Merry Mimosas

JM, Cylinder and Sphere, 12.30.07

And good riddance to 2007, may it be utterly forgotten.
~

Into Mischief

JM, Navy Street, Venice, 12.26.07

Off Little Santa Monica. His name is Yann. He suggested in the way only a Frenchman would to meet at the flowers, and I knew where he meant, and we did. We meet on Gallic time (cinq minutes plus tard) and walk up the stairs to Century City proper. Many of the flowers are dead, so many that some have been freshly planted.

Everyone at the restaurant is stunned to learn that we will eat outside. But in truth it is easily warm enough.

He has a couple of books for me. I promise him thirty pages of the one I'm editing. (Thirty pages---everything with me these days is thirty pages). I want it to go first to France. We talk of coming panels, especially about the homeless. He is not like other cultural attachés; he is far more open, far more adventurous, far more bavarder and far less agenda. He would be a good agent if there were anything to be an agent about.

He is very much the urbanist. He was once in the London office; great for him. A double: he had Christmas dinner at Canter's. A hat-trick: his girlfriend is from Senegal.

My scarf is off, then my jacket. We are both wearing tee shirts under our jackets and soon sitting in only the tees in the strong sun; Lynn never fails to get it right, even on a Boxing Day with complex weather. He trumps me, though: his has a collar and it's pale blue. Mine is a mere vee-neck, Hollywood black. But it's OK to lose at la mode to a Frenchman, especially a tall one, especially one I'm sure is fifteen years younger at least.

However, it is my solemn American duty to trump him on the drink, so I order my margarita on the rocks. He does likewise. The glass it comes in is obnoxious, far too wide a flute, a glass for a tourist.

I give him a ride back to the Consulat. He tells me that he learned last week that Ray Bradbury consulted the shopping center on pedestrian traffic circulation shortly after the mall opened, because it was initially failing. Bradbury recommended the Brentanos early on. Now no mall is without a bookstore. It is something a cultural attaché might note.

° ° ° ° °

I forget her name, the one at the Harbor Room in Playa Del Rey. But I look at her and I recall that she knows how to make an old fashioned. I ask her if she feels like making one. She says that they may not have an orange---then she recalls that she brought one to eat this morning, and she'll use a wedge from that one.

I watch her. She also uses a squeeze from the wedge to muddle the sugar. That's her thing. She also tops the drink off with a little water, an unnecessary precaution. She serves it: "Twelve dollars," she jokes. It is in truth $5.25.

She has a coterie of the usual World War II vets at the tiny bar. Dependably, the racing channel is on the television. I ask if she follows things close enough to know who won the Hollywood Futurity last Saturday [hours later: Into Mischief; him, Colonel John and Massive Drama are all decent Derby contenders, but nobody has been as as convincing as War Pass yet], and she says she does but she doesn't, which is precisely where I am too. We agree that the Times coverage of horse racing is below awful.

One comes in: golf shirt, grey hair, white face, eighty-two years old. The others wonder where he's been. "I've been with two twenty-three-year olds," he boasts.

"Twenty-three?" the barmaid asks. "No wonder it took two of them."

Nobody else catches her wit. The wind is blowing outside the picture window in intermittant bursts that rock the window panel like the wall of a well-anchored tent. I note the street signs, all of them heroic: Vista Del Mar, Culver, Argonaut.

Especially Argonaut. There is no better street name in a town that is full of perfection in street names.

° ° ° ° °

e.g. Abbott Kinney, which also comes close to perfection. The Abbot in it sounds like a special variety of street---which it is. Retail, but the scale is human. The Kinney sounds like something nautical; indeed, it turns into Navy at its north end. That rarest of LA street types, it is kind both to autos and pedestrians alike.

I think I was last to Abbot Kinney last summer, Lynn bought some Japanese napkins; we used them all summer.

I'm meeting Stephanie at Hal's. She likes the art here; it's more accomplished than elsewhere. I agree it is. I spot a painting with a taxi I really like.

She orders a pink gin by ingredients, not by name. I order a Jim Beam old fashioned by name rank and dog tag number. This will be my second old fashioned over about three hours. It comes in a neater bucket than it does at the Harbor Room. A postmodern bucket, colored, cylindrical, a short column of a drink, with two short straws. The bar is well stocked with oranges and everything else.

She doesn't like brown drinks. Neither of us like Laddie Dill. The piece above the bar looks dated, 70'ish. Still, the room is warm and inviting. Two hours fly by as though carried off by the windstorm. The idea of wearing tee shirts at lunch seems as though it was from two seasons ago.

The Overnighter

JM, Apollo and Daphne, Forest Lawn, 12.21.07

Spring arrives March 19, 2008 at 10:48 p.m.

The Overnighter

JM, Sign / Streetlight / Sycamore, Monon, 11.30.07

Winter arrives December 21 at 10:08 p.m.