That Sonic Spicy Chicken roller coaster commercial is conceptually disturbing. I was innocently watching a dull hockey game–Calgary hasn’t won a hockey game in Anaheim in over ten years, though Albertans prefer not to think about it–and then thirty seconds later I was rendered speechless and bewildered. All I could think was Bob and Ray with a chicken sandwich. WelI, I could think other things, actually, I mean I’m not that stupid, but I did think Bob and Ray with a chicken sandwich. I love Bob and Ray. I have a couple years’ worth of Bob and Ray radio shows. One time I spent an entire day at work doing paperwork and listening to Bob and Ray. I came out conceptually disturbed. Like the day after an acid trip. Everything looked different, weird, funny. I kind of liked it. I had the same feeling after this Sonic commercial. Maybe I’m just unusually susceptible to the weird and amusing. Not chicken sandwiches, though, which I don’t especially care for. I once got a chicken sandwich at the Sonic in Tuba City. Not so good. Great commercial, though. Incidentally, if there are any tubas in Tuba City I didn’t hear them. Not like Drum City. But that’s drums, not tubas. If there are any tubas in Drum City, I didn’t hear them.
Category Archives: Places
Obamajam
Every time a prez or a pope visits Los Angeles, or a Michael Jackson dies, there are traffic jams for a couple hours. Except now they get on Facebook and the whole world shrieks. Remember when Carmageddon was gonna end civilization as we know it?
It didn’t.
I was just down on the prez’s motorcade route a bit a go and had no idea he’d even been there a couple hours earlier. Traffic was normal, the secret service all gone, and civilization remained. Even the birds flew.
I think in a decade or two Facebook and Twitter will stop controlling our thoughts and actions, and we’ll all start thinking again.
The 405 in the Sepulveda Pass. Sometimes it moves.
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Frisco
Don’t tell anybody, but San Franciscans used to call their town Frisco. I know, I know, perish the thought. But that was before they kicked out all the working class people. Now it’s strictly San Francisco or even worse, The City. Terrible what gentrification can do to a town.
A few years ago I unthinkingly let slip a Frisco while talking to a San Franciscan. He winced. I could feel his pain. Before I could apologize he told me, slowly, so that I could understand, that they really cannot abide “Frisco.” He winced at the sound. Please say San Francisco or “The City”.
I’d never been admonished over urban nomenclature before. I felt like a Cockney being lectured on enunciation by Rex Harrison. If I insisted on speaking to a resident of San Francisco, please use the correct designation. Otherwise leave them alone.
So I said you don’t like Frisco, huh? Another wince. What’s wrong with Frisco? Wince. I don’t see the big deal. Why do you care? He grew exasperated. How do you like it, he said, when people call your town Hollyweird?
But we call our town Hollyweird, I said. You do? Of course. We live in Hollyweird, and you live in Frisco. He winced again.
So what about San Fran?
End of conversation.
Bob Scobey’s Frisco Band
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Whole Foods
Posted this on Facebook a few weeks ago and decided it’s so pretty I’d save it for posterity:
Just read that our local Ralphs–once a local Hughes–will be turning into a Whole Foods. Which means we will have a Whole Foods and a Gelsons to shop at now. That’s the new Silverlake for you. To think this used to be a real neighborhood, full of real people making real people wages. I swear, having your neighborhood gentrified under your feet is so sad. All the soul and feel is sucked dry and you’re left with nothing but rich white people buying organic food and complaining about the Mexicans in the parking lot.
I love where I live, but I’m not so nuts about a lot of the people living here. If I’d wanted to live on the Westside i”d have moved there. Watch out Echo Park, you’re next. The tide of money flowing in from the westside is inexorable. Head east, young man, head east. There’s life across the river.
I wondered later how a Whole Foods and a Gelson’s compete in a gentrifying neighborhood. Price wars? Gelson’s raises its prices, Whole Foods raises their’s more. Then Gelson’s raises their’s again. It’s already weird to go to Gelson’s and see produce triple the cost of Ralphs, and proud of it. Same stuff, vegetables, fruits, berries, but fantastically, fabulously priced. And shiny. They glitter and gleam in the light. You step into Gelson’s and slip pass the oranges and lemons and pomegranates like you’ve entered an antique porcelain boutique, afraid the slightest mistake will send that great stack of perfect oranges crashing to the floor. You break it you buy it. Turn over the rent money or they’ll seize your car. You’d be left in the parking lot, crying, with a big box of scuffed oranges and the security guard shooing you away.
It’s a rough town, Silver Lake.
Silver Lake
Just read that our local Ralphs–once a local Hughes–will be turning into a Whole Foods. Which means we will have a Whole Foods and a Gelson’s to shop at now. That’s the new Silverlake for you. To think this used to be a real neighborhood, full of real people making real people wages. I swear, having your neighborhood gentrified under your feet is so sad. All the soul and feel is sucked dry and you’re left with nothing but rich white people buying organic food and complaining about the Mexicans in the parking lot.
I love where I live, but I’m not so nuts about a lot of the people living here. If I’d wanted to live on the Westside i”d have moved there. Watch out Echo Park, you’re next. The tide of money flowing in from the westside is inexorable. Head east, young man, head east. There’s life across the river.
Bob Sheppard at Hollywood and Highland
(2012)
Hey y’all….if ya wanna hear a great saxophonist, I mean a seriously great saxophonist up there with all the seriously great saxophonists, then check out Bob Sheppard at Hollywood and Highland tonight (that is, Tuesday, July 24). It’s a free gig, 7-9 pm, in that trippy interior courtyard with the Intolerance elephants overhead and tourists everywhere, shuffling and staring and wearing stupid tee shirts they picked up on the Boulevard. It’s utter madness outside, demented superheroes and people who will never wash their hands again after touching John Wayne’s bootprints and once we saw a police chase at 5 mph, a hundred police cars with lights flashing proceeding ever so slowly down Hollywood Boulevard and the lady running out of gas right there in front of the Chinese Theatre and tourists rushing into the street to touch her car and as she emerged cops pleaded through bullhorns for the people to stay clear of the vehicle, the suspect might be armed, but it was Day of the Locust, baby, nothing could stop grandma from getting that photo. The suspect emerged, unarmed, exhausted, and laid down on the pavement. Superman rushed into the street to pose in front of the scene. Metropolis was safe from evil again. A Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalked past. Spiderman watched, then slunk into the shot.
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Inside the courtyard just steps away all was bliss. I can’t remember exactly who was playing (might have been the Clayton Brothers) but the music swinging, the wine good, the vibe perfect. The music is almost always swinging, the wine good, the vibe perfect. Or at least fun. Bob Sheppard is one of my favorite sax players in this town, and when he launches into a solo the melody goes places I can’t follow because it’s so over my head but I love every second of it, I just wait till he comes flying back into the head and you can hear the tune again. That is the art of improvisation, man, a very swinging improvisation. He always has the best players, too, heavy cats, dudes on his level. Basically, there’ll be two sets worth of state of the art jazz, and he may or may not make it easier for the folks to dig, who knows, but it ought to be the real thing, pure and unadulterated and uncompromising. We’ll see if he takes it outside for the folks. Maybe he’ll take it outside for the folks outside, wander out to the Boulevard blowing those crazy scales for Spiderman and the Michael Jackson guys. I’d pay to see that. But wouldn’t have to because it’s free.
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I wonder what ever happened to that car chase lady. It was the most pathetic car chase I ever saw. I mean you could have pushed that car faster, all its tires punctured, and gas running out right there where just a couple weeks before giant inflatable robots stood for some movie premiere. I remember we came out onto Hollywood Blvd after a one of these Tuesday night gigs and saw them, looming. Then around the corner there was another giant inflatable robot in reserve, just in case. Just in case what I’ll never know.
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Anyway, we’ll be there tonite. You don’t see Bob Sheppard’s kinda jazz that often anymore, at least not outdoors in front of God and everybody. It’s mostly singers doing standards nowadays. That’s what people want, singers doing standards. It’s comforting. Me, I like an edge sometimes. Well, most of the time. Anyway, if you ain’t doing nothing head over to Hollywood and Highland tonite. Hell, it’s free. Parking is three bucks, cheap. A ten spot will get you two glasses of wine and a mess of cheese and crackers and fruit, or just sneak in some hooch and save the bread. The night will be gorgeous and you can hang and listen and talk and check out the ladies, so I’m told.
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And say hi to Spiderman. Actually, don’t. You’ll have to give him money.
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Nojoqui Falls
(written for and rejected by an online travel site—too long—back in late 90’s.)
Rural California seemed to start with Goleta in the rearview mirror. Driving north out of Santa Barbara on Highway 101, there is a long, gorgeous stretch between mountains and shore, where the elongated Santa Barbara plain is reduced to just a sliver of farmland and undeveloped beach. Eventually it is too narrow even for the fields, and civilization just tapers off into nothingness. Just the road, sea and mountains.
The last vestige of the plain comes to an abrupt end at Gaviota, where the 101 makes a veer to the true north from its western course along the South Coast. A winding pass permits passage through the wall of the Santa Ynez mountains (one of those Transverse ranges, erupting when plates collide and causing so much seismic mischief in the LA Basin). To the burro riding padres of Father Serra’s world this must have seemed a more gradual—if more arduous—transition, but in a speeding car the change is sudden and stunning. The narrow walls of the defile reveal a whole other world of crags and dense oak forests. The mountains are stark, untamed; the slopes impenetrable. Signs warn of falling rocks and wild beasts. We sped up the long grade, at the top of which was a truck pullover, where a battered orange sign announced “Nojoqui Park”. Curiosity got the best of me and I veered off.
Once off the highway, we were plunged immediately into the primeval forest. An ancient, narrow road, cracked and sundered, twisted its way round slopes beneath the trees. The air was dark, almost creepy, penetrated only feebly by rays of sunlight. Birds flushed in all directions. We had the near instantaneous feeling of being lost, only minutes off the 101. Round we wound, down and down, till at last we were dumped into a sparkling green valley. We parked along side a rotting wooden fence to stretch our legs and snap some pictures. Birds called from all directions and a rabbit darted at our feet. We walked about a bit, listening and watching. We were completely on our own in this tiny, beautiful valley. I had no idea where this Nojoqui Park—or even what—would be, but if it were anything as beautiful as this then we were in for a treat. Back in the car, my wife studied the county map and found Nojoqui Falls. Now our curiosity was truly piqued, and we followed the old road, which in a few minutes seemed to lead us right through a farm, past barn and aging machinery. A right turn eventually led us to the park. As if out of nowhere, there were crowds of people about, seemingly hundreds of them, and animals—cows, pigs, sheep and goats by the score. We had stumbled onto a gathering of the Buellton 4H club. Fortunately there was plenty of parking under the pines where the trail began. It was a very gradual uphill walk of perhaps three-quarters of a mile, alongside the gurgling stream, round trees and over rocks, some laid out stepwise. Squirrels chattered in the branches. The weather had turned cool, cloudy and was threatening rain, and in these coastal canyons you could still feel the dampness of the morning’s fog.
Suddenly, the narrow canyon opened up and the sounds of the creek were swallowed in the rush of falling water. Ahead towered Nojoqui Falls. A good 80 feet in height, its grandeur was not in the volume of water tumbling over but the cathedral-like patterns of its fall. The rock upstream, it seems, is an easily soluble limestone while the falls themselves tumble over much harder granite. Over the eons evaporating mists have left their mineral mark and built up layers of limestone in the very shape of the Falls themselves, and then the water, in its turn erodes patterns anew and falls in the most perfectly graceful gestures. A perpetual motion machine of water and rock and air, Nojoqui Falls shall continue its slow, inexorable growth until the limestone that lines the stream above is eroded away completely. There was a bench and we sat and watched the water flow through its ancient etchings. It seemed such a shame that we had left the camera behind in the car. We had the binoculars, though, and through them observed flycatchers and bluebirds flitting in the branches above. I walked down to the pool and reached in elbow deep. The water was cold, clear. The footing slippery. We sat and watched and listened. The mist wafted into our faces. Who knows for how long people have come to this place tucked back in the mountains to watch and listen. Who knows what spiritual significance this place held for the local Chumash Indian civilization. Indeed, that such a splendid and rare natural phenomenon has remained but a county park is one of bureaucracy’s little mysteries—though Santa Barbara County has done an excellent job maintaining the site (and providing the geologic information on these very peculiar falls). The urge to remain just a little bit longer was powerful. But for us time was pressing. Places to go, reservations to keep. We tracked back to the car, slowly. The sound of falling water faded behind us. Squirrels rattled about in the trees and the sun was breaking through.
Back in the parking lot all was a bustle of competition. Walking past the car I wandered down to the 4H pens, where kids in their green ties and caps gently prodded their hogs around before the judges. Those reservations would hold a few minutes longer. I watched, applauding, and took in the sweet reek of pig.
Nojoqui Falls
Brick Wahl 