Three weeks in California: a new Japanese car, a bag of potato chips, the beautiful GF, Antony and the Johnsons and the freckled American landscape. I drove for two days to get out West and finally saw Los Angeles for the first time. Cities sometimes resemble the very buildings that compose them. Disney buildings are mirrors: fractured, gray angles that make new surfaces and separate. The isolationism (hello, early twentieth-century America) and classism leave a sour taste in your iced-out mouth. But, despite all that, I like the city. The first day there, we watched water for twelve hours. Santa Monica and Venice are where I can imagine reading books on the beach is an actual physical exercise. Lift hand, turn page. Drizzly light endlessly sprinkled across navy-blue waves. There was no reason to remember anything else but the sea (Herman Melville, stand up). And I realized that for all the driving, Hollywoodism and weighty faux creative impulses in the air, normal folk (the homies at Dodger games, gold-hoop earring clad black ladies, nameless actors and Venice beach bums) still run 'tings. Next day: Basquiat at the MOCA was all I imagined as roomfuls of black genius spilled onto the glossy floors. With only half an hour to study these works we went downstairs knowing that we would see the show in Houston and watched some archived videos of Jean-Michel. Real talk as he layed it down about Andy Warhol and his collabo, him not being graffiti, hustling paintings while broke and other stuff. He always reminded me of my man Chang (formerly the DJ for dalek) when he spoke with jittery, thoughtful, hyper-intelligent phrases. And for two seconds one realizes the fictional sensibility of the past. Those that walk among us will one day be canonized and socially cemented. Like the unlidded ears Marias spoke of in A Heart So White one is also unable to not see history. Before that, we saw Margaret Kilgallen's work at Redcat in downtown LA. Redcat is one of the nicest galleries I have ever been because it looks like something out of a Wong Kar-Wai film. Minimalist seventies furniture, a huge window in the center and an intimacy most places sell crack for. Between these happenings, me and the ladyfriend ate the best Thai this side of the Pacific: you should name your future children Saladang.

These first two days were joy.

When I returned to LA a week later on my way back from San Francisco, three not-so-nice Middle Eastern kids rear-ended me. Angelinos must wear blindfolds and drive around with their hands tied behind their back--its the only way to explain their horrific driving abilities. Ask the car repair places, they bank on accidents. Weird that almost dying can make someone so much money.


p.s. Hollywood in the daytime ain't where you want to be.



PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR PART II OF "GOING BACK TO CALI, FOR THE FIRST TIME"



(insert commercial for Paxil here)