In California

Everyone has an awesome car in California.

Yes, I Went To Disneyland

Disneyland is many things, and a mess of contradictions which I am still limping my way through. Currently. In no order:

1) It's smaller than I remember. Now, I've not been there in 12 years or somewhere thereabouts. In any instance, the forced perspective in the buildings (Main Street gets narrower and the buildings get shorter as they approach Sleeping Beauty's Castle) is now less effective now that I am 6'2". There is also an argument for my "seeing better," if that makes any sense. What took a whole day to walk around now takes about 20 minutes and most of the time is spent waiting in line for rides, which speaks to the designers' grace in jamming so much shit into such a (relatively) tiny space and still managing to give each Land its own entry way and exit.



2) Disneyland is BIGGER than I remember. There's a whole second park, with a second admission fee (Disney's California Adventure), which was built over the old parking lot. Now you take a tram (or walk through Downtown Disney, a weird little shopping mall/esplanade thing) to the main gate from the multi-story parking garage with super-high-flow escalators and a view of scenic Anaheim over and beyond the Magic Kingdom.

2a) Disney's California Adventure is clearly not meant for people from California. Or maybe it is, but that has a certain cynical implication that the good people of the state of California are too dumb to go visit their own (real life, with real bears) attractions. My family and I took a cursory walk through it and I was pretty unimpressed.

Consider below:



Poppies: Check. They are the state flower. Well done. They're all along the highway.

Retro Font: Check. Sell the postcard image of sun-drenched beaches and Beach Boys compilations.

Movie Theater: YOU'RE IN LOS ANGELES MOTHERFUCKER GRAUMAN'S IS VERY CLOSE BY MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO. SHIT IS CRAZY.

Pen: I don't get that. It must be some Miramax-Barton-Fink leftover shit.

Sun, Surf, Palms: See: "Movie Theater," substitute "Venice" for "Grauman's."

3) Disneyland is scary.



There's a lot of skulls. I recall there was a skull count a few years back (which was done apropos of nothing) and the number was pretty high. Or higher than you might expect or think of off the top of your head. There's a lot of blacklight stuff and fucking two story WOOZLES (above) which will clearly haunt your dreams. We can joke all we want about Coney Island being a strange and violent looking place, but all things are equal in this instance and in spite of Uncle Walt's best wishes, Disneyland is closer in spirit and execution to the old carnivals he was trying to render obsolete than we might want to admit. Permanence is great, and the safety record of the park is unbeatable, but content is content is content and the Indiana Jones Ride is just as dark as Dante's Inferno.

4) I might just be getting cynical ("getting," "ha, ha") in my old age. I mean, the holiday re-dressing of the Haunted Mansion (the ride, not the sad Eddie Murphy movie thing) for the Nightmare Before Christmas was pretty cute, and clearly had a lot of thought and love behind it (unlike the sad Eddie Murphy movie thing). Kids seemed to be having a good time still, which is important, because when the STOP having a good time we should burn the place to the ground, and people closer to my age seemed to be having a reasonable time as well. So what does this say about me?

Retroactive Post to June 24, 2007

Me: "Oh! We can stop at Randy's Donuts on the way to the airport!"

Dan: "Yes... we could do that."

In truth, I'd never been to Randy's, even when I was going to Kings games when they were still at The Forum (which is still, even in religious mothballs, better than the Staples Center). We arrived at Randy's with a good two hours to spare before it could be considered panic time at the airport, but we had to wait in line for a good fifteen minutes before our turn came. The line itself was always about ten people deep (there is one walk up window) and the drive-thru windows were easily backed up onto Manchester Blvd. They seemed understaffed for a Sunday morning, even though it was going on ten AM.


In true (bad) scientific form, I consumed one (1) plain cake donut as a control. The donut base is really pretty good -- better than you'd expect, if you're the type who figures they'd coast on reputation -- cakey not too sweet with a nice crisp exterior that holds up well to dunking, which is the only way to enjoy a fresh donut.

I then had a maple long john, which is a surprisingly obscure commodity here on the east coast and found it to my satisfaction -- the light sweetness of the cake portion didn't make the whole thing sickening or overwhelm the maple flavor which, while as inauthentic and synthetic as anything else, was passably "maple."

In conclusion, Dunkin' can take a leap. Horton's gets a pass for belonging to a culture. Krispy Kreme remains some other-type shit.

The whole detour to Randy's took a good half hour longer than we had figured and by the time we made it to the airport a pipe had burst in the first terminal, forcing passengers out into the street and causing massive congestion that seems to happen in L.A. no matter what. Still, we made it into the waiting area with ten minutes to spare and pacified our producer, M., who got a chocolate-cake donut with a sugary glaze. He declared it "good."

Retroactive Post to June 23, 2007

I've been offered travel jobs in the past that would take me back to California before, and they've all been canceled shortly after informing my parents of the possibility of my arrival in the state of my birth. This has led me to not talk about jobs before they happen, or at least to wait until the very last minute to tell people where I'm going.

In this instance, I got confirmation from Dan in quick order that the job was going to happen, and he had the tickets to prove it. So I called the folks and they drove the hour down to Westlake to see me, and I was happy to see them and we drove another hour south towards Dodger Stadium where it just so happened The Police were playing. This ate up another hours' worth of time and delayed our arrival at Philippe's, purported origin of the French Dip Sandwich (pictured above, with lemonade and pumpkin creme pie). It's a landmark of sorts, and is covered in Dodger memorabilia and artifacts from the nearby Union Station and features $.09 coffee (I like the way nine-cents looks when digitized like that).

The waitresses aren't allowed to handle money, mostly because of disease, though I'm sure at some point someone's pilfered the till -- you put the cash on the tray (left of frame) and they take it to the register (not pictured) and bring the tray back to you. You can see the plastic safety gloves on her hands. The sandwich is turkey (I'd already had a roast beef). The waitress in the picture started crying for some reason after she took my check over to the register. I never found out why. She had an eastern-european accent.

Tomorrow the crew will fly to Denver, weather permitting. So far the actual shooting has gone off without a hitch.

Retroactive Post to June 22, 2007

Hello from Los Angeles. Westlake, actually, which isn't in the City of L.A. at all, just the County. I'm on the road for a Pharma with Dan, who sees fit to throw me work now and again and sometimes, when the moon is full and the harvest comes, takes me on the occasional trip. This one will take me to Simi Valley and Denver -- the former of the two is closest enough to my ancestral home of Santa Barbara that I will get to have my parents drive down and pay for a dinner that I could just as easily invoice the company for. It will also be nice to see them -- I only get back to the West Coast once a year or so, and I rarely schedule a vacation due to my erratic work schedule.

It's times like this where I debate about whether to purchase a laptop -- I already carry so much shit (between gear for work and my camera-toting) that another breakable object seems like an absurd hassle. Then I remember that I'm traveling with only two memory cards and I'd love to be able to do realtime updates from wherever I am rather than post retroactively [as I'm doing now --RG].

It looks like the schedule will grow in intensity rather than soften as it goes on, and downtime will be scarce after Sunday the 24th when we fly to Denver. I'm definitely looking forward to Colorado, though. I've been twice -- once to Gunnison (which is some beautiful country) for a shoot with Preservation Volunteers and again to Estes Park for Knievel's Wild Ride which was a... different... experience.

Updates to follow. In the meantime, there's some action over at the Flickr Site with more pictures from SoCal.

Archiving

A couple of oldies while I wait for the Powers film to come back:





I was scanning some negatives and trolling through my archives (which is no small task considering how poorly organized they are) and happened across these two. I have the second one framed in my apartment, and the other I always meant to, but never got around to it.

I took these in 2002, I think, and never printed them myself in any form, so any sort of work I did with them at the time was limited to the quick prints from the lab. These are about as sentimental as I get when it comes to photography (see previous discussion here) and about as sentimental as I get about California and Santa Barbara in general. My pithy comment is always that Santa Barbara and I have "...reconciled [our] relationship" and I guess that's more true than not.

A side note: For whatever reason I didn't notice the biker riding away in the 'Jesus y Selena' picture until 2005 -- or three years after I took it. Sometimes you can see, but you may not observe.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY CHINKS

I think Chinese New Year is the only holiday celebrated by that side of the family that isn't totally Americanized -- and even then it's not like we're out setting off fireworks in the street or baying at the moon so even I wonder if it's even a celebration. CNY does end the four-month blitz of red envelopes, however, and all that entails (Thanksgiving through multiple Birthdays, X-mas, "good grandchild awards," and the New Year).

Above and below is Mee Heng Low -- my family's restaurant. Though the business is no longer run by us, the building is still owned by us, and for all you perverts out there wondering, it translates to "Most Savory Place" or somesuch.

Sea Otter Skulls, Santa Barbara, CA

I'm making a few mixtapes for a friend -- the playlist being a skill I've sent packing into semi-retirement. Long story; not very interesting; traditions are hard to break. I give good tape though, if I do say so myself. Plus, The nice thing about having expensive toys is using them to print your back catalogue for frivolities like liner notes and tracklisting graphics.

These little buggers were part of an exhibit put on by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History of errata that isn't on display; obscure stuffed birds, Native American oddities, dead shit in jars of fluid. From the press release,

Over a span of 90 years the Museum has collected more than 2.5 million artifacts and specimens to preserve, document, and promote understanding of the fascinating diversity of the world around us. TREASURES provides a glimpse at some of our more eclectic and rare collections. Also enjoy a video that gives a virtual "behind-the-scenes" tour of the Museum's collections and research areas.

These are Sea Otter skulls, and apparently the bones acquire a tint over time due to the purple pigment in their favorite food -- sea urchins.

In another one of those you-can't-go-home-again moments, this exhibition was set up in a hall that used to have an expansive display of small stuffed local birds in wall cases, as well as rows and rows of floor cases containing sample nests and blown eggs of the various California species. Of course, now it's cleared out for this particular traveling show and I suppose the bird exhibit probably wasn't as cool as I imagine it would be now (it was pretty boring back then; not as cool as the mammoth skeletons, anyway).

Wagon Wheel Motel, Oxnard, CA

I recall the Wagon Wheel Motel vividly, but only from passing by on the way to Thousand Oaks or Los Angeles from Santa Barbara. The marquee and property was described thusly in the January 13th 2007 LA Times,

Its Western facade and neon sign depicting a whip-cracking wagon driver were a throwback to 1950s-era California. The property was part of a strip of businesses near Highway 1 that were a favorite stop for families, tourists and an occasional movie star on trips to Santa Barbara.

It was also a pretty good telltale for letting Little Richard know how much further he would have to wait until Disneyland (Little Richard was usually asleep on the return drive).

Now it's shuttered, and my first actual visit to the grounds consisted of breaking and entering and if you want a good scare, I would encourage you to hang out in an empty Motel at least once in your life. There are more images at my Flickr site, which will host all the images on this blog until I decide that I want all the hits instead of the nice people at Flickr. Or until my reputation is secure.

ADDENDUM:

While searching for blurbs about the history of the Wagon Wheel, this appeared as the 5th or 6th Google result. So... let's say that the Wagon Wheel has served its purpose.