spirit of intent in sharia might open way for a more liberal understanding of religion in the Islamic world. The second element was a good history lesson for us mostly non-Muslim Angelenos. In Afghanistan, between 1959 and about 1976, the royal family greatly liberalized the rights and restrictions on women. They did not do this by edict, but by going to the Imam’s and asking for religious evidence for the dress restrictions imposed on women: when this evidence was lacking, the royal family themselves adopted liberal dress habits of women wearing non-restrictive clothing, and this influenced the country (or at least the big cities) to follow.  It’s funny to think of Afghanistan as a liberal society, but comparatively it was in the 1960s and 1970s… those darn invasions!

If you are unfamiliar with this excellent series, I urge you to check it out by listening to a podcast or attending one yourself.

The central library of John Carter's Mars?

Update: It appears that Mrs. Lulu has snuck into the blog again.  The following contains her observations of a delightful lecture at L.A.’s magnificent Central Library.

Last night, Lulu and I attended one of the LA Central Library’s free lectures in their wonderful ALOUD series:  George Lakoff, “The Public Mind:  A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics, In Conversation with Ian Masters”

We were both particularly excited about this talk since we had studied Lakoff in graduate school.  For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a cognitive scientist and linguist  at UC Berkely, whose interdisciplinary work focuses on investigating the ways in which linguistic and cognitive structures (e.g., metaphors, prototypes, frames) shape perception and social life.

A central theme of last night’s discussion was the way in which the framing mechanisms of public discourse have been controlled by the Republicans [...]to the disadvantage of the Democrats.  This situation becomes especially remarkable in light of the fact that the latest cognitive science research, according to Lakoff, demonstrates a neuro-physiological basis for empathy.  Our brains are hard wired to feel the pain and pleasure of others, so it turns out that democracy has a material ground in our natural care for each other.   So why aren’t we more progressive and democratic as a society?

Here Lakoff turns to our political language. For example, the term “pro-choice” sounds frivolous next to the deeply compassionate and moral “pro-life.”  And who among us can be against  “tax relief”? Wouldn’t a “public option,” in health care strip us of our right to make private decisions in consultation with our trusted and chosen doctors?  These examples point out how language subtly directs us to the right wing position.  One of Lakoff’s own entries into the political fray, of particular interest to our state’s current budget standoff, came up against the resistance of such framing.  He had tried to get a referendum balloted stating nine simple words:  “All legislative matters shall be decided by majority vote.”  No top Democrats would back the measure because they feared the increase in taxes that would result from the repeal of Prop 13.  Thus, the simple democracy of majority rule becomes too subversive a step for the Democrats of our “golden state.” Again, as Lakoff pointed out, this fear of taxes has been inculcated by a republican framing mechanism according to which we automatically associate taxes with hardship and unfair burden, rather than with paying for social goods and services that we need and want.

One reason liberals do not do as well in framing issues, according to Lakoff, is their belief in the Enlightenment view of reason as pure of emotions or politics; thus, liberals need only to lay out the facts without attempting to persuade or influence and the rational person will come to the proper conclusion on his/her own.  Lakoff’s suggestion is that we frame the language ourselves–e.g., the use of guns could be seen as an act of cowardice rather than macho bravery (this, in response  to an excellent question by interviewer, Ian Masters, based on his own Australian upbringing that taught him that it was manly to settle differences by fisticuffs, but never with a weapon).

The news was not all bad, however; in fact there was an upbeat mood to last night’s talk.   For example, Lakoff  frequently praised Obama as succeeding in articulating some of the truth in contradiction to the overarching right wing frame.  Even Obama’s personal style and image as a calm, intelligent, nurturing man is helping to dispel the dominant view of masculinity as violent, authoritarian and controlling.  This view and its correlative view of the patriarchal family has served in turn as a model for our vision of politics and government, again as part of the conservative frame that hinders social progress.

Although many of Lakoff’s ideas did not come across as entirely new and original (after all, many currents of 20th C thought and philosophy, from phenomenology, to structural linguistics, psychoanalytic Marxism and feminism have argued the connection between the so-called purity of reason, logic and empiricist perception and the linguistic and social constructs that unconsciously determine our views), his presentation was provocative, timely and very well received.  I have attended several of these lectures now, and have always been impressed by the quality of the audience’s questions and comments.  If you are unfamiliar with this excellent series, I urge you to check it out by listening to a podcast or attending one yourself.

Walker’s company, 599 Productions, makes time-lapse films for a variety of projects– TV and indie film productions and music videos, as well as for corporate clients.

From Placerville, a small town midway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, Walker didn’t go the usual route, through a traditional film school, to get into The Industry. After playing around with a camcorder in high school and editing skate films together for fun, he got a job at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank as a projectionist, which served as his on-the-job training. (Interview with Walker after the click.)

“That was kind of like my film school, except they were paying me to be there instead of me paying them. It was a great place to learn about filmmaking. Then I started working over at DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox doing the same thing,” he told me in an email.

“It was very educational in that I got to see films in the rawest form they come in, dailies. Then I would see different edits until the final film, so the process of seeing that helped me a lot.”

CP: How did you start doing time-lapse film?

AW: I originally was shown a time-lapse DVD that someone had over at 20th Century Fox. I can’t remember the name of the artist. But what really caught my attention was that the guy showing me the DVD said that it was all done with a DSLR camera. I thought to myself, “I have one of those, I wonder how hard it is?”

I started testing which methods worked well and which ones did not. I remember seeing the first time-lapse I did and thinking “Wow, I have to watch that again.” I started posting my  clips after I would process them and people seemed to really like what I was doing.

The very first time-lapse piece I did I sold to a small website to use in their logo for  $100. I started to think I might be able to make some money to at least pay for some new equipment.

I already had the base for this type of photography in my bag of skills as I had done long exposure photography while I was in high school. Of course all this was done on film and this made time-lapse the way I do it a little out of my reach. But I always liked the process of long exposures because you get to see a world that exists if you could change your perception of time and let the light that is small and faint become bright and almost overwhelming with things you didn’t see before.

What types of clients approach you for your films?

A lot of different types of people approach me about the footage my company does but  only about 20% of them are serious about paying for the clips. Most try and get them for free and that usually doesn’t work out for those people. But I have donated a DVD of my footage edited together for some churches and a non-profit organization or two.

The type of people that approach me are music video people, independent film people, people that want to use it for a business meeting and sometimes TV.

Recently I signed a deal with Getty Images to represent my time-lapse footage along with some other things that I film. I also have footage represented over at Footage Bank. All of my new footage is at Getty Images and the older footage is at Footage Bank.

Are you at liberty to say where your footage has appeared?

A couple clips made their way onto the now-cancelled show “Moonlight” [the CBS vampire series set in LA.] A couple of my time-lapse clips were in a music video for a band called The Script, in their “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” video. Sprint used some clips for a meeting they had. Also the Public Works union of Los Angeles has used some of my time-lapse for a video they made for their members. Plus a couple short films and other smaller music videos.

Your LA time-lapse films seem to exude a love for Los Angeles, or am I projecting my own feelings upon them?

To be very honest, I’m mainly in this city for the work. There are times, when I’m driving around looking for a shot, that I’m amazed by the beauty that this city has in it. That feeling may only last a couple moments but it usually changes my day for the better. The places I go to get some of these shots are places you wouldn’t want to be late at night. Most people would just keep their heads down to avoid trouble. But in some of the dirtiest, most dangerous places the best shots can be found.

Do you have other film-related pursuits?

Of course. I write, direct, edit and DP shorts and music videos that I produce. I do work on other peoples’ projects from time to time doing all kinds of things. Some of the other things I do are work as a RED Camera provider, RED digital image techician and colorist. [RED is a digital cinema imaging system.] I also pick up a couple shifts over at the different studios around town working as a projectionist when I’m not out looking for shots.

Which filmmakers have influenced you?

Frank Darabont, Steve Soderbergh, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Zemeckis, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Alex Proyas, Peter Jackson, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, Gore Verbinski and David Fincher.

599 Productions’ site has a time-lapse reel where some of Walker’s work can be viewed. Be prepared to be mesmerized.

Photo by flickr user nancy- under a CC license

In California I dream of snow
And all the places we used to go
With the night falling down
With the night falling down
Now I’m living in Korea Town
Waking to the sound of car alarms

Neko Case didn’t write this song, although I first heard this melancholic track off her album Canadian Amp while virtually thumbing through iTunes’ Neko collection. Philistine that I was, for years I believed it to have been penned by the Western-noir fox confessor of Americana herself. Instead, it was actually written by a woman named Lisa Marr, who fronted a band called Cub, and who played off and on with Neko in the 90s.

Was “In California” autobiographical? Or was it, as it is with many songwriters, a case of a musician crafting a narrative around an imaginary life?

So while this post was originally supposed to be about a song and a city, I now find myself drawn into a search for a woman, and her story…

I remember your face when I showed you the ticket
Said you were happy for me, your heart wasn’t in it
Just a phone call away
Now there’s nothing to say
As the days roll by, disconnected

In the land where the sun is always shining on
Crying alone, palm tress are laughing at me
Another fool playing songs that don’t matter
For people who chatter endlessly

Another suicide on the 405
The Black Dahlia she smiles and smiles
It’s the same old town that bled her dry
One more starlet one more time
Bound to make it do or die
Talk a walk to Bonnie Brae
Try to wash these dreams away
They try to tell me L.A is beautiful when it rains

I think it’s important to note the disappointment, the sense of anti-climax, dreams dying on the vine. And it’s also important to note that those things happen a lot in Los Angeles. Relentless booster of LA that I am, even I have to admit that at times the golden sunshine seems to burn the life out of everything, the endless urban grid an arid cage for pacing.

The Chili Peppers’ “At least I have her, though–the city, she loves me” seems for the most part like a lucky one-off; LA doesn’t love anyone very often. Lately even I’ve been occasionally feeling as if I’ve seen every street, smelled every bacon-wrapped dog, and the most exquisite of jasmine-perfumed breezy evenings seems melancholic. Too many ghosts and memories crowd every drive along Sunset.

To really love this city–to find your home here, truly and deeply–requires an initial surrender of all those early visions of what you thought Los Angeles would be, or of what it would give you. Until you can let go of those images you superimposed, with great hope, over LA, you can’t really get in. You’re locked out, lonely.

For me, maybe that vision was simply that LA could be all things for me, for all time.

The final line, “They try to tell me LA is beautiful when it rains,” evinces the presence of friends & acquaintances — maybe even an LA fan like myself — who encourage our protagonist to discover, for herself, the better parts of this city; but implied is the fact that is has not rained since she has arrived in this impersonal, harsh town, and the sensation is one of suffocating drought, dying of thirst. If love & dreams are like water, so ubiquitous in Vancouver & Washington State (where both Marr & Case hail from), then LA seems a desert.

In analyzing this song, I decided it’s got siblings out there. I suggest you also listen to Neko Case’s “Thrice All American,” an unabashed, through-it-all love letter to rusty Northwest port town Tacoma, which could be a genuine literary foil to “In California”…:

Well I don’t make it home much, I sadly neglect you
But that’s how you like it–away from the world
God bless California, make way for the Wal-Mart
I hope they don’t find you, Tacoma

and the Twilight Singers’ “Bonnie Brae,” whose dark take on East Hollywood/K-Town’s street named, in old Gaelic, “pleasant hill,” shows just how lost you really can get in this city (the street crops up occasionally throughout a number of songs by local songwriters)…:

There was a rapture, so I can never see you anymore
nightmares believable, walking into sweet oblivion
i’m not saying it’s easy, to feel it all or not at all…
‘cuz when you play with fire, take your fate, it’s not going away
situation dire, on bonnie brae, on bonnie brae…

Lisa Marr’s name sounded familiar when it cropped up during my research. Maybe it just had a familiar ring; maybe I’d heard it before. Marr appeared to still be in Los Angeles, and still playing music–despite the disenchantment of “In California,” she must have settled in ok (if indeed the song was autobiographical in the first place)–so I sent a mass email out to everyone I knew, asking if anyone could introduce us.

I abruptly felt like a damned idiot when I realized that the Lisa Marr I was looking for was the Lisa Marr I’d interviewed some time ago when writing a story on the Echo Park Film Center. Along with Paolo Davanzo, she co-directs the amazing community resource that is the EPFC. Marr herself, a slight, dark-haired woman who had that dewy look of someone who does yoga every day, had presented me with a membership pin a few years back.

The pin’s lived on my everyday jacket–a lightweight Army-green thing spiked with close to a dozen pins–even since then. Who knew that all the last few years I was listening to this song, the woman who’d written it had also punched out the little badge affixed to my lapel.

I emailed the EPFC right away, only to find Marr was leaving in the next few hours for two weeks in Japan, on an EPFC-related trip, presumably with much film in tow.

So this post, here, will have a post-script, when I interview Marr after her return to Los Angeles. As with the song, I suspect a new story will begin where the final line ends.

For the initial Songs About LA post & the collection of published posts on the topic, go to Julia’s introduction here.

Photo courtesy nancy- at flickr via a creative commons license.

If anyone knows who took this photo, please let me know in the comments

John Leech, the founder of the Onyx Cafe in Silverlake/Los Feliz/Echo Park and beloved patron of the arts and truth in general has passed away.

It apparently happened around Monday or Tuesday March 17th or 18th and has been confirmed by the County Coroner. He apparently has no family but he has a trust and its executors have been notified. There is a votive memorial in front of the former location of the Onyx on Vermont Avenue (now Cafe Figaro) in Los Feliz. Initial planning for a fitting memorial to John has begun. More on that soon.

John was one of the rarest things in this world: a genuine philosophical Bohemian in the very best sense of the word who created an austere unpretentious Cafe which was, by his design, a magical safe zone for artists, musicians, poets, scientists, intellectuals and outsiders of all stripes…

… What was most unusual about him was that John had the backbone to truly stick up for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience while a fascist Reaganistic culture rampaged everywhere without. He was one of the secret great Americans who keep the true lamp of liberty burning in the midnight…even though he was English.

He provided a genuine refuge from the hollow prevarications of a culture that had largely accepted the fatuous greed, corruption and pillage ideology of the Reaganauts, and he kept it vital for a good long string of years because he considered it culturally necessary – a duty even. He never tried to cash-in on any of it yet he provided a free and supportive venue for literally hundreds of local artists who may have lacked other means, a fair number of whom went on to fame and fortune. They just don’t make people like John Leech any more. They hardly ever did. His passing is a great loss to culture and the arts in Los Angeles.

Peace be upon him.

I'll be your author this evening

I moved to Los Angeles in October 2006, for a strange contract, in this strange specular land. Then, as now, I was reminded of our friends at the Bureau of Public Secrets who so presciently remarked of 21st century LA:

As the world of the spectacle extends its reign it approaches the climax of its offensive, provoking new resistances everywhere. These resistances are very little known precisely because the reigning spectacle is designed to present an omnipresent hypnotic image of unanimous submission.

Year by year, things get queerer here, in this pastiche of post-modern archaity I now call home.

As readers can now see, I have joined Metblogs, at the invitation of our dear editor, Lucinda Michele. I hope to add to this site some socio-political musings on the psycho-geography of LA. Perhaps even fulfill some lofty ambitions of making y’all folks think just a little bit harder about this city around you. We’ll see.

As to me, you’re welcome to sleuth around more. I am not hard to find on Google, and my bio gives some (oblique) pointers. Perhaps it’s enough to say that I’m old enough, and over-educated enough, to have thought about a thing or two; but neither old nor wise enough to hold my tongue when I should.

Welcome!

photo by Thomas Hawk, used under a Creative Commons license

An interview with Leah Peterson, technical consultant for the Steven Spielberg and Diablo Cody produced “United States of Tara.”

Long time Los Angeles blog readers probably know Leah Peterson for her blog leahpeah and as creator and coordinator of the live reading event series LA Angst and LA Bloggers Live!  She’s also contributed to Huffington Post, crocheted hats for Amy Sedaris and sold paintings that hang all over North America. And she’s a mom. Oh, and she also has Dissociative Identity Disorder, commonly referred to as multiple personality disorder. While many people suffering from disorders prefer to keep them secret, Leah wrote a book about it. The book was read by an Oscar winning screenwriter, and now Leah is a consultant for one of cable TV’s hottest shows.

Leah graciously accepted my offer of an e-interview… following are her answers to some of my questions, discussinghow she became involved with “The United States of Tara,” when the show veers from reality, and what Leah is up to next. You reading this, Mr. Spielberg?

How did you become involved with United States of Tara? Is working as a consultant a part of your background?

Leah: The story goes that somehow, my book (Not Otherwise Specified) made it into the hands of Diablo Cody while she was researching DID for the show. She sent me an email and since I’d never heard of her, I forwarded it to my husband, my own personal Snopes, and he looked her up and deemed the name Diablo Cody as a real person. A person really named Brooke Busey. So, fictional, but also real. Crazy? Yes.

I agreed to meet with her and we had lunch. She asked a lot of questions and I gave her a lot of answers. And then a few weeks later I got a call from the studio asking if I wanted to be a consultant for the series. I welcomed the invitation and have loved being involved.

Consulting is not something I’ve done before, but I’d just like to shake Mr. Spielberg’s hand and thank him for having the wonderful idea for the show and offer to be a consultant on any project he’s working on. I’ll look up the information on Google if I have to.

"United States of Tara" stars Toni Collette as a mother with multiple personalities.

What are your day to day activities as a consultant? Are you “oncall” or required to work regular hours?

Leah: Totally on call. As far as I can tell, there aren’t that many regular hours when working on a show, besides Long. I’m basically (willingly) at their beck-and-call if they have any questions about anything regarding Tara or how she would perceive the world or act in some situations. My job is to hopefully keep the realism in there because part of the show is not just to entertain but to also inform. I mean, at the end of the day, it is a TV show and it has to draw viewers (and has! Yay for season 2!) to stay on air, but it was really important to Diablo to make sure that the show wasn’t too funny or too dark. It really works well to have both elements turning together.

I’d love to be even more involved and be on the writing team for next season or be on set for filming every day or sitting in at the table for read-throughs. Someone make a note of that. Call me.

The most surprising thing to me about the show is how casually Tara’s family accepts her and her multiple personalities, even having favorites, and, seemingly, somehow enjoying them. Is this an idealized environment for a family coping with a similar situation, relatively common, or a stretch of imagination?

Leah: Most DID people with young kids that have worked hard to have a high quality of life, would have an agreement between alters to make sure the kids were always taken care of. That might look like one personality always being out when the kids are around. And if someone else had to be out for some triggered reason, they would try to act like that safe personality as much as they could, even down to answering to their name and trying to talk like them, the focus really being on the kids and their well-being.

A person who has not worked on their internal system to gain quality of life or a person who lives in a constantly triggering environment might not have those options and may choose to send their kids away to a family member or a friend for some time until things become more normalized. And if they don’t have that option, the environment might not be that great for the kids, and it’s a sad situation for everyone.

“In my experience, if you have alters, you have alters. If they come out, they come out. And no drug stops that from happening.”

On the show, the premise that Tara stopped taking medications and is now experiencing her personalities where before she was not, is not really accurate in my experience. People with DID can take many types of mood altering medications and suppressants which will improve their lives and help them function, but I’ve never heard of a drug that takes away your personalities when you take it. In my experience, if you have alters, you have alters. If they come out, they come out. And no drug stops that from happening. This doesn’t mean there is no such medication. Maybe I’ve just never heard of it.

That being said, if you’ve got parts that want to come out and play (children) or parts that want to exercise or parts that want to do some heavy cleaning in the garage, they’ll come out on their own when it’s safe to. And maybe even when it’s not so safe, unless you’ve done a lot of work to figure out how time should be spent and by whom and when. It can get complicated. And if your kids are older, it might not matter as much who’s out when, if they are aware of the situation and enjoy hanging out with the one that likes to go shopping or is a mad scrabble player. All told, all those personalities are really a part of one whole, so there is no shame in enjoying the part that is out, as long as everyone’s needs are being met.

When it comes to Tara sharing with friends or acting like Buck in public, I’d have to say that is mostly for the show. I don’t think I’ve ever met a DID person who would go out in public and do anything that would seem weird or call attention to themselves, unless it was a truly dire situation. There is a whole lot of trust involved for a DID person to even share their alters with their own therapist, let alone friends. So, while that part of the show makes good TV, I wouldn’t go around looking for DID people to start being publicly odd. It’s a pretty private world they live in.

Research on disassociative personality disorders led Oscar winning screenwriter to Leah Peterson's book Not Otherwise Specified.

What’s going on with LA Angst?

Leah: Short answer? Nothing at the moment. It became too big a job for me to do alone and no one seemed to want to step up and help at that time. I’d love to start it up again, as well as LA Bloggers Live, because they were both really fun and a great chance to get together. But, I’d need a co-pilot or two. Currently taking applications.

Any new projects/opportunities that have come from your work on Tara? Or anything else you’re working you’re excited about and/or that LA blog readers would dig?

Leah: I’m putting together a Drink Up the first part of June. Kind of like a blogger Meet Up, but focused on friendship and Buttery Nipples instead of networking. To get on the info list, send me an email.

I’m currently writing a cable series and a movie. The series is twice as fun because my son, Devon, is writing it with me. I’m also working on a DID collaboration book project and looking for people with DID to share their stories.

Last but not least, I want to release my book Not Otherwise Specified mainstream. It’s currently available at Lulu.com. I’m actively looking for a good literary agent that is interested in memoirs.

So, to recap: Spielberg and Cody, get Leah into the writers room. Bloggers, contact Leah about putting together the next LA Bloggers Live. Everyone, buy her book. And, oh yeah, watch “United States of Tara” Sunday nights on Showtime.

Having resided mostly in small towns and cities on the East Coast and in Texas, the move here was a big change for me. Not only is L.A. the most expansive place I’ve lived, but it is by far the most diverse. The people, geography, lifestyles, and cultures fascinate and energize me. Sometimes I feel like I’ve learned more from my time here than in most of my years of formal education.

A health care professional by day, I pursue crafting, writing, and photography in my spare time. Nature and my pets are often an inspiration for my creativity. I also attempt to take advantage of all that Los Angeles has to offer from music to art to hiking to film to geek-centric gatherings and beyond. There is always something to do, which is one of the reasons why I don’t get enough sleep.

I appreciate the opportunity to write for Metblogs and am looking forward to sharing my love for and my unique perspective of life in L.A. My musings can be found elsewhere online and yes, they often reflect my unhealthy obsessions with tote bags and rodents.

HI!

HI!!

I’m yet another newbie in this influx of new writers.  You very likely don’t know me from that annoying 2009 Hummer with license plate MRY XMAS hogging the road next to you (or me, this morning, as Yaris and I barely escaped being eaten by that silver monstrosity of a car) but I run a foodie blog over on What You See is What You Eat.  I know, another one of those. Oh well. Other random things: I have a dog that everyone thinks is a fox, but really, is just a shiba inu. I say this at least 5 times a day, so if you’re in Santa Monica and there’s a girl explaining that No I did not steal this “fox” from Runyon Canyon, and, anyway, who would steal a fox and domesticate it? That makes no sense., that is me. My day-and-often-night-time job is to be a lawyer; having to write pleadings that are variations on a you-owe-me-money theme, I am eternally grateful to Lucinda and the rest of the LA Metblogs team for entrusting me with the space to write in English a few times a week.

So, this is my hi post.  The substantive post will be forthcoming.

I am also a Los Angeles native, having grown up in the far east corner of the San Gabriel Valley, and I’ve slowly been migrating west ever since. Although I’m new to writing here, you may have seen me dropping in to the comments from time to time. I’ve been a reader since back in the day when this was just a little blog affectionately known as “b.LA.” (I wasn’t the only who called it that, was I?) In fact, even when I moved out of town for two years, I still came back to LA MetBlogs everyday. Los Angeles has always been my home, so even when I lived thousands of miles away I was able to stay in touch through the magic of the interwebs. I will forever be grateful to the LA MetBlogs authors who kept me grounded in my true home, and I’m very happy to be a part of that team now.

I usually like to be the one holding the camera, but occasionally I’ll turn it around and hold it at arm’s length. Here’s a rare image of Burns! in the wild:

I like to tell people that I have more fun than anyone I know, and probably more than anyone you know, too. I am happy to have that statement challenged, but I’ll expect you to prove it by taking me along for your fun. Los Angeles is a great city for fun, as there is always something going on; usually several somethings. I’m going to try to tell you about many of those things here, but MetBlogs isn’t just an event guide, so I’ll also be writing about my own L.A. experiences and observations, too. Blogs are all about community, so I hope you’ll join me. More often than not, “The more the merrier” is a true statement, so I’m looking forward to you joining the discussion here, as well as coming out to take part in the fun with me.

Thanks to everybody for this terrific opportunity. I hope you’ll stop by the comments section and say hello, maybe find me elsewhere online, and definitely come out for the real live fun in L.A.