Jay Leno's Falafel Cravings and a Little Hermeneutics

I ducked into a cheap Greek restaurant on Ventura Boulevard for a quick gyro today, regretting only that I had recently removed all reading material from my car. So, I had to rely on imagination while eating alone, something I’m never happy about. Sadly, just as my imagination was failing, Jay Leno (or someone in a damned good Halloween costume) and a friend came in wearing motorcycle gear and sat down across from me. Thankfully this is LA, or more precisely Encino, so no one made a fool of themselves and fed his amour-propre, but of course, not having anything to read, I just had to sit there blandly looking at Jay Leno wolf down falafel when I really would much rather have had a copy of Terry Eagleton's Ideology of the Aesthetic. Hell, the Ikea Catalog would have been sufficient, under the circumstances. Not that I have anything against Jay Leno, just the cult of celebrity. In fact, judging by how he treated the restaurant staff (and that, in my estimation, is a pretty good indicator of character) he’s a stand-up fellow, but I can never get out of my mind what Bill Hicks said about him being a fevered ego and total sell-out. Nonetheless, whether it’s that Angelenos are too hip or too self-absorbed, I was delighted that even the women at the next table over, one of whom was holding a digital camera and showing pictures of “the new house” to the other, didn’t see fit to take advantage of the obvious opportunity. Actually, I ended up walking into the bathroom just as Jay walked out and I now know for certain that his shit isn’t any less malodorous than mine.

A friend of mine at campus read one of the entries here and told me “by God, you’re a Snob and a Socialist.” Well, it’s probably true and frankly I don’t see that these are contradictory. Contempt for the bourgeoisie? Check. Class insecurity? Check. Loathing of gaudy excess? Check. Support public funding of the arts and education, and, aw hell, just about everything else that’s high-brow? Check. Religion and/or television is the opiate of the masses? Check. And not really interested in a true worker’s revolution? Well, as the old joke goes: “The workers are revolting!” “Why yes, they are.” Look you might not find this all a compelling basis for a political and aesthetic ethos, but I’m not looking for converts. Go shove another Krispy Kreme in your pie-hole and leave me to ponder the good life.

Or the bad life. I will be going to Washington D.C. Friday after the election and if George Bush has won by a suspiciously slim margin, I’m hoping for chaos in the streets. A Kerry victory will only bring me relief, and though I earnestly like him and don’t think of him as the lesser of two evils, it will not bring me joy. To paraphrase Jeremiah, my heart is already sick at what I see as the breaking of my people. Maybe I am a Socialist, but is only because I fear there is no balm in Gilead.

And I thought we were supposed to be guarding the balms.

Consuming Blindly

Los Angeles in the morning after a night of rain is an alien place. Cars move slowly past slowly flowing mud tendrils intruding into the highway. The air is sharper and the colors brighter, stranger, one’s vision is no longer blurred. Angelenos appear slightly stunned as if they had just been roused out of bed. This is what happens when the seasonal intrudes upon a people who have convinced themselves that all measures of time are artificial, or at least that the clock can be turned back.

I was at a party a few days ago with the usual suspects. My friend the novelist and a small collection of the people representative of the sedimentary stratum of Hollywood: screen-writers, photographers, film critics, editors, and the guy who played Harry Goldenblatt on Sex in the City.

I conversed with a couple of fellows who could discourse easily on nineteenth century history and literature, worked in political speech writing, boasted ivy league degrees, and now respectively, wrote for Blind Date and an upcoming show about a blind police officer. I suggested they name the show Eyeless in La-la, as long as we’re talking about loss of meaning and people falling in love with their own servitude. All this blindness must be a sign of something, I’m guessing. One of the writers invited me to participate in a discussion happening later in the month in which Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad would be talked over, proving to me that in Hollywood, the role of producers and consumers is turned on its head. It is those who produce who are alienated from property, who quest after authentic experience, however inauthentically.

Of course, I’m so happy just to consume. Give me Tivo and HotPockets, let the air be blurred again, and program my Caller ID to block any messages coming in from Mr. Huxley.

A Decisive Stand

And of course on Friday, I was pleased to have the opportunity to watch the Presidential debate. For the life of me I don’t understand the liberal claptrap that passes for commentary here in LA-LA-Land Southern California. I thought our President was clear and decisive. In a brilliant disquisition on constitutional history, our leader came out firmly against the legal minds that brought us the 1857 Dred Scott decision. For this Texan, for this landed gentryman, to stand firm in the face of his own self-interests and ally himself with the forces of abolition against the grim prospect of slavery, warms the cockles of this hardened-heart. His lion-hearted manliness, his dauntless heroism in this crucial turning point in our nation’s history is a model for us all. Let us join voices with our leader and shout out, “NO!” “NO!” to those twisted legal minds that with the act of a crooked pen would provide sanctuary to the lash and the whip. Let us turn a deaf ear and a Christian cheek to all who would dare imply that our lofty Chief directs no amity toward the common salt. The Party of Lincoln knows no better way to honor the fallen martyr than in the flesh and blood of our great President. With this noble countenance at the helm someday our black brethren shall indeed enjoy the freedoms and rights of white men of property throughout this nation of destiny!

Oh. . . And Remember the Poles!

Darth Vader and A Statue of a Boy Pissing Pol Roger

I have been missing in action – lost in time and space, actually. With the time travel equipment of the future we can, according to the manual, journey backwards and loll about in the past for as long as we wish. Then with the flick of a few switches we will be able to arrive back the moment we left.

My time-machine is obsolete.

For the past few weeks I’ve been stuck in the Paris of Napoleon III, antebellum Boston, and, most enjoyably, at a modest Manhattan party held by James Hazen Hyde on the last day of January 1905. Some back-story? Of course. When his daddy dropped dead of overwork, Hyde inherited the reins of the Equitable Insurance Company at the ripe age of 23. Before too long he was director of 46 different companies, performing such wise business acts as selling bonds from one company he directed, to another company he owned, and then to the Equitable for a nice profit.

What better way to celebrate insider trading and conflict of interest than with a big party? So, Hyde called upon architect Whitney Warren to transform Sherry’s Hotel into the Court of Louis XV for a night and then commissioned playwright Dario Niccodemi to compose a one-act play. At around eleven o’clock the Metropolitan Opera’s forty piece orchestra along with their ballet corps filled the ballroom and performed until midnight. Then a foursome of working stiffs carried a sedan chair into the room bearing the actress Gabrielle Rejane, fresh from Paris, who performed the play, which was about as inspiring as taffy. Trumpets announced supper and we all retired to a room that had been transformed into the gardens of Versailles with grass, a canopy of roses, marble statues, and fountains bubbling with Pol Roger ‘89. Dancing followed, but of course two more suppers were served before the guests, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and myself, collapsed of exhaustion.

So . . . when I arrived back in Los Angeles in 2004, minus a few weeks of my life, only to find that Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker had both come to life and emerged on a stage at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, you can understand the shock of recognition with which I was afflicted. It takes time to adjust to an all out battle between good and evil when you’ve been reveling in the spoils built by greed, waste, extravagance, imperial aims, corporate corruption, cheap imported labor, and no income tax for the rich.

But the historian’s mind, like the snob’s, is quite supple and soon I was carrying from 1905 to 2005 that emotion most appropriate for historians and snobs alike–indignation. Snobs and historians both have an aversion to the tasteless and the showy. Oh yeah, and the morally maladroit.

The ballot box is probably a better time-machine than mine. Vote appropriately and with hope we can revive the glory of parties past! Maybe, just maybe, they’ll even let us eat what falls from the tables.