i forget to write you, not because i dont care, i just take you for granted. which is lame.

if anything this terrible disease has taught us how precious and fleeting life is.

a perfectly healthy person finds themselves dead in just a few days.

poof.

and yet because of POLITICAL BELIEFS there are thousands of people in the USA who are willing to risk it and go back to “normal” and not believe scientists and not even believe the current administration that they seemingly support

who tells them to wear masks and chill out and stay away from each other

even if that same administration refuses to wear masks, or chill, or distance.

im sure you are now up to your ears with biographies about those dead souls, future, and for that, i hope they’re well written.

today was Cinco De Mayo which happened to fall on a Taco Tuesday so i took amber to my favorite taco truck in Echo Park and since we are currently not allowed to eat next to the truck i drove her a few blocks south to the actual Echo Park which has a pretty lake.

there were hella people over there, future. too many for Amber to feel comfortable with so she made us stay in the car

but isnt that fountain pretty? arent those two empty benches? wouldnt it be romantico? it was 77 degrees. night. mexicans with beers. hipsters with weed. homeless with tents.

¡no! she said in spanish, which means business.

so we listened to Ozzy in the Benz, and watched the people walk by and then we drove to DTLA and took this picture for you.

hope it’s still there when you are.

Arrivederci!

even though shes the one working, and working hard, there she was on her weekend trying to cook me a late lunch

fourth of july

rarely does she get holidays off but the veterans wanted the double time so there we were sleeping in

she tried to turn on the stove but it wouldnt. she asked me to light the pilot. we have an old stove so who knows whats going on.

then she went to doing the dishes. but no hot water. i couldnt get anything going so i called the gas company. their number asked me if it was an emergency?

its not like its a gas leak, but i cant shower, do dishes or cook. yes i guess thats an emergency. amber said she was gonna take a nap. her work wears her out. i said, fine i will order some thai food cuz postmates gave me a $10 coupon.

before i knew it there was the gas man, followed quickly by palms thai. no traffic on the 4th i guess. the other day me and this uber drive were talking about how small the city is when theres no traffic. like late at night and on holidays where you can get from DTLA to the beach in minutes. or long beach to hollywood in no time.

gas guy fixed my problem in record time and as he did we talked and his stories just came out of him. am i a great interviewer? no. but people sure as hell like telling me things. he wouldnt stop. told me he had been a gas man for nearly 20 years. we talked about hollywood, beverly hills, bel air, little roads, weird houses, crazy details that youd really have to know to notice. we bonded so quickly and he just leaned against the fridge and told me everything.

“you should write a book,” i told him.

“i can’t write for shit,” he said.

“ever read Post Office,” i asked and told him about Bukowski and asked him if he ever did anything on Delongpre near Normandie. i told him thats where he lived when he wrote a bunch of his best stuff. but it all started with writing about how hard it was delivering mail in East LA when so many names were Gonzales or Hernandez.

“you should try finding the right Kim in Koreatown,” gas man laughed.

“i’m telling you you have a book.”

the more i talked about bukowski the more realized he was inches away from 20 of his books. so i gave him “Women” so he could read his style.

“i dont have Post Office. ive given mine away,” i said, “but i have two Women,” i said and we laughed at how that came out.

i shoulda just written that book with him.

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.

the day all the good little boys and girls get to flee from their tyrannical countries

which are unsafe, underserved, and riddled with dirty air water and old men.

bring me your bags of cash the statue says

which oil company do you work for asks the survey

charlie cant read, but his driver can and fills out the paperwork

gets his hand stamped,

tips the doorman

and voila: americano.

when you run the country like a business

your closets become stuffed with receipts.

last thanksgiving my friends charlie and bonnie hosted Friendsgiving – an all night dinner for those of us who either dont have family here in LA or wanted to spend the holiday with friends.

because my mom lives in chicago and because im a single man something like Friendsgiving was the difference between something that could have been a hugely depressing day and something that was a beautiful evening.

many of our friends were there and many of them brought friends.

one of the friends of friends was a gentleman who i couldnt stop talking with. he was jovial and smart and funny and a little drunk and told me the most interesting stories about his very interesting job.

bros name was Christopher O’Leary and he worked as a behavioral scientist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, specializing in sexually transmitted diseases, a field i was more than fascinated in talking to him about, for quite a while, as people in the kitchen with us prepared the two turkeys.

he was so open and so passionate and so frank about several of his most outrageous situations with people who were either so ignorant regarding HIV, AIDS and other diseases, or completely reckless.

eventually Chris’s wife came in to find out who had cornered her husband and when she heard our conversation couldnt believe that two people would want to talk about such a topic when the fragrant aromas of thanksgiving had filled the warm home, and wine flowed and friends reminisced and babies cooed and children laughed. but we went on and on because dude was clearly an expert not just in the diseases but in People.

yesterday charlie called me to ask me if i remembered Chris because he had been shot and killed the other day and after he refreshed my memory i was all, wait, THAT dude? That dude was awesome! and charlie said, yes, that dude.

according to the story in yesterday’s LA Times, Chris had gotten a full scholarship to attend UCLA where he graduated summa cum laude, then got a full ride at Michigan where he got his phd, he spoke four languages, and had committed his life to helping people.

then some 17 year old kid shot him dead while Chris was grabbing a smoke in his neighborhood. chris rarely smoked, and when he did he didnt smoke inside his house.

Jesus says that He will come like a thief in the night, meaning you dont know when the end is gonna come. the bible says to be ready.

the busblog says go for your dreams, today. because you can be 34, tall, handsome, married to a lovely woman, a new homeowner

and then suddenly dead in the street.

for no apparent reason.

no more saving the world.

no more friendsgivings

no more anythings.

we live in a confusing, freaky, fucked up place

identify your goals

and run to them.

a lot of us are getting the day off to celebrate the birth of the Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the most important Americans ever.

his birthday was really on friday, but whatev. lots of people in america Don’t get the day off at all. they work for companies who dont recognize the only federal holiday to commemorate an african american.

this year he would have been 75.

if he hadnt been shot

for saying, wtf, i thought we were in america.

mlk lived in a time when it wasnt unusual to get shot for what you said especially if you were saying things that would make life more even for blacks here in the home of the brave.

dr. king delivered his “i have a dream” speech to a quarter million people next to the reflecting pools in august of 1963, he was 34.

maybe one reason that some people have a hard time grasping the importance of mlk is that when many of us look back at the 60s we see it as a time of great change in civil rights and social acceptance, but the summer of ’63 wasnt the summer of ’69.

’63 was the year that valium was invented. a year that the andy williams show, the dick van dyck show, and walt disney’s wonderful world of color were winning emmys in variety, comedy, and childrens programming respectively.

the most aggressive thing happening in music was that the beatles were writing i wanna hold your hand.

tony bennet and ella fitzgerald were winning grammys for best male and female solo vocal perfomance respectively.

the grammys named peter paul and mary the best group due to their hit, if i had a hammer.

so when martin luther king got on that podium and said that he had a dream of little black kids walking down the street holding the hands of little white kids, that was probably as punk rock as it got in those lilly white days before the civil rights act.

nowadays we cant even imagine a time when you needed federal laws to guaranteed equal rights in housing, public facilities, voting and public schools. that we would need a constitutional fine-tuning so that everyone would have impartial hearings and jury trials.

martin luther kings life and death remind us that there was such a time, not that long ago. in america.

the beautiful.

and less than two months after that speech. jfk was shot.

lee harvey oswald was shot two days after that.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”

oliver willis + american black + negrophile + bunnie mac + baldilocks + watch citizen king tonight on pbs