What I Saw on the Street: Why Would You Ever?!

Ok, maybe I've just never been an overwhelmed, sleep-deprived parent, but this warning really made me wonder.







Mostly because of where it was located. On this fold-out baby-changing rack.














In this lovely rest room.


Now is it just me, or are there very few circumstances that would result in leaving a child unattended here? Maybe a massive earthquake involving the ground splitting between you and the changing rack? Or maybe security guards storm the bathroom that you're sharing with Larry Craig (they don't see the baby) and you're hauled away to bathroom jail somewhere? Or maybe aliens abduct you and their tractor beam doesn't 'perceive' the baby.

These are just some theoratical possibilities. Because I can't even imagine forgetting my luggage or cell phone in a place like this, much less something I worked on for at least 9 months.

Now get back to your books!

Last year: nada. This year: Glaucoma?

Yes, this really is me, facing down one of those Clockwork Orange-esque eye-test contraptions that you sit your mug into when you go to the optometrist. Having fairly recently re-acquired insurance (after a 6 year gap), I get eye checkups every year now. And just to remind me that time was passing, God gave me a hiccup this time. Last year: nada. This year: Glaucoma?

Yes, that glaucoma. As in: pressure-on-the-eye-that-eventually-causes-blindness-disease. My internal eye pressure which was normal last year was high enough this year for my doc to order more tests and put me in a waiting period. To say the least, I was pretty unexcited at the prospect of going blind sometime in the future. I have always taken good care of myself, and the idea that nature and fate were going to curse me just out of a random throw of cruelty darts was really getting me down. My eye doctor told me not to worry (easy for her to say, she’s got glasses, and apparently nothing to worry about), and that I should come back in 1 to 3 months for a follow up.

I chose 1 month. Best to find out when my eyeballs were going to explode from the volcanic pressure that I was sure was mounting even as I felt my way along the corridor outside, wondering if I’d even be able to see it next time.

A month is a nice length of time when you’re on vacation in Hawaii. It’s an eternity if you’re waiting to find out if a cloak of darkness will eventually descend upon your eyes. The realization of mortality, of human limitation, and all that I have not achieved fell like mattress-sized dominoes. I wondered if I would still be able to write if I could not see. Maybe this was a good time to switch to that acting career everyone always told me I should pursue. Or maybe it was time to dip into savings and go to Hawaii before I couldn’t see it anymore.

When I revisited my eye doctor, I went through a round of tests, much like looking at an old computer game. I was sure I was missing peripheral dots of light… that my plunge into blackness was just around the corner. Would I get a cane? Or a dog? Would I have to move back home where I’d ramble around the house like Lynn Holly Johnson in “Ice Castles” until finally rescued by a Robby Benson-like hero? It was all too much to think about. Until she told me that my pressure was fine.

“Fine?” I asked. I’d already checked with relatives to see if there was a history of glaucoma. I’d already begun working on my ‘Well, I’d love to keep working for this company…but’ speech. What? I’m not going blind?

She said that sometimes the pressure rises and they don’t know why. It was just a glitch. I left feeling two feet taller than I’d felt in years. I took off my sunglasses and really looked at everything around me.

The truth is that it could come back, or I could be in an accident, or that maybe there’s a transatlantic plane in my future that’s headed for the bottom of the ocean. But in the mean time, I have the knowledge that the future is unsure. The only thing that is sure, is appreciation. Look around. See, hear, taste, feel, and do.

Eyesight is as tenuous as life itself. Lose one, and the other is drastically different, or ceases to exist at all. So finances be damned, maybe I'll be taking that trip to Hawaii after all!

Now get back to your books!

What I Saw in My Kitchen: Eye vs. Orange

Ok, is it just me, or does this bisected orange look like a science diagram of a human eye? 

No, I did not drop acid in my kitchen. But you know how patterns and shapes in nature repeat and borrow, right? Like the “clouds” in your coffee look strangely like the soft, dried foam that remains after high tide recedes on a beach. Or how the veins of a leaf resemble the branches of a winter tree seen at a distance. Well when I cut into this orange, I was struck by how much like a human eye it looked like. No, no the L’Oreal Eva Longoria long-lash kind, but the kind you might see in a science class diagram. It’s a little antiseptic, yes, but pretty fascinating to think that nature crosses barriers as wide as fruit and the human being to borrow designs that work for her. Just something to look at next time you’re slicing citrus… or at the eye doctor. Now get back to your books.

What I Saw on the Street: Advertising Misstep

I’m not sure exactly when advertising and pornography crossed swords (pun intended) but doesn’t this ad from a “classy” parfumier do just that? If they decide to follow it up with something even more daring, where is there to go? Come Even Closer? Or maybe something really classy like Pearl Necklace. Sorry. I didn't make the ad up, I'm just running with it. 

Now get your minds out of the gutter and get back to your books.

What I Saw on the Street: The Escaped Shopping Cart

Ok, I’m obviously a mystery fan, but it’s even better when you see the mystery outside the local Super A Foods/ El Pollo Campo. How? How did this shopping cart a) lose its wheels? And b) how did it make its way to the curb?

Let’s say you’re shopping, and you lose the wheels. I’m down with that. It could happen. But would I then continue to drag the cumbersome and rather uncooperative cart all the way to the curb to catch the bus?

Or let’s say the cart just became defective. Would the employees drag it all the way to the street instead of just leaving it out back for the garbagemen to take it?

In my entire life, I have never seen a shopping cart without its wheels, much less one that has managed to find its way to the curb, where apparently, it’s waiting for a bus to the wheel factory. Who knows, maybe next week, the cart will have returned from its travels and gone back to service at the Super A Foods. Now to track down the disembodied wheels somewhere...roaming the streets of Los Angeles, looking for a cart...

They Melt in Your Mouth, and In Your Conscience

I’m trying to lose weight. Not that you can tell. But I can. At work, over the long and lonely nights that are the “Sunrise Shift” atop the 25th floor of an empty office tower, the vending machines call to me. “Come….” They say, “behold our wares, taste of us, we are sugar.”

I try to resist. But at 4:15 am, trying to stay awake while editing legal documents, a tempting way to revive oneself (albeit temporarily) is the loud crunch in ones own ear of the beloved M&M.
Always peanut. Never chocolate.
Chocolate is too sweet, too easy, too…junior for my adult palatte.
Only the slightly larger, almost imperceptibly varied curvatures of the peanut buried beneath the factory-glazed coating can satisfy a discerning landscape of sugar-enhanced tastebuds waiting for a flavor journey.

The outer coating strikes like glass at first, and to the first-taster, it must seem like he’s about to eat rocks. Then the thin layer of not-too-much-milk-chocolate gives way to the yielding flesh of the peanut that has nested there, fresh as the sun-baked Georgia soil where nature’s tender rays brought it to fruition.

The crack/yield/flesh is too much for just one M&M. Oh no! You must have more. And therein comes the genius that is dieting on these rainbow’s end of indulgent would-be waist-busting beauties. They come in very small bags. Bags that cost almost a dollar each. One bag is enough to satisfy my eternal craving for crunchy and salty and sweet all rolled into a shell of hardened candy goodness without having to resist a tray of say…cookies. But don’t get me started on those.

For now, take up my battle cry of M&M! America’s Next Subway Diet. The US Solution to the Biggest Loser Desert Plan. And if the little marbles of mmm never make it past the vending machine front-lines of sugar-satieting service, then perhaps their modest placement in the pantheon of national sweet-n-savory snacks is right where they belong. May they never go the way of Bacon Thins, Mother’s glazed animal cookies, or (gasp) the cheap but oh-so-satisfying Marathon bar. Indeed, may it be M&Ms that last a long, long, long, long time.

What I Saw on the Street: Dirty Robbers!

Sometimes just a walk down the street is enough to make you smile.  Like this small sticker I saw on a power box on Hope Street.  Ironic, no? Right downtown, in the heart of LA’s business district is  a sign that really tells it like it is. Now if they only had this sign posted  on the roads so people could be really aware of what’s going on.  As it is, the PC police will probably remove this sticker, so I was quick  to get it on film before it’s gone.

What I Saw on the Street: Handy Man Haulin'

Now you don’t see a truck like this every day. But you might see one every day — at Kmart. Right there in swanky Burbank, just one street over from the IKEA/Bed Bath & Beblond Complex lurks a low-end, barely-staffed, so-ready-for-five-finger-discount Kmart. Surely a blight on the neighborhood, hidden barely by it’s proximity behind a Ralph’s grocery. I can even imagine Burbank Galleria architects' slightly altering the entrances, windows and store layouts to hide the Nuevo Mall-riche-ness from America’s dirty, early, unretouched retail roots.

But what a wonderful truck this is. In the face of an economic meltdown, I imagine that this non-Apprentice-ready entrepreneur is probably picking up some business from the newly-down-and-out who need a lot of stuff hauled away. And need a paint job? He’s ready.

You don’t get these kind of pictograms except in primitive caves, and the sides of do-it-yourself-man vans by guys who create their own opportunities, even if the tons of scrap metal they’re haulin down the high way in their Roald-Dalh-esque junk jalopy may threaten your life in a sudden stop, blowout, or a 'but-officer, I-was-jus'-reaching-for-my-coffee moment.'

Maybe we’re turning a corner in LA. A corner where Zza Gabor will be eclipsed by the return of some Joads like this guy who might just be moving up in a world that’s long been over due to come back down a notch or two. Who knows? Maybe IKEA and Bed Bath and Beblond will end up going Chapter 11 along with Linen’s & Things and free up some store front glass for this guy to display his wares, and maybe even his painting skills. With his ‘naïve’ approach to art, maybe he’ll be selling on canvas and not just putting a brush to the walls. I say more power to him. He's not asking for billion dollar bail-outs, that's for sure.