[Los Angeles]From the belly of the beast***

*** This post has been edited since its original posting to reflect actual events.

I’m writing from Los Angeles, where Jared has come for a class and I tagged along for the company. I brought my bike, and the idea is to keep myself entertained with art. LA has a lot of art to see, it turns out.

In other news, my ALC “tan” on my right leg is peeling. Also, I forgot to tell you about the time a bird pooped on me mid-ride.

We drove down here on Sunday afternoon. It went pretty quickly (the company was good), but did take longer than the Google estimated 6 hours. We stopped a couple times in “America” for milkshakes and Starbucks coffee. Jared said “I would have thought that you’d have a problem with Starbucks.”
I replied “I do, but there aren’t any other options. Anyway, what’s great about Starbucks is that now you can get good coffee anywhere in the world.”
Jared: “Yeah, there was a while there when, in parts of the country, the coffee was really bad. It was as if we were in the coffee Dark Ages, and Starbucks started the Renaissance.”
Me: “Sometimes I like bad coffee. You know, it’s bad coffee about being bad coffee.” And, to my surprise, he shook his head.

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) downtown. It was funny because it appears you can't get there on foot. I took the bus, which took an hour, and then walked a couple blocks to the underground loading area where I took an elevator to the main entrance thru a parking garage. Anyway, the art was good.

They have a Rauschenberg exhibit going now. I read recently that he is the most successful living artist, based on the kind of money he gets for his work. I’ve always liked the way he “combines” every day items into his painting, and way he uses color, to create these seemingly random but really quite compelling canvasses. Of course, it helps that he likes chickens and goats (and puts stuffed ones into his work).

I watched the film on him for a short while and learned some interesting things. One friend told a story about Rauschenberg having a bunch of bamboo polls up on the wall in his studio. The friend said, I really like your work here, but I don’t get what’s going on with the bamboo polls. Rauschenberg replied, I bet you’ve put things up on the wall before that you don’t know what they mean. To that I say: LET’S ALL PUT SOMETHING UNEXPECTED UP ON THE WALL THIS MONTH. Maybe it will change your life. Rauschenberg said he works for maximum lack of control so that something might happen that he didn’t think of. This seems like a great idea to keep life unexpected and work fresh.

Also at the museum, I saw a film called “call waiting” where several characters show a story by talking on the phone, in their native languages (subtitles) and English, in various locations. They are working, at home in their kitchen, in a bar, etc., and they receive other calls, either thru call waiting or on other phones there. Between the languages and phone lines, the piece was an interesting fairytale on contemporary American communication.

While riding the bus back to the hotel to meet Jared, a woman asked the bus driver in Spanish which bus she should ride to get home. They had an extended conversation where she spoke Spanish and he responded in English. Eventually, it became clear to her that he didn’t even speak Spanish; he spoke Italian. It also turned out that she was on the wrong bus.

Mid-intersection where the bus was attempting to turn left (it took a while), I noticed a woman attempted to cross the street. She was speaking on her mobile phone and pushing the pedestrian signal activation button constantly. I thought to myself “that’s how those things get broken.” But on the other hand, I understood her frustration. She can’t jaywalk because this is LA and there are too many cars. Her only recourse to having to wait too long at the corner is to keep pressing the button. It’s no consolation to her that it took the bus a long time to make a left turn there too….

We went to Santa Monica last night and Venice the night before. SM was a hit. We walked along the beach with our shoes off. I’ve got this idea that I want to be able to move each of my toes independently, and I heard that walking in sand is a good way to teach those muscles. I waded and forced Jared to get his feet (and pant legs) wet too, and the water was warm and soft.

We decided we wanted tacos, and of course there’s a problem with deciding exactly what you want to eat when you’re in a city and neighborhood you don’t know. SM is pretty up-scale, and we walked along pedestrianized 3rd Street, where street performers dominate and there are white Christmas lights on all the trees. It took some trial and error, but we found a place with tasty fish tacos. Jared said it was even better than what he had imagined.

Venice appears not to be much of a night spot. We found this place on citysearch which people said had excellent sushi and a relaxed “beachy” ambiance. On the real beach, the stalls stood empty and dark, looking kind of dirty and pathetic.

We're staying at the airport, which kinda sucks, but it does mean there are a lot of buses for me to take around. The hotel has a decent gym, pool and hot tub in addition to a view of the runway. I spent some time yesterday morning enjoying the fitness facilities. But today, alas, I just slept in. For some reason we didn’t get the lights off for sleeping until after 1 AM.