Category Archives: Los Angeles

June 17, 2016 · 22:11

A Not-So-Friendly Warning

There’s a very large brush fire burning into its third day about 100 miles to the northwest of here. Dozens of houses have burned, whole towns are in the fire’s path, Highway 101 between Southern and Northern California has been shut down with flames on both sides of the road, and the “sundowner” winds have been gusting every night, fanning and spreading the inferno. As of tonight it was 20% contained, but there were concerns that it could get completely out of control again if the winds didn’t die down.

This morning, with the winds shifting from the north, LA was brown and smoky, over 100 miles away. I guess that’s not as surprising as it might have been a few weeks ago, when we saw that huge fire in Canada spreading smoke all the way to Atlanta.

As if that isn’t enough, it’s going to be a scorcher all over the US SouthWest this weekend. We’re expecting 94°F tomorrow, 104°F on Sunday, and 109°F on Monday. Up there in the fire zone, aside from, you know, the radiant heat of thousands and thousands of acres burning in your face, it’s only supposed to be 97°F.

On the other hand, in places like Phoenix, Arizona, it’s supposed to be 119°F on Sunday, and I notice that the forecast there is for the highs to be 112°F or above for the next nine days, as far as the current forecast goes out. There are whole swatches of this part of the world that are expecting the highest temperatures EVER RECORDED at those recording sites. Not the highest temperature on that day in history – the highest temperatures ***EVER*** recorded at those spots.

Then I saw the news that the very last recording station on Earth that was still seeing CO2 levels under 400 parts per million has finally reached that symbolic level. It’s in Antarctica, about as far away from anything human as they can put it. The last time the CO2 levels hit this height was over four million years ago. From this point onward we almost certainly will never see any spot on Earth recording less than that in our lifetimes. Or our children’s lifetimes, or their children, or their children…

All of that made me think that, in an effort to be totally transparent and up front with everyone, I should let y’all know:

If you ever, EVER come to my site, my timeline, or my face wanting to tell me that CO2 isn’t causing climate change (100% bullshit), that human activities aren’t driving that CO2 increase and climate change (unbelievable 100% bullshit), that scientists haven’t really proven that there’s climate change (you’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me 100% bullshit), that it’s “just a theory” (bullshit 100% ignorant of any clue what the scientific method is or what the word “theory” means), or anything along those lines, I will as politely as I can ask you to piss off and never darken my door again.

If you’re stupid enough to ignore that request (and I’m betting you are if you’re spewing any of the aforementioned bullshit) then I will do everything I can to show the world what a moronic, ignorant, clueless, illiterate, uneducated, imbecilic, cretinous, witless buffoon you are. I don’t for a second think that any of the mountain of evidence and facts that I’m going to shower on you will change your mind, but the rest of us will have fun laughing at you and pointing.

Then I will block your ass and take whatever measures are necessary to never hear from you again. Life’s too short to spend it putting up with the intentionally ignorant.

For those who think this is a policy which stifles a free exchange of ideas – get a clue. Look up “false equivalency” for starters. Put simply, if I say 5+5=10 but you think that 2+8=10 and someone else says 15-5=10, we can discuss how each of us got to ten. On the other hand, if I say 5+5=10 but you say 5+5=37.89927837128 because there’s a conspiracy founded by some secret society and the aliens are really running the whole thing, then we have nothing to talk about and it’s a waste of breath for me to do so.

I just wanted y’all to know!

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Filed under Disasters, Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles, Politics, Weather

June 16, 2016 · 22:08

There Goes The Skunk Again!

If you’ve been here at all for any time, you know we have critters. We may be in the be-you-ti-full San Fernando Valley but it’s a regular Weird Kingdom out there.

I can put up with the ceiling dripping blood. I can put up with the raccoons under the eaves. I love having the bats and all of the birds. The bunnies are cute, even if they do tear up the yard.

But the skunks?

The meander around a bit, so we might go weeks without smelling one, but when they wander back into our immediate neighborhood all of a sudden something is setting them off at least every other night. I suspect that “something” is probably a dog and I wouldn’t be surprised if the dog was on a leash with a very surprised neighbor on the other end.

Sometimes Nature stinks! Sometimes it stinks and makes your eyes water and makes you nauseous even a block or two away.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Los Angeles

June 15, 2016 · 22:54

You Don’t See THAT Every Day – June 15th

But you will, more and more and more…

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In the parking lot at work, I’ve seen this car every now and then for about two weeks.

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What happens if they can’t get one of those five or so parking spots that are close to a light pole? Do they have to find another way to get home?

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Or maybe that’s the problem on display here. They couldn’t get one of those spots all day, so they have to wait until the lot empties out a bit at the end of the day, move their car so it can charge, and then hang out until they’ve got enough juice to get home?

Inquiring minds want to know!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

June 4, 2016 · 17:44

Close But Not Yet TOO Close

Coming home from the hangar in Camarillo, as I topped the Camarillo Grade on the 101 and started down into Thousand Oaks, it was immediately clear that something was amiss.

From a good twenty miles away, a column of smoke was visible, the brown, roiling, wannabe pyrocumulus. Right in my path.

I couldn’t find anything on the news, although they were talking about several other brush fires in the area that were being attacked. Thirty acres here, something being held to twenty acres there, all “normal” for Southern California in the first weekend where it’s topping 100° every day for three or four days.

As I got closer to home I kept expecting a massive traffic jam, and apparently so did a lot of other folks. The split with the 23 Freeway was jammed and all backed up, very unusual for a Saturday afternoon. It might have been caused by an accident up ahead on the 23 – but it might also have been caused by a big percentage of the traffic on the 101 diverting off to take the 23 to the 118. (For reference.)

The question was, “Where? Where exactly?” Down in Malibu? Off of Topanga Canyon? Up north of the 101 by our place?

Getting off the freeway at my normal exit was, in retrospect, a mistake. It turns out the fire is in Calabasas, only a mile or so from that exit, and traffic was (after it was too late to wave off and stay on the freeway) gridlocked.

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With a capital “G”.

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So, no, it wasn’t dangerous taking these pictures while behind the steering wheel. We weren’t moving.

At least this wasn’t THAT close to us. While my car dashboard was saying it was 102° outside, there wasn’t a lot of wind, which can be the factor that turns a twenty-acre brush fire into a twenty thousand acre brush fire. I was patient and was finally able to turn onto Valley Circle (a left then another left to head back to the north) at which point it almost immediately got worse.

Two things. First, there was a second brush fire. Much smaller, but much closer to our house and much, much closer to a lot of homes. (For family and those who have visited, it’s west of Valley Circle behind the baseball fields, sort of in that canyon between the fields and Victory Boulevard.) There were helicopters dropping water all over it so I don’t think it will have a chance to grow much. I hope.

But secondly, there had been a major car accident with were apparently a lot of cars and a lot of injuries. Valley Circle Drive, the last of the major north-south streets at the west end of the San Fernando Valley, was closed. Completely. With all of that traffic trying to squeeze off into one tiny residential side street.

Take hundreds, if not thousands, of impatient, pissed-off, Los Angeles drivers, 99.9% of whom have never in their lives been off of a main street unless they were within a half-mile of their house, and shove them off onto a gridlocked, narrow, residential side street with no traffic control and no clue for them about how to get around the problem and back to where they want to be.

Yeah, it was that much fun.

I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I’ve run and walked all of these streets when I’ve been training for marathons. (Taking the same routes over and over is really boring – I try to explore a bit.) It was the other 999 drivers (or it might have been 666 of them)  that were in my way.

Meanwhile, when I finally did get to where I wanted to go, i.e., the next through north-south route, I found it to be gridlocked by people diverted off of Valley Circle coming from the north.

That’s about the time I noticed that my gas gauge was reading “fumes, maybe, if you’re lucky.”

I did consider finding a spot to legally park without causing any further gridlock and just walking the three miles or so home. But, 102° convinced me otherwise.

I finally broke free of the gridlock, looped around all of the traffic, came in from the other side, and made it home, even if I didn’t pass a gas station on that route. Tomorrow I may run out of gas a hundred yards from the house, but for now I am home.

There is a steady stream of helicopters going overhead, one every sixty seconds or so. It looks like they’re refilling their tanks from the Chatsworth Reservoir (about a mile north of here) and shuttling back and forth to the smaller but much closer fire behind the baseball fields, and to the big Calabasas fire that (according to the ongoing news reports) is completely out of control and growing. It looks like an awful lot of $1M+ homes didn’t do their brush clearance and may pay the price.

I’m going to go get a cold drink, find a shady spot outside, watch the helicopters, monitor the news, and maybe review and update my Bugout Lists.

(What do you mean, you don’t have a bugout list?)

Worry not, it’s close, but I don’t think it’s THAT close.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Los Angeles

May 18, 2016 · 23:30

A Void For Song

Today I ate lunch in the little plaza between the two office buildings in the complex where my office is. There are a handful of tables there as well as a number of large planters that make an excellent place to sit. The biggest problem there, and the reason I often end up in the car, is the wind, which can funnel between the building and blow lunch right off the table even when on the sidewalk a hundred yards away there’s barely a breeze.

But today was nice. I was busy as all get out all morning, so I didn’t get out until after 14:00. By that hour, I had the plaza to myself. Or, almost to myself.

After a few minutes I was surprised to singing coming from behind me, where one guy was sitting. No accompaniment, just an acapella tenor solo.

In a business (i.e., “normal”) situation, what are your first thoughts when this starts up behind you?

  • A busker, with his hat or guitar case open in front of him for donations
  • A homeless person (sorry, it’s LA, it’s not that hard to find them, even in Woodland Hills)
  • Someone listening on his headphones and singing along without realizing they’re using their outside voices
  • A person not totally on the same plane of existence as you and I (sorry, it’s LA, it’s not that hard to find them, even in Woodland Hills – and I am NOT implying a one-to-one relationship between being homeless and having a serious mental illness)

Notice that “someone just singing, because they like to and they don’t give a damn about idiotic social mores” doesn’t appear on the list. Although on closer examination, that appears to have been the case.

While wondering about why there’s such a social stigma against singing in public or at work (unless you work in a karaoke bar or make your living as a singer) I realized that almost the only place any of us (in my experience) ever sing is when we sing “Happy Birthday.” If your experiences are anything like mine, that might be the key reason that most of us never sing in public. We usually sound horrible at office birthday parties!

This guy, however, sounded pretty good. Maybe not “The Voice” good, but considerably better than average.

How do I get him to come to my next office birthday party?

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May 3, 2016 · 22:52

Walking Companion

I’m trying to make an active effort to get out and walk in the evening on days when I’m more sedentary at work. It’s that Garmin smart watch I bought myself for Christmas that’s now watching my every step. I get gold bars and vibrating fireworks when I meet my daily goals, and sad blue bars when I don’t. The watch isn’t angry with me when I slack off, but it’s very, very disappointed.

Having now conditioned myself to be aware of this, most days if I haven’t already met my daily goal I’m at least pretty close, so a quick evening stroll to the end of the block and back will do the trick. Today however was one of the days when I was glued to the desk, so I was way short. (“Way short” in this case is about 1,800 steps, roughly a mile.) It’s a lovely evening and the weather might be turning toward the cool and rainy over the next few days (more on that later, I’m sure) so a quick trip around the block and over to the next one was in order.

It really was very calming and pleasant. 63° F with no breeze, a few high clouds but you can still see Jupiter high overhead and Arcturus rising in the southeast like the Eye of Sauron.

As I looped back past our street and headed toward the next block over to loop around there, I saw a critter crossing the street as I crossed. It was two or three hundred yards away, looked like a cat.

As I headed down the block behind ours I saw the critter loping along the sidewalk toward me and then turning to scoot down the sidewalk parallel to me on the other side of the street. It moved funny, not like a cat at all. Not really like a raccoon either, but for the size and all that’s what I assumed it was.

I kept walking down my side of the street. It kept walking down its side of the street. I kept an eye on it, starting to feel… Well, let’s say that I was starting to have a bad feeling about the situation.

I moved under a streetlight and it was in shadows. I moved off into the shadows on my sidewalk and it came into the light on its side. Cat-sized, black, arched back, sort of funny gait, huge tail sticking straight up over its back, white stripe…

Shit.

I didn’t break into a run, partly because I didn’t want to spook it, partly because I was still in my good work clothes. It was still across the street and not moving toward me, but if someone came out of their door with a dog, or we went by a yard with a dog in the backyard that spooked it, I didn’t want to be that close.

We know they’re in the neighborhood. Twice Jessie went after one and got sprayed good. We’ll often smell them somewhere in the neighborhood, and it’s not uncommon to have it so strong that your eyes are watering. On one occasion I’ve actually been a lot closer and lived to tell the tale.

But let’s not be stupid.

The skunk eventually found the yard that it was looking for and ducked through a hole in the fence. Good luck and good night – happy hunting for those grubs and bugs and whatever else it is you eat! My wrist just started vibrating and I’ve got confetti on my display, so I’ll be heading home.

Alone.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Los Angeles

April 27, 2016 · 23:05

Winter Returns To Los Angeles!

At least, that would be your conclusion if you were wandering around Woodland Hills on Ventura Boulevard this evening.

Among Los Angeles many bizarre (and occasionally endearing) qualities is the way that locals react to dips in the temperatures. Tonight after work I took a quick walk down the block to the bank. The sun was still up, but the wind was starting to gust to 15 or 20 knots and the air had started to cool.

It had “cooled” all the way down to 65°F. The horror!

Walking back to the office I passed one person after another, more than a dozen total, who were bundled up like they were going to the South Pole. Ski jackets, woolen hats, scarves, gloves, and even then there were people hugging themselves for warmth while they stood waiting for the light to change.

I swear, it was noticeable enough that I started to wonder if I wasn’t somehow in a little bubble of thermal discontinuity, separated from reality by some unseen barrier that was fending off the horrible fate of freezing to death right there on the Boulevard at the end of April.

Not a single person in sight was walking around in a T-shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. That’s one of the other bizarre things you’ll almost always see in Los Angeles, even if it truly is down below 40°, blowing a gale, and raining sideways. But not tonight.

When it gets so odd in LA that you have to stop, look around, and wonder what in hell’s going on, that’s a good day.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Weather

April 24, 2016 · 22:58

Imposition vs Opportunity

I had things to get done today – many (most?) of them got put off. First thing this morning I received an email requesting information ASAP for CAF Headquarters.

The documents I needed to work on were out at the hangar, thirty-three miles away. These days, with the new full-time-plus job, I only go out on Saturdays unless there’s a pretty urgent need. Especially since they’re working on the one freeway that goes in that direction, so that thirty-five minute drive is now more like an hour plus.

But off I went, got my documents, and headed home. Only to find something going on causing a huge traffic jam before I could even get out of the airport and head toward the freeway home. On an impulse, and in large part because by that point it was the only easy way out of traffic, I headed toward the ocean instead of the freeway.

What a wonderful opportunity that turned out to be. The drive along PCH was scenic, cool, lovely, and “the Southern California experience.” I had the convertible instead of my little Fit, cruising Pacific Coast Highway with the top down and the tunes turned up.

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(click image to view full sized)

 

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Filed under CAF, Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography

April 23, 2016 · 23:28

101 At 1/4 Second

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An analogy for how we’re all moving to fast and life becomes a blur?

Nope, an example of how the iPhone camera, as good as it is, isn’t the correct tool for this type of a picture. A good SLR will let you get exposures of one second to ten or even sixty seconds, giving long, cool, glowing trails on the freeway. Set properly, it will also give you crisp, non-blurred photos, even at night.

The iPhone tries to compromise with little ability to override the default settings, so what you get is a little bit of both and not enough of neither.

So it’s cool – but only a little bit cool. It could be a lot more cool.

(And it was a really lovely and fun Seder tonight – thanks, Bonnie and Greg!)

 

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

April 22, 2016 · 23:22

Observations During A Short Commute Home After A Long Week

First

As I’m exiting the building and heading away from the street, toward the garage, I hear some serious screaming start up behind me. A woman’s voice, it’s not one of those “Alice! It’s you! I haven’t seen you in AGES!” screams. More like one of those angry screams that will make people start to think about dialing 9-1-1. I turn and see the screaming woman, running across Ventura Boulevard toward me. Seven lanes of moderately heavy, post rush-hour traffic, and she’s darting out in front of cars without bothering to look. Screaming. “STOP!! GET AWAY!! I HATE YOU!! DON’T!!”

Fleeing an abusive date? A victim of domestic violence?

No, a young (late teens, maybe early twenties) Valley Girl risking her life and going berserk because the parking enforcement cop is putting a ticket on her BMW.

The conversation deteriorated quickly into “I HATE YOU!!” and “HOW DARE YOU!!” and words I rarely use on this site. At which point one of the traffic ticket cops’ gun-toting senior compatriots showed up and suggested either calming down or discussing potential jaywalking, assault, and resisting arrest charges.

You gotta love LA!

Second

Two miles away, stopped at a light on the aforementioned Ventura Boulevard, one of the San Fernando Valley’s homeless population was engaged in a heated and loud discussion with a different parking meter. No one else was around except those in cars at the light, and most of them were making sure that their windows were rolled up and their doors locked. I had the moon roof open and could hear the words, which seemed to mostly come from English, but not used in the normal pattern of nouns and verbs. The obscenities were easy to hear, but not used in a particularly enlightening manner.

I wonder if the parking meter was arguing back, or just sitting there stoically, letting the woman’s incoherent wrath wash over it like water over a stone in a brook.

Third

The whole way up Fallbrook I was following a very brand new Jaguar F-Type. I’ve long ago determined that, in the event of a sudden, significant, and positive shift in my financial position, I would really, really want a Tesla to drive around town. They’re hardly unique here, but they are just so freakin’ good looking, not to mention the next big thing in eco-friendly transportation.

But I hear that the current waiting list for a Tesla is on the order of a year or more, and if I were rolling in money I could hardly keep driving my little Honda Fit. (Not that it isn’t cute and wonderful, but c’mon, let’s get real here!) So in the meantime, I would just have to check out the availability of that Jaguar.

In the meantime, Hissy got me home one little four-cylinder putt-putt at a time. No parking tickets, no arguments with parking meters, and no speeding tickets just on general principles.

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