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only got a few hours of sleep last night, which is rare

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usually amber and i watch a Sopranos or two and hit the hay once she starts snoring.

sometimes im the one who snores first.

then someone shuts off the tv, claps twice and the christmas lights and aroma therapy stops and the cats realize it’s the end of another broadcast day.

but yesterday was a good day for lots of reasons. so good that as she and i were walking home from dinner i spotted a Bird scooter right there on Sunset. i looked on my app to see if it was a decent reward to charge it up and free it in the morning and sure enough it was worth $11. so i took it and charged it.

amber usually works very early in the morning and often she kisses me goodbye and that will send me back to a peaceful slumber but sometimes it riles me up and i cant get back to sleep. because i hadnt slept well i had a hard time getting back.

so i watched tv and looked at my phone and fed the cats and considered releasing the bird.

but everything i did i did in slow motion and with the hope that i would get groggy and pass out for one more hour. for a half hour. for 15 more minutes. but no.

my mind was racing. so many ideas. so many weird thoughts, oh so many.

and now its a bit after noon and my body is like mmmmm nap fool. nap.

but now is when the world wants me.

and i want it.

sometimes things are good

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and you dont wanna talk too much about them because you dont wanna jinx it

even though you dont believe in jinxes

but you just wanna let everything fall in place the way they seem to be falling

and not be the thing that clogs up the system.

took a guy from the beach up the 405 and then we wound our way through Sherman Oaks

up in the hills, in places i hadn’t been before because im not all that familiar with the val

and he had an interesting disposition like he was just about to erupt at any minute.

he had what i have when i have kidney stones and im waiting for the one thing to lead to the other thing

which eventually leads to someone eventually giving me morphine or demoral or heroin

whatever phony name they wanna call it

which eventually kills the pain and guides me to a beautiful dreamy sleep.

but before that happens you have to deal with The World which is full of People

and typically i am in love with those things but when theres a little baby asteroid in my loins i hate everyone

mostly because i am not allowed to say, look i know what the problem is, i drink too much pop

and the stone has been created, and it’s too big for my body and now i need that one or two shots of H

please and thank you.

this guy was like me. this guy was ready to pop. this guy, even when we were talking about happy things, had this edge

and i wanted to tell him look, we’re gonna get there, it’s gonna be ok. everythings gonna be fine.

and because of the 4th and the 100 degree heat (which was 112 in the val) traffic was amazing because everyone else said

fuck. this.

and stayed home in their airconditioning or pool side or ocean side

it was a dream.

and i didnt think i was gonna get a tip from him because even though we had a lot in common,

he didnt seem the happiest guy

and i didn’t really have the morphine he was probably looking for.

but alas the next day i checked the app, and boom, he tipped me $10

and i did a little jig in my sweltering apartment.

deep down im a basic bitch

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i eat mcdonalds, i drink cokes, i still pay for cable.

so naturally i ran outside to see the fireworks last night.

the pretty girl had been napping because she had woken up at 4:20am to get to work.

around 8pm she was all, “10 more minutes” and smiled.

so i took a shower. when i returned she said

“i sleep now.”

when amber’s tired she has trouble conjugating.

but i bombarded her with kisses and due to the fact i have very stinky breath and spikey stubble she miraculously arose.

she said, “take me to Dodger Stadium” but unfortunately the game had ended by the time we arrived and the fireworks, for what i could tell were over.

but alas the rest of the city was just warming up. so i remembered a party i went to once on the most east end of Echo Park. our friend Michelle L. used to live there. it was on an incline and there was a park at the top of it.

when i approached it we could see 2-3 pretty well curated street firework situations happening so we parked on Sunset and walked up.

Mexican families, then black families, then white hipsters as we walked up the hill. everyone letting kids play with sticks of dynamite.

one lady kept holding her bottle rockets dangerously close to the giant pine tree and we decided to Kate Bush it and ran up the hill.

there we saw an abandoned lot with a poorly constructed fence. we slid through it and there, alas, all of LA opened up to us and from Downtown to the Hollywood Bowl fireworks bloomed from the horizon.

i tried to take pics but it was like trying to draw Mohammad: a dangerous waste of time.

we drove home with rockets still exploding all around us.

i decided not to make a quick buck Ubering because blasts + drunk drivers + drunk passengers does not equal a good time. instead we turned on the Sopranos and slowly feel asleep to the sounds of what the cats probably thought was the end of humanity.

fascination street

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she said wanna

i said yeah

she said no do you really wanna

i said is there a hot tub

she said and a pool

i was all do i have to drive

she said ill drive

stopped off at a book store to pee

the thing i like about santa barbara is it’s seen it all

so it’s chill

theres pretty much nothing you can do to impress santa barbara

except be cool

and pick up your litter

this place is

still

magic

picked up this guy from a fancy hotel

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he didn’t talk much at all. he was on his phone.

we were going to Mt. Olympus which is way up in the Hollywood Hills.

My GPS told me to go up through the Beverly Hills and then take Mullhulland along the edge of seventeen.

the sun was setting. a bunch of people had pulled over to watch it.

but he was still on his phone.

i was playing Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Dream”

finally i said, “this is the prettiest you’ll ever see the Valley.”

he looked up and grunted something and looked back down.

i thought, i am so lucky. so blessed. so loved.

dropped him off.

thought about only giving him 4 stars cuz he made me wait at the hotel

and didn’t know enough about life to enjoy the ride.

but one shouldnt judge.

maybe he was in the middle of a flame war.

one good thing (and there are many) about being black

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is, if we are in touch, we don’t worry about certain things

because in the last 100 years things have been much worse.

hell, 50 years ago it was illegal for a black man to marry a white woman in half of the USA.

so when people get all uptight about the supreme court, or certain laws, a well-grounded black person could say, welcome to my nightmare

shits always been bad. we cope. we fight on. we dont get hysterical. we dont scream and cry. we keep marching up that hill.

despite how steep it is.

regardless of how much oil they spill to slow our progress.

it’s gonna happen.

we will reach that mountain top.

which isn’t to say that there isn’t a time and place to make a joyful noise, oh there is. there just isn’t a time and place to quit. because, and heres the secret to life the universe and everything: people are watching. and people are mimics. thats how we learn.

and if someone sees you fight a little and if they respect you, even secretly, then they will think fuck this is impossible. but nothing is impossible. blacks can marry whites. we did send men to the moon. the cubs did win the world series.

we did figure out how to get internet access through the freakin air.

which means we can solve the problems of today, just like we can solve the issues of tomorrow.

we will do it together, as a team, but every member of that team needs to remember that everyone is watching and learning and if your lesson is to persevere, then fucking persevere.

aint no anthems being sung about dirty quitters.

picked up a guy at a fancy hotel

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as i normally do at hotels i ask the people if theyre in from out of town.

chicago! he said. older guy, which is what this hotel usually caters to.

i turned my cubs hat around and said, “did you see this?”

we laughed and i knew things would be good.

but i didnt expect them to be this good.

i asked, what are you out here to do?

“im here to visit my daughter.”

oh what does she do?

he said, “shes in a band, but unless you were a high school girl in the 90s you probably haven’t heard of them.”

i said I WAS A HIGH SCHOOL GIRL IN THE 90s! WHAT BAND?

he asked, have you ever heard of Veruca Salt?

i was all, omg The Seether? American Thighs! (i couldnt recall their followup hit)

we talked about the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. he told me that The Dave Clark Five were just as good, i told him I would look them up.

then he told me this great story about a friend of his whose son didn’t get accepted into an ivy league school.

he said, “oh it will be ok.”

the depressed dad said, “are you crazy? you’re a father. don’t you want things for your kids?”

and my passenger said that he thought about it and finally concluded the most beautiful thing

he said, “i do want something for my kids. i hope that they love music.”

rarely do i shake my passenger’s hands, but after that one i did.

we’re gonna get through this

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i promise

just hang in there.

since everyone keeps wanting to talk about the good book, heres just another lesson i have learned from reading that thing every sunday for the last 25+ years

shit takes time

in the bible there are numbers and some of those numbers are symbolic. one of the most symbolic numbers is 40

40 years the jews were in the wilderness trying to get back home.

40 days and 40 nights the rains came down during the flood.

40 just means “hella long”.

we are in that hella long period right now and it may seem like 40 years but it’s not. it just feels like it. we can make it. we can survive. and once we survive we can thrive. so just hang in there during this storm of hate and ignorance and cruelty.

this is the time that character is developed and long-lasting bonds are created and the evil is separated from the good.

unlike one of my favorite flaming lips songs, i believe that good will prevail.

the cubs won, love won, good will win.

adios, history

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yesterday amber an i went to the LA Times because we learned that there were only two official tours remaining of the building before the paper moves to El Segundo.

thankfully my boss understood that im insane and the only days off that i want are for weird things like this and not trips to maui.

but to get a tour of a fascinatingly rich and complex building like the LA Times from a 40-year veteran of the paper like Darrell Kunitomi is a priceless gift.

he has seen it all, met everyone, worked with everyone, and experienced all the very high highs and extremely low lows of the greatest paper west of Manhattan.

it was a bittersweet tour because with every fact, photograph, and piece of equipment was an asterisk that said THIS TOO WILL BE GONE WHEN THEY MOVE.

the root of the problem was executive after executive from Chicago has done its best to ruin the LA Times, plunder its riches, lay off its people, and finally sell its majestic building and hoard the profits.

so now the paper is a tenant in a building that they also share with the likes of Uber(!) and they are forced to pay $2 million a month in rent. meanwhile the new owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong owns a building by LAX and he would rather spend millions renovating it so that the paper can work in a modern place… rent free.

because life is crazy, it just so happened that Dr. Patrick (as people now call him) was in the building yesterday because he was officially announcing the sale and the new Executive Editor. the newsroom was joyous with anti-Tronc signs, cake, and bubbly.

the tour was not allowed to join in the celebration, as this was their moment, which is understandable, but damn did i want to be in there with some of my former colleagues. The Mayor even showed up.

i did splinter off from the group when we made it to the Entertainment section which is where the Sports Dept used to be. Gerrick Kennedy, Randall Roberts, and Alison Dingeldein all greeted me and i got to chat briefly with my pal Todd Martens.

when we finished the tour Amber and I were filled with emotion because… that’s it. That cool building will be ruined, basically, with stupid condos or offices that will not change the city the way a 100+ year old paper can. and all the memories that people with way more time spent on Spring Street will be heard and not seen.

so we went to the nearby Redwood Bar, where Timesmen and Timeswomen have escaped to since the days of rotary phones. and there we hid out in the dark, listening to classic rock, and eating fish tacos.

i love the LA Times so much and the people who made it and make it what it was and is and it’s so sad that this sad story never ends. even with a prince of a billionaire trying to make things better. maybe it will be better. maybe the new place will be a turning point.

lets hope.