I’m just sitting here waiting for the official word to come down on whether the NBA season will be cancelled or not. I already have it written, just waiting to have it go live. So here’s my desktop. You’ll notice it’s cold, cloudy and Bjorky.
I’m going to preface this by saying I’m a spoiled shit. Having duped people in thinking I’m working sports media, I am privileged. I get to watch sports live in a space where cheering is not allowed. Hell not talking to someone is not considered a faux pas.
I was invited by a PR company to look at the renovations going on at the Rose Bowl while also getting to watch the September 17 UCLA noontime game against Texas from a luxury box. I knew full well I wasn’t going to be in the press box, and I was fine with being in a confined space with cheering fans. That’s why god invented iPods.
The problems started before that Saturday. My ticket and parking pass was supposed to be sent via Federal Express on Friday. I had to cover a Dodger game that night, but when I got back home there was nothing.
Being someone with horrendous rejection issues, I sent an email back to the PR company wondering what was going on. Am I still invited? Is this still happening?
Saturday morning I got a reply saying that it was still going on, sorry for the confusion, Fed Ex said they delivered, yadda yadda yadda. But nothing.
Since I would have to pay a lot for parking, I opted to take public transportation to the Rose Bowl. I was also running a bit late, so I had no time to get coffee. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem since I’m in a luxury box, they surely have to have coffee available.
Once I got to the stadium, meet up with my PR contact to get my ticket and get in the box, I find there is no coffee. There’s food, beer, soda and hard liquor available. But. No. Fucking. Coffee. I ask to get some coffee in the box.
Anyhow I get the tour and thankfully get a cup of coffee from the Rose Bowl trailer. We get back to the box, no coffee. I ask around if I can get coffee in my box, and the response I get is that they don’t have coffee.
What the fuck? No coffee?
Things were so dire instead of homicide I dropped way into suicidal thoughts. Well maybe that had to do with the combination of no coffee and watching UCLA football.
I am fully aware that I could have gone all the way downstairs and waited in a long line to buy a small cup of coffee for whatever gouging price they sell for. But no. Isn’t the point of a luxury box? Like I prefaced earlier, I’m a spoiled shit. In press boxes I get as much coffee as I want. It just boggled my mind that in a luxury box at the Rose Bowl, one the most historic venues in the world, coffee was not to be had.
I threw a hissy fit. I was around a bunch of people I didn’t know who looked happy. My head felt like it was going to explode. I was in misery. I did think about hurling myself out of the box, but I didn’t want to be the story — I guess all the time I spend in press boxes have rubbed off on me.
The game ended and I got back to Old Town Pasadena at around 4:30 where the first coffeeshop I saw was Intelligentsia Coffee. Fuck them.
They are so fucking snooty about their coffee they had no empathy for the caffeine-deprived desperation in my bloodshot eyes. They took their damned time to get me my red eye, and then they had the fucking nerve to charge me $7.85 for a 16-ounce cup.
I know tons of people who like Intelligentsia, but fuck them. I hope they go bankrupt. It’s coffee, not fucking foie-gras. And not that good coffee at that.
The lesson learned: like people struck with emphysema who have to lug around an oxygen tank, I need to lug around a coffee tank. I also learned I’m not a very nice person uncaffeinated.
Here is the largest active landslide in the United States. It covers around 250 acres and moves at variable rates around the landslide area from 0.1 to more than an inch a day.
The original landslide occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago and stopped mysteriously. When officials decided to build the extension of Crenshaw Blvd. to connect to Palos Verdes Drive South in 1956, the landslide was reactivated.
This is one proof that the land is still moving, a small fissure in the ground. There are much larger fissures all around the area which are hidden by the flora that have grown around.
Here is some more proof. You can clearly see the pipe that has separated due to the land movement.
One of the mitigation solutions they have implemented that has seemed to work is using dewatering wells to reduce the amount of ground water. The ground water acts like lubrication for the land to slide over the slippery foundation of bentonites which when wet turns into a clay-like substance. While the land continues to move, thanks to the wells the land doesn’t move quite as fast as it did during the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Unfortunately for the homeowners to the north of the landslide area, the head of the landslide is migrating north at a pretty alarming rate. But I’m not really crying since that land is in the City of Rolling Hills where residents can afford to find other housing alternatives. Plus since that city is completely gated with 24/7 checkpoints, it really fucks up navigating around the peninsula. So boo-fucking-hoo.
The hike isn’t too bad. I was out of breath a couple of times, but I think that was more because I’m a fat mess. The walk was labeled as “moderate” but I didn’t think it was too bad. But then again since we had a geologist as a tour guide with many stops, there was plenty of opportunities for rest.
I know the pictures here don’t do the walk any justice, but when you have the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop how can you go wrong? This site tell you how to navigate to the area. It sounds complicated, but don’t worry about which trail to go or whatever. Just get there and get lost. It’s completely worth it. But just be sure to stay on marked trails since one wrong step you can suffer quite a fall.
It’s been a busy week or so, and I do have a lot to write about here. But I can’t seem to concentrate my thoughts right now. There are:
But I’m still coming off of my sickness, I have 5,000,000 sports-related shit I have to write and I really want to just chill for a bit.
So here’s this photo. This is the last view I had of Dodger Stadium this season from my seat in the press box. Like Matt Kemp told me when I asked him to describe his season, for me it was “bittersweet.” But I’ll expand on that later.
I axed this story at about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday night after a Dodger game. Thinking about it for a day I think I made a mistake for not publishing it.
But given that I write about sports, it would be my third consecutive story that would be viewed anarchy in the sports world. After all who in sports would understand a David Lynch reference? This after a day I wrote extensively about imagining suicide.
I’ve been gnawing on this for a bit, and I’m regretting it a little. So here is what I wrote. It’s not completed: it needs about three or four more paragraphs with quotes from Javy Guerra. But here it is.
There was a lot of psychic paranoia in the air Tuesday night. It was being stuck in the middle of a David Lynch film right before the horror that’s embedded in your psyche gets unleashed causing you to skip dimensions and enter into a psychic hell.
In heaven. Everything’s all right.
There was a kid wearing a chef’s hat sitting behind the Arizona Diamondbacks’ dugout. There were other kids with him attired normally. But this kid was running around with the rest of them, chef’s hat affixed to head like everything was normal.
Maybe it’s the grind of the baseball season that has changed what used to be informative this-is-what-happened-in-the-game to meandering diatribes that are attempting to find a point (and failing quite badly at that).
But this game was about being stuck in that moment.
It was gnawing even when the Dodgers came back and scored four runs off of D-backs’ starter Ian Kennedy in the bottom of the first inning. Lifting Chad Billingsley and the two runs he gave up in the top of the first, the Dodgers managed to do that with Matt Kemp only hitting a sacrifice fly to score that first run.
A good sign, yes, but also something forboding.
The D-backs scratched another run across in the third inning, then Billingsley found his groove.
“I felt he was okay,” Manager Don Mattingly said. “That first inning is trying to get the feel of the game. Bills battled today.”
After his three clunkers, he managed to come back nicely going 6 1/3 innings giving up those three runs.
“I was just getting back to the way I was,” Billingsley commented on his fine tuning of mechanics. “My timing was off.”
Then it just seemed everything went off when Billingsley left. Hong-Chih Kuo came in with one out of the seventh inning and struck out pinch-hitter Collin Cowgill. Then things got bizarre with Gerardo Parra at bat.
Kuo, whose yips have widely been documented, let a ball go that was close to Parra’s head. Parra took exception to that, grabbed his crotch and pointed back to Kuo.
Oblivious to it all, Kuo kept pitching. Parra got his seeming revenge hitting a solo shot. Clayton Kershaw on the bench and catcher A.J. Ellis took exception to Parra’s actions, and Ellis had a discussion with Parra. “It was just baseball talk,” Ellis said after the game.
“It’s just emotions,” Mattingly deflected. “Both teams are trying to win.”
Whatever it was got a warning to both benches and life went on.
Except the game was tied 4-4 and headed for a quagmire into extra innings. And that kid in the chef’s hat kept running around.
In heaven…
Since my review of Exit through the Wound, I’ve gotten an influx of Brits coming to the site to read my review of it. They probably aren’t going to read the rest of my writing which is fine. I never intend for anyone to read any of this, so when I do get readers it’s a surprise.
But on the off chance some of them might like the way I string these words around, I thank you.
It’s been a horrible several days. Like I wrote in my last post, I was pretty much sheltered from all the 9/11 memorials that were televised from a hockey event I was covering. I was relieved to miss the pissing contest from politicians and corporations (i.e. I’m more poignant than this other guy so give me your money!) You can say that it was a highlight.
Last night there was a debate amongst Republican presidential candidates that was televised somewhere. One of the great things about covering sports is that I can shield myself against these sorts of things. Sometimes.
Going through my Twitter feed, several of the people I follow kept everyone abreast of the proceedings. I was hesitant to close my Tweetdeck window since being at a Dodger game I might have to tweet if something happened or if someone I followed had a question or what not.
As much as I tried to avoid it, there those tweets were telling me the audience cheered when these candidates agreed that a 30-year old man should be left to die if he is uninsured.
I really do try to stay away from politics. I hate it. I know I can’t change to world to fit my world view. I know I will never live in a world that I comfortable in. I only hope to live in a place where I could, you know, live.
But that question hit home. I’m a 32-year old man who is uninsured. So if a drunk driver were to swerve into me as I’m walking to cover a hockey game at STAPLES Center, they want me dead. And seeing as how they are all anti-taxes and anti-government, they will probably defund the department that should scrape up my rotting carcass in the middle of the street.
So I’ll probably lie there on 11th street in Downtown Los Angeles, my laptop probably already pilfered, my broken ribs sticking through the mile-thick layer of fat on my body, my feet pointing behind my neck as birds, cats and other scavengers pick off my body for protein and other nutrients they require.
So this is a call for help. Depending on how the next year or so goes, I might want to jump ship. Where should I go that has a bit of humanity. I don’t require a utopia or anything. Just a place where I can live and not be bothered too much with any impending doom. Oh, and since I’ll probably want to keep writing about sports, they’ll need to have some sports teams and good media outlets. My areas of expertise are baseball and hockey, but I’ve done tennis and soccer (football) before.
Getting out of the LA Kings’ Hockey Fest at STAPLES Center, I decided I wanted to ramen in Little Tokyo. A very pretty Chairman Mao was on my walk there.
I think I’m going to pass out now.
Last year I discovered London Preppy’s blog. Naturally I was three, four years too late to ingest it as it was created. But I was obsessed with it and started from the first post and made my way chronologically forward.
It had the perfect mix of cynicism, nihilism, self-obsession and humor that is everything I strive for. All of this was wrapped in a hot body and the ubiquitous red bars covering the eyes on the photos that gave the hint of anonymity that was intriguing.
Reading through the blog it was clear that it was either fiction or that the details were fictionalized. But it didn’t matter because it was so well written.
What else do you do but hate him?
So he wrote a novel Exit through the Wound, and fucking hell it’s good. It was so good I was compelled to write a stupid Amazon review:
I hate North Morgan. London Preppy. Whoever the hell he is. He crafted a wonderful piece of prose that embodies all aspects of the disembodied drones that go to work, come home, rinse, lather and repeat day after day. It’s a work trying to break away from the confines of disillusionment, cynicism, resignation and monotony while being absolutely hilarious.
What’s fascinating was how seamlessly the blog fit into a narrative form. Gone were the daily tracking of what outfits were worn. Gone were the text message dispatches from a night of clubbing. Some characters were moved around notably All American Girl who is now Sadie. But reading the string of words page after page, what made the blog an enjoyable read was still there.
So I hate him like I hate all good writers.
While reading the novel there were plenty of moments where I distinctly remember reading certain sections from the blog. But it didn’t feel stale or contrived in an attempt to fit it in a novel form. It just fit. It worked.
Like I hinted at in the Amazon review, the characters are different from the blog. Maine pines for Sadie whereas in the blog London Preppy and All-American Girl were co-conspirators at work. Perhaps that what made the recycling of blog posts refreshing, to see how it fit in a different context.
Reading the blog it is clear that there is a huge dose of Bret Easton Ellis in the work. However there is a tinge of humanity laced in the words that salvage it from being an abject wrist slitting work of depression.
Basically all I’m saying is that it’s a fucking good book to read.
Perhaps the most disappointing part about the novel has nothing to do with the novel. To promote the book, Mr. Preppy read excerpts of the book on YouTube eyes fully exposed. The enigma and intrigue of the London Preppy aura died just a little bit. But that’s my only complaint, a minor one at that.
I still hate him.
Wednesday night, a fellow media conspirator Gann Matsuda from Frozen Royalty sent me an email. The subject line was, “Are you contributing to this site?” Immediately my stomach fell.
Are you contibuting to this site, or are they just stealing your/LAIst’s content?
I omitted the URL of this site for obvious reasons.
This website took my piece “Summer of Sorrow Continues for Hockey”, HTML and all, and published it on their site. My anger might have been mitigated somewhat if they gave me a byline. But no. The byline reads, “September 7 | Posted by admin | NHL News Tags: hockey news.” All there was was a crummy link at the bottom of the story with the heading, “Article Source”.
I was sitting at a coffeehouse in Redondo Beach when this discovery was made since it was hotter than a pair of trapped balls in a jockstrap. My immediate reaction was a string of expletives that caused more than a few people to look at me. I responded to their looks by saying I was plagiarized.
Once the first wave of anger left, then came the bewilderment. Of all the pieces written that day about the tragedy in Russia, why did this person choose this one? I really didn’t like the piece and thought it was too slap-and-dash, had continuity problems, was overwrought and had a piss-poor ending.
Writing as much as I do, not everything is going to be a gem. I’ve come to live with that reality. I just hope to throw in a jewel somewhere in there every now and again.
So for a bit I was oddly flattered that such a piss-poor piece would be pilfered.
That moment of peace left very quickly when I realized that this motherfucker has stolen my intellectual property. Well perhaps intellectual should be put in quotation marks since I do write about sports — how intellectual can it be?
I tried contacting the person or people that run the site, but the link that says, “Contact Us” directs you to another page. I did a /WHOIS search on the domain name which leads to Toronto. Then I realized that maybe I shouldn’t be doing this alone. I should have the weight of Gothamist handle this.
So I got my editor on it, but as of noon pacific time today the piece is still up.
This is unacceptable.
So I am declaring war on Canada for harboring these heisters. I want a written apology, the piece to be taken down and the people who are responsible for this nonsense brought to me.
But it is sort of amazing that I have written things on the Internet in one form or another since 1997, and this is the first time I’ve encountered this problem. I guess I’m lucky.
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So here’s some pictures of the headstones of some famous people.
