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Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
March 2016
‘Round Town
2-8 The Honey Lulus opened the show for the peripatetic and positively perfect Troy Walker at Viva Cantina.
Following them, Jane Cantillion and the Dick & Jane Family Orchestra delivered quite the rousing performance!
Troy has the crowd in the palm of his hand.
The Honey Lulus want to see you at a hukilau
Jane - or was it John? - of the Dick & Jane Ork, ends the set on a dramatic note.
2-10 Back to Viva Cantina to see Ronnie Mack’s ensemble, and then to the back room to see the 19-piece (!!!) Don Lucas Big Band. For free, yet. The band plays there every Tuesday night.
2-13 Friendly poker game (quarter ante, in the early hours) at the home of friend and record-seller Charles Randolph. I stayed the course to the tune of $40 down, then luck reversed itself - no, it was skill - and I came home $50 ahead. That was some $90 rally!!
2-14 Valentine’s Day date with Diane at the Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Ice Cream Parlor in South Pasadena.
2-22 Scalawag selfie at Gelson’s. Dawson, Diane, AF.
2-25 Had my first colonoscopy. Or so I hear: I was unconscious. What’s the big deal? You fast for a day and empty out. Got all scared for nuthin’. Diagnosis was “A-OK.”
NO PHOTO !
2-26 Could not attend Dwight Twilley’s sold-out solo appearance at McCabe’s, but loaned our friend Scott my vid camera to capture the set. Rocky Burnette came by to see Dwight.
2-27 Left the house at 9:20 for the 9:30 Tony Gilkyson set. Got to TAIX and ran into Paul Body and others. My info was wrong and Tony went on at 10:30, so I didn’t see much of the following act, Rosa V. Next time for sure.
Paul Body and Anna G.
The Tony Gilkyson band - with Danny McGough and Greg Boaz - is a blur of magic.
Paul Body is at left with his camera, getting better shots than mine.
These Are The Times Of L.A.
1-18 Nearly a whole page about a Van Morrison concert. What can be said that hasn’t already been?
1-31 Columnist Michael Hiltzik, on Carly Forina: “Since her firing in 2005 she hasn’t had another corporate job and has been reduced to running for president.” Hee hee ... slow news day. “World Briefing” breaks the news that a painting seized in Istanbul “looks like a Picasso.” No verification, or byline on this nothingness ... A hospital allowed nearby residents to maintain a neat garden on their property, and now wants to kick them out because it’s overgrown with weeds. A “leader” says, Gee, we don’t garden in the winter - we didn’t understand the agreement! Out, damned idiots ...
2-1 Joe Mozinga tells the plight of seafront homes sliding from eroding hills with “cannonading,” “gnashed,” “abstruse” and “a William Turner seascape.” No nod to Roget ... No byline on another swooning repeat of that lovable old black gal who steals jewelry, this time in Atlanta. She’s so persistent! Ha ha ha, we love thieves ...
2-3 Someone “who’s leased Honda” figures in the story. Caption-writer, learn your possessives ...
2-7 California Briefing: “Merced: 6 puppies saved from trash bin.” It’s a news-starved state ... “Another Oscars blind spot.” Eskimos? amputees? bald women? The world of omission is as big as the world.
2-12 “Obesity battle.” County urges eaters to eat smart. Finally ... A disgruntled firee “speaks out” that he was unfairly canned. News would be he agrees ... Lady Gaga endorses anti-rapeness, and gaga Gina Piccalo confides “it would be impossible to resent the superstar as she glided forward in a deep blue gown, her hand outstretched, her wide-eyes unwavering on her interviewer.” Interview subjects normally avoid Gina’s gaze ...
2-19 Reviewer Gary Goldstein comes down hard on a 27-minute (?) film about Tiffany’s. Turns out the store appeals only to rich people, and he’s sore. What’s amazing is his amazement ... About 30 double-column inches about Adele’s tv interview with ‘Ellen.’ (Mikael Wood: I read print, but I have a tv) ... New ABC boss is woman, black. The article-writer hesitates to pre-praise her. Just kidding ...
2-22 Guess the gender of the writer, lede on story about a disgusting drug criminal’s wife: “She sweeps into the restaurant dressed elegantly in black slacks and a sleeveless pale pink blouse, a white ribbon tied demurely at the neck.” Hint: not male ...
2-24 Obit for Sonny James hed cites/slights his “copious country hits.” Five column inches, NYTimes gave four times the space. Country, hicks, who cares ... 2-26 Almost a whole page dedicated to telling us that Chris Rock will ‘kill’ on the Oscars show. If he didn’t, would there be a retraction? ... Send in the crabs. Three small-movie reviews side-by-side with these heds: “Lost soul cliché is as dull as ever”/A far-fetched stacked deck/Cooly told drama fails to heat up.” Why didn’t they just throw away the reviews? But crits must crit, it’s their curse ...
2-28 James Queally reports trouble between Klan members and ‘protesters.’ The latter term suggests honor. Aren't the despicable Klan members protesters? ... Matt Pearce reporting about campus strife in Missouri, stirs us with the factism that a video “sparked debate - especially among activists, conservatives and journalists.” The “people talking” are people Pearce knows ...
2-29 “Sharpton fires at Hollywood.” When does he not? Considering how often he's been wrong, it's a wonder anyone listens ... I care not about the Academy Awards, but the next day’s splash of giant color photos (in three separate sections) was pretty splashy. Also a testament to the efficacy of digital photography, with presses rolling at 3 am ...
New Yawk, New YAWK Times
2-14 “An Art Scene Grows In Los Angeles.” Stop the press, the blinders have fallen. “Scrappy spaces and new outposts of pedigreed (NY-born AF) galleries inject life into the social circuit.” Hey, make a circuit with ME ...
Yes, I write
Every time I see "The Grim Sleeper" I want to spit.
The clumsy pun is an honorarium, like "The Night Stalker."
Save nicknames for heroes.
Sent to LATimes, not published, 2-21
Movies, interesting
Sorry, Haters 2005
Jayne Mansfield’s Car *
* In this, a character says he’s going to “the dollar store.”
It’s set in 1969. Should be the dime store.
Photo op. At Farmers Market on Fairfax, Diane and I went to DuPars for a 4:30 bite before the 5 o’clock Mardi Gras show on the patio.
A waitress handed me a Happy Hour menu and said “Good timing - the time you arrive is what you pay.”
I didn’t grok til I looked at that menu -
By golly, my meal was $4.30. Hey la bas!
I’m liberal, but to a degree
LATimes photo 2-29, “counter-demonstrator tries to tear the shirt off” a KKK guy.
Demonstrator? He is an attacker.
If a word makes you immune to law, there is no law.
Words, Music
I wanted to know where I’d heard the phrase “a personally autographed picture of Bo Diddley, suitable for framing” and found it - Ray Stevens, “Santa Claus is Watching You,” on lyricfreaks.com. However they are not to be trusted, as they spelled it “Santa Clause.” (The spelling continues on copycat sights. I mean sites ) ...
You do know that “Mr. Mojo Risin’” contains all the letters in “Jim Morrison” ... Fancypants TCM caption-writer trumpeted “Gold Diggers of 1937” as the penultimate of the series. But it was the last ...
The Johnny Cash “Look At Them Beans” LP is really great. Also “The Rambler,” Cash songs featuring between-cut dialogue between him and a hitchhiker (his son-in-law Jack Routh, then-husband of Carlene Carter) who, like Cash, has just lost his woman. These were released when Cash was being eased out of Columbia Records, so not recognized for these brilliant entries ...
I amass music by buying and borrowing CDs, choosing likely songs by hearing a few seconds, and listening back at random. Wed night, March 3, a song played on the iPod that floored me - “Murder In My Heart For The Judge.”
That song played on Denver radio in 1968 many times in the wee hours, and I never knew who it was. And never heard it again til 2016. Moby Grape. It was as great as I remembered it, by which I mean not so great ...
News and such
NY Times cites a boost in car sales spurred partly by a drop in gasoline prices. Do 16-year-olds account for this? Surely people NOT born yesterday wouldn’t drop tens of thousands of dollars on a negative burp in the price of this flammable commodity ...
Had a Cobb salad at The Bowery in Hollywood. Scraps of lettuce, bacon strips, one whole egg, a do-it-yourself kit. A Cobb is finely chopped ingredients piled separately in a mound. Funnily, the errant restaurant is two blocks from where Bob Cobb created that salad ... TCM is selling wine from the Coppola vineyard. He makes good movies, so it figures his wine weds well with film. (Does it?) ...
TV news excitement: video of killer, before rampage, shopping at gun store. (“This just in - footage of him that same day trying on a jacket” Justification to follow) ... Allegations that “resurface” do not acquire validation ...
Is Dunkin’ Donuts some sort of gold standard? Sez who? When one opened last year in LA’s SF valley, news-trucks swarmed. What are we, Podunk? Some money must be changing hands. I went to one (they’ve propagated) in Hollywood and had my first and last. As the Roches said, “a big nothing” ...
Cars
The hills of Hollywood are alive, with the sound of car exhausts.
Over many years, I mastered the traffic in LA fairly well: only rarely did I leave and turn back in defeat.
Now GPS has made driving unbearable.
At peak hours, I knew the best side-streets, estimating the odds of making that left-turn across a busy street at a corner with no traffic light, dodging here, there.
Now global readers crowd them all.
So I don’t leave the house between 4 and 7 pm.
I am situated just north of a business district.
It’s no fun anymore.
