From the South Bay to the Valley From the West Side to the East Side Everybody’s very happy ‘Cause the sun is shining all the time Looks like another perfect day I love L.A. (we love it)               – Randy Newman                    From our room on the 18th floor of the Loews Hotel, just down from the […]

   I thought this would be an emphatic but easy “no!” This time Carol had won tickets for something called the Willie Nelson Outlaw Music Festival. If anything sounded like a MAGA magnet to me, this was it. But after my third “no!” It was clear Carol wasn’t even listening to me anymore.  “It’s a festival. […]

   I was determined to hold my tongue this time around. I decided that exercising my pet peeve, where people stand and block your view of the stage during a concert, was ineffective. More people were turning around to look for the wingnut exhorting the crowd to “sit down!” than were people who actually sat. I […]

   For someone growing increasingly reclusive as he ages, you wouldn’t think the words “street festival” would have any appeal whatsoever. Crowds of people jammed together, wandering aimlessly about and looking only to create long lines to stand in. No thank you.    But the promise of pasta, marinara and sweet Italian sausage was like […]

   When Ernest Hemingway faced the existential crisis that he couldn’t write anymore, he blew his brains out. When Fran Lebowitz realized she couldn’t write anymore, she simply devolved to what she loved the most anyway, which apparently was smoking cigarettes and talking to people. Both managed to maintain mystiques beyond their years of fame, […]

   If I were ever to have a bonkers food dream, where I went from one Italian restaurant after another, eating a full meal of sturdy, al dente pasta and buttery meat sauce at each one and never getting full – or fat, I’ve been to the place where that dream will likely be set. […]

My idea was to find a Hollywood hotel that was walking distance from the theater we’d be attending, with the rim shot being a sweet Italian eatery halfway between. My aspiration in traveling to a big city is always to park the car and leave it parked until it’s time to go home. Carol’s aspiration […]

   So, what began as a humdrum weekend chaperone with Carol’s two oldest grandchildren soon metastasized into Carol and yours truly hosting a New Year’s Eve California beach party extravaganza for, now, six swarming, super-energized hormonal containment systems, otherwise known as teenagers. Or at least, that was how I was initially projecting the new plan. […]

   As soon as Carol saw the motel room, she didn’t like it. She had picked the hotel, based on my desire to be walking distance to an Italian restaurant (any Italian restaurant) in Big Bear, and her wish to stay in a place where she wouldn’t have to jam the luggage against the door […]

   Until I read John Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez recently, I’d always thought that tidepools were populated and depopulated with the tides. When the tides rolled in, so did sea life. When the tides went back out, sea life followed. I guess I’d thought of those tidepools as the bar and nightclub scene for marine […]