LA en vie

The dancing waiters

One night after a movie we were looking in vain for a place to eat that was still open at 11 p.m. on a Friday night, for heaven's sake! This is one area where Los Angeles still really feels like a small town.

After being turned away at various places that were just closing, we were reduced to going to Johnny Rocket's on the Santa Monica promenade, which serves food till midnight. I actually like it for milkshakes and because a dose of its all-Americana still feels exotic to me.

We sat at the counter and noticed that the wait staff looked exhausted. Maybe a couple more restaurants should stay open late!

Suddenly the music turned up loud. Aretha Franklin's "Respect." I looked up from the menu and frowned. Surely they weren't going to leave it like that, ear-splitting?

But instead of turning it off, the waiters all started dancing and singing in unison, even the manager. They danced in line, pointing their fingers in the air, they whirled around, and they sang loudly along to the music:

 A little respect (just a little bit)
I get tired (just a little bit)
Keep on tryin' (just a little bit)...
I got to have (just a little bit)
A little respect (just a little bit)

Coming back

When you are a long-term expatriate, you give up a lot. Just how much, I don't think I realized until I came back to my own country again.

Everything is just easier. You fit in. Your credentials mean more. You understand the nuances. You know how to behave. Your old friends are here, and it's easier to make new ones. You know how to network. You know what to do.

I've lost many years of work, of fun with friends, of learning.

What did I get in return for those irrecoverable years?

France. England. Germany.

Was it enough?

I don't know.
 

Mother's Day, U.S.

One of the unfortunate side effects of living as an expat is that you lose track of American things, as when I tried to get some business done at the U.S. consulate on the Fourth of July.  Mother's and Father's Days are on different days in France and the United States. So year after year, I would be reminded by storefronts and candy boxes that the Fête des mères was coming, but would forget about Mother's Day a couple of months later. And my mother isn't one to remind me!

But I love her very much. Here is a poem by C.P. Cavafy,  presented in her honor. I'm sure she too would have been a very sagacious Byzantine empress.

  Anna Dalassena

  In the golden bull that Alexios Comnenos issued
  to prominently honor his mother,
  the very sagacious Lady Anna Dalassena —
  distinguished in her works, in her ways—
  there are many words of praise:
  here let us convey of them
  a beautiful, noble phrase
  "Those cold words 'mine' or 'yours' were never spoken."

--tr. Dalven/Barbanis,The Complete Poems of Cavafy

The Bush supporter

The Griffith Park fire is out but now there is another fire on Catalina Island, which I can sometimes see off in the distance. Last night, before it got too dark, you could actually see the fire on the ridges. Now the horizon is covered with white smoke even though it is a clear blue day.

Yesterday a workman came into my house chuckling to himself. "Around here I get a lot of people honking at me and giving me the finger," he said.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Oh, because I have a Bush-Cheney sticker on my truck. This is not exactly the neighborhood for that." (I live in West L.A.) "But I ask you, why is the economy so good? Why is there such low unemployment? I made two bets that Bush and Cheney would win the last election, but the other guys refused to pay up. Even though we only bet one dollar!"

"Why not? That's not very honest of them," I said.

"Well, because I told them I wanted the dollar in pennies, glued inside a frame with the caption 'I LOST,'" he said.

The endless not-quite-summer

In Paris, I pretty much wore only black, like everyone else in the city--usually turtlenecks and trench coats, with maybe a scarf on a cool day or for a change of pace. This made dressing very easy, although boring. Most of the year, that's all you need in Paris, and the French are conservative dressers and tend not to go for the bright wardrobe of trendy items.

Naturally, I thought I would need a whole new wardrobe in L.A., where the uniform in many parts of town is clamdiggers, empire-waisted sleeveless tops, and flipflops, all in loud prints.

But actually, where we live is near the ocean. It's chilly in the morning and evening, the house has marble floors, and the black turtlenecks still come in handy. The misty white "June gloom" has set in early and I find myself longing for a little really hot weather-- like what Paris is experiencing these days! L says I'm lucky and that it's already miserably hot in most of Los Angeles.

Fire in the city

Last night I was in my class when a cell phone started ringing. Normally when this happens, people are embarrassed and quickly fish out the phone and turn it off. But instead, the man went quickly out of the classroom to answer it. He came back in looking upset. "There's a big fire in Griffith Park," he said, "and the wind has changed. The fire is coming downhill and they're evacuating all the area around it."

L lives near the fire so I called her up. She said she didn't know about the evacuation order, but that the internet was down because of the fire, and there was a lot of smoke.

I went back into class and the others were still talking about the fire. Los Angeles has a lot of fires, so that the summer is even called Fire Season. This is the driest year on record. Usually they burn outlying areas, but Griffith Park is a huge hilly park in the city itself.

"The zoo is there," said one woman. "I hope the animals are safe!"

"And the Griffith Park observatory!" said someone else. Everyone groaned. The observatory just reopened in November after a four-year renovation. Here's what it looked like yesterday.

This morning on the radio they said that 800 acres have burned. There were 600 firefighters at Griffith Park, but many of them were exhausted from working all night. But they did say the observatory was "defensible."

This city is vulnerable to fire, earthquake, and mudslides, riots, crime and drought, and the traffic is barely manageable at ordinary times. Several of the major roads of Los Angeles go right near Griffith Park. So not surprisingly, the freeways were hellish today.

A month or so ago, we got a brochure in the mail from the Los Angeles fire department, saying that we live in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone and had precautions to take. I take them a lot more seriously now.

All-American star

"The studio head told me himself that he hired her to service his male stars," said an older woman I know, talking about an "all-American girl" movie star of another era, "and after a few discreet inquiries elsewhere, I found out it was true."

"There's a t-shirt in Hollywood," said someone else. "'Fame is not sexually transmitted.' But in this case, it actually was."

A ride down Sunset

Last night we were going to something in downtown L.A. and  took Sunset through Hollywood. About four fire trucks came through on the other side of the road, sirens wailing, and everyone on our side pulled over and stopped as they went by.

In France, I was amazed to learn years ago, ambulances do not have the right of way unless they have a police escort. In general, the French do not pay much attention to ambulances and I have often seen them stuck in traffic jams,  which I found hard to understand. On the other hand, I once saw an entire tunnelful of Germans in a stationary traffic jam clear a lane-wide path for an ambulance within five seconds. I always thought this illustrates why the Germans found it fairly easy to conquer France, but impossible to keep it under control.

"It's the law," said a new friend who has lived here all her life. "In fact, there is a new law coming into effect where you'll have to move over two lanes from any emergency vehicles."

On the way home, we were driving through Beverly Hills ("which is famous," said the new friend, "for its traffic cameras, and they take two photos each time, too-- they'll getcha every time. I always drive re-e-e-e-ally slowly through Beverly Hills"). Suddenly we came to a roadblock. There were about fourteen police cars, and the police officers were standing on either side of the road, shining a light into every single car going through the barricades. A lot of unhappy-looking people were off at the side of the road with their heads bent back, trying to touch their noses or recite the alphabet backwards.

Blake Snyder on Zegna-suited slix who nix PG pix

I don't like violent movies or anything so graphic that makes me turn my face away from the screen and go "Ewwww!" But most of the movies made these days seem to be like that, and I always wondered why. Why is it so hard to find a good movie that you wouldn't be embarrassed to take your kids or grandmother to, but that isn't stupid or about dogs? After all, good movies in this category seem to be huge moneymakers.

The most convincing explanation I have found is in a great screenwriting book I'm reading (got to get with the program here!), Save the Cat by Blake Snyder.

While I've been writing this book...a lot has happened out here in Hollywoodland:

--family films outperformed every other type of movie, a truism that was met with the resounding sound of...crickets...by the Zegna-suited slicksters. (It's hard to be cool at the cocktail party when you make--ugh! --PG flicks.)

Homework: Play a video game

A came home with the English class homework assignment: play several hours of a certain quest computer game and get to a specified level.

This reminds me of how mad my parents used to get when the teachers assigned us television programs to watch. We did not own a television. (I'm grateful now, but a couple of my brothers are still annoyed about it. I guess it depends on the kid.)

Apparently some kids play so much that their concerned parents buy them the Gamecycle, left, where the game turns off if the child stops pedaling. It is guaranteed to get them a bit of exercise.