(2012)

I have a hot Brazilian babe angry at me because I owe her some writing. This stuff didn’t happen before I became world famous and then world unfamous. There’s a price for fame and a price for unfame. Is there a happy medium? Maybe the psychic in El Sereno is a happy medium. Passed her office today. It was on Huntington Drive with a big evil eye painted on the window. Malocho. Huntington Drive must have the biggest parkway in the world. Enough once for two Red Lines. Now there’s a bike path and old men playing bocchi ball. Progress. We turned right for the hell of it because the street looked so steep. It curved and curved and wound and wound and turned to dirt and a dead end with a view you wouldn’t believe. We decided to get lost in Montecito Heights. We did, aimlessly, driving all around just looking and peering over edges. Gorgeous up there, abandoned in places, Appalachian. Down a bit the moneyed people show up. At the bottom was a house with huge metallic grasshoppers in the front yard. Art. Cool. Highland Park. Silver Lake used to be Highland Park, crazy, arty, weird, gay and dangerous. Now our Silver Lake neighborhood is very nice, very quiet chockfull of gorgeous, moneyed hipster chicks. I’m nearly 56 years old and grandfatherly. Oh the irony. Bored by our pleasant surroundings, we explore, like today. We wandered home from Highland Park down historic boulevards and up crazy backroads. Our secret way. L.A. is full of mysteries, lost continents, other dimensions, freaks. No wonder I live here.