Category Archives: Los Angeles

September 12, 2024 · 20:42

The All-Natural SoCal Alarm Clock

It’s a total bitch to set, it’s wildly inaccurate, goes off whenever it wants to, and in general is about 99.99999% useless.

But boy, let me tell you… When it DOES decide to go off, it’s effective as all get out.

This morning’s epicenter was only about 13 miles from our house, so we got a pretty good jolt.

What’s really bizarre is that I heard it coming before I felt it and before the alarms went off on the phone and Apple watches. (Being so close to the epicenter, the emergency alert and the shaking arrived pretty much simultaneously, leading to the inevitable “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” screams of terror.) It sounded to me a lot like a very low flying helicopter. We get helicopters screaminging over all the time (we’re at the very top of a decent-sized hill) and it sounded like a police or fire/rescue helicopter going like a bat out of Hell. A local brush fire starting up and there’s a water drop incoming? Someone fall and break their leg (again?!) over on Castle Peak? Another police chase on the freeway and the news helicopters are racing to intercept?

Nope. About three seconds later the first jolt hit, the windows rattled, the dresser drawers threatened to dump their content, and the local electronics started wailing their warnings.

That’s okay, I wasn’t going to sleep in later anyway.

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Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Paul

August 3, 2024 · 19:43

Ahmanson – End Of Another Season

I’m often referred to as being clueless, so we’ll see if being here tonight helps.

I do wonder if the finale and resolution changes from performance to performance – has anyone else seen this production so we can compare notes?

LATE EDIT – I checked with one of the ushers about the ending changing from show to show. “Sadly, no!”

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Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Photography

June 8, 2024 · 19:50

The Music Center In Spring

Back at the Ahmanson for “A Strange Loop.” Going into this one cold, no clue what it’s about except for the emailed warnings about “…explicit language, references to internalized racism, homophobia, HIV stigmatization, sexual assault, and scenes of an adult nature. The show uses theatrical haze, strobe and flashing lights, and sudden loud noises.” So, unlikely to be musical comedy.

As the days get longer, we get to see a bit more of the Downtown LA area and Music Center when we get here early.

The iconic LA City Hall, on the far side of the Great Park, with the Hall of Justice on the left (I think).

The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is at the other end of the Music Center plaza. Despite the dozens and dozens of times I’ve been to the Ahmanson, I don’t think that I’ve ever been to the Chandler. Something to check off the list in the next year!

The Mark Taper Forum is the round building on the left, with the Ahmanson behind it, and the LA Cathedral sunlit on the right across the street.

We ❤️ LA!

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Filed under Art, Los Angeles, Photography

April 20, 2024 · 23:33

Theater Rescheduled

We normally would have been seeing “Funny Girl” at the Ahmanson two weeks ago, on April 6th, but I was three large states away, so we rescheduled.

No, I haven’t become homeless – that’s my two-day old Kings playoff beard! Yes, I know the looks are almost identical…

Let the festivities begin!

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Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Photography

March 15, 2024 · 23:07

Night Clouds Redux

In the middle of watching the hockey game tonight (it was good, Kings 5-0 over the Blackhawks) we got a blaring warning emergency alert, followed by the robot voice synthesizer from the National Weather Service warning about severe weather, up to and including hail, thunderstorms, and a possible tornado. WTAF?!

We didn’t get more than a few drops here, most of the action was east of Downtown LA and in the San Gabriel Valley, all thirty to fifty miles to our east. (Southern California’s a big place.)

By late tonight, the leftover remnants were over us, and with the quarter moon (that bright spot in the lower right) lighting them up from above and the light pollution from the city lighting them up from below, they looked pretty cool!

The big takeaway lesson for the evening, however, was that it’s so much harder to get down on the ground and then back up to my feet than I remember it being when I was younger. This sucks! (For the record, I was laying down on my back on the patio to try to stabalize my arms when holding my phone to take these 10 second exposures, rather than just walking inside the house to get one of the dozen or so tripods I have… Okay, so, the true takeaway is that I’m an idiot, but that’s not exactly news now, is it?)

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Uncategorized, Weather

February 5, 2024 · 22:31

Soggy Squirrel

The closest official rainfall recording station to us is in Woodland Hills. Over the last 100 years or so, the average annual precipitation total is 15.96 inches.

The three-day total for this storm, through 19:00 tonight, is 11.05 inches. That’s 70% of a normal year‘s rain in three days.

We’re fine so far, as I expected. So is this guy, munching on one of the grapes that got tossed out there. (The ravens and towhees also like the grapes, while the juncos, finches, and mourning doves prefer the bird seed.)

There are plenty of places with some local street flooding, the freeways suck even more than usual, some schools closed, and so on. We closed our office for the day, which really isn’t a super huge deal since all but two or three people normally work from home anyway.

The winds haven’t been as bad as feared, at least here, which has helped limit the power outages. That was my major concern. Up on the Central Coast north of Ventura it’s been a different story.

Tomorrow and Wednesday there’s a good chance of a third wave moving through. Fingers crossed!

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Filed under Critters, Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

February 4, 2024 · 23:39

Heavy Rain

I got out reasonably early today and got the weekly groceries and Sunday morning breakfast before it got too wet. That didn’t last long.

We’re fine. Up here on the hill we worry a tiny bit about mudslides and power outages, but all of the rain just runs down the hill to be someone else’s problem. (Not being snarky – that’s why there’s a big flood control basin down there which starts Bell Canyon Creek, which in turn becomes the headwaters of the Los Angeles River about a half-mile downstream.)

We have a couple of spots with some ponding of an inch or so, but then it goes into a drain. As long as I keep those drains clear, we’re golden!

Other parts of California are not so lucky. Locally we’ve have had a lot of local street flooding, and some canyon areas are being evacuated, particularly those below brushfire burn areas.

The expected rain totals for the whole five or six day storm have been upped from 6-7 inches here to 8-9 inches, with most other areas also getting an increase in the estimates. We’re a desert, our drainage system just isn’t designed to handle that much rain that fast.

Stay dry out there!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

February 1, 2024 · 23:37

Ghost Clouds

February arrived wet in SoCal. A little under 2″ of rain in the last 24 hours. It’s been a fast-moving storm, so we’ve gotten heavy showers and then sun, followed by more showers, sun, showers, stars…

It’s odd going out to take a lap around the back yard. Sometimes it’s cold and clear with spooky ghost clouds scudding about but huge chunks of the sky crystal clear and starry, Orion and Jupiter bright above.

Then thirty minutes later I can go out and need to pick up an umbrella to take trash out.

They’re already warning us that after a sunny respite tomorrow, the weekend all the way into Wednesday and Thursday next week is going to be stupidly wet and cold and floody. We’re expecting 6″ to 8″ of rain here and there are mountain communities that are expecting 15″ or more. Let’s hope some of it’s snow, we need that even more than we need the rain.

But the long-range forecast for the 11th looks good. Let’s hope. We’ve got some partying to do!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

January 14, 2024 · 23:33

But The Food’s Really Good

Inside of the men’s room door in a Mexican restaurant we’ve been to a few times, located in a part of town we normally don’t frequent.

Lots of what I assume to be gang names – but no cartoon dicks and no outright obscenities that I can see. So maybe it’s performance art instead of grafitti?

That is one hideous shade of green, however!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

January 4, 2024 · 23:36

About 25 Years Apart

Looking for something to share tonight, I ended up back in the pictures I took on my iPhone 13 just after Thanksgiving. We were visiting the Science Museum, primarily to see Endeavour, but also to see an IMAX film.

One of the pictures I took there reminded me of a picture I remember from just a month or so after I got my first digital camera, in 1999.

640 x 480 pixels. 100,512 bytes. Taken with an Epson digital camera that my dad gave to me. (He worked at Epson, got an early peek at these newfangled devices).

This is the entryway between the IMAX theater and the main museum lobby. Purple tinted skylight, several hundred gold balls hanging down.

It was July, 1999 and my three kids were with me, ages 9, 12, and 14. I was doing the single dad thing and it would be almost another year before I met The Long-Suffering Wife.

(There was no building out back with a Space Shuttle in it.)

4032 x 3024 pixels. 4,705,344 kbytes. Taken with an iPhone.

It was November, 2023 and two of my three kids were with me, ages 33 and 38.

The museum has grown considerably, and is quickly growing even more as the annex to hold Endeavour, the last flight-rated external fuel tank, and two flight ready solid rocket boosters, all combined into a vertical stack just like they would be when ready for launch.

The photographic resolution has skyrocketed. Today’s “older model pocket-sized supercomputer” (i.e., an iPhone 13) has forty times the resolution of yesterday’s cutting edge next big thing.

Welcome to the future!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Space