Local Teen Killed

A young man was shot to death a couple of blocks from my house.

The LAPD blog has some of the details.

Apparently no coverage in the LA Times. The Times doesn't care about my neighborhood.

Harsh Times

Roommate Gil and I caught the movie Harsh Times over at the Magic Johnson Cinema in Crenshaw. I usually don't go down to the Magic Johnson to see movies, since the seats are a little uncomfortable, but, the Crenshaw District seemed a more appropriate to see a movie about South-Central, even if that part of the Shaw is way Buppie. Pity there isn't a cinema in the heart of South-Central. Avalon and Florence, perhaps.

The movie is about a shell-shocked ex-soldier and his buddy in South LA who are torn between their old-neighborhood ways and trying to make the jump into something more legit.

Christian Bale is very watchable.

The film takes place over a week while the main charaters are looking for work, spending their time acting like the young wannabe bangers they used to be. But the ex-soldier, now quite traumatized, can't navigate and change gears between street life, soldier's life, corporate life, and love, and ends up hurting everyone.

In a way, the movies is about identity: Everyone in this town has to be different versions of themselves depending on what neighborhood they're in.

One critic said the plot was pretty thin, but, I liked that. It is more of a character study, and a slower film that you might guess from the trailers.

I was impressed with the dialog, flipping between corporate English, Chicano English, Spanish. I got it, but, I wonder just how comprehensible this film is to Regular Joe. Even so Christian Bale's accent, and Freddy Rodriguez's accent as well, just didn't fit the words they were saying. They just don't sound Angelino.

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My Space's Johnny Boy and Jon
are two other bloggers that saw the movie.

Tale

The first gay bar was La Avispa in San Jose, Costa Rica, when we were all 20 years old. I was there with some anglo students from the University of California. I don't remember how I felt, but, it was difficult for me to be there, around the gayness, the alcohol, and the cigarettes. I used to be so pure.

Years passed.

Mark was the first. British, fair thinning hair, a little shorter than me. Mark was a friend of Lawrence Moala, a aboriginal Kiwi living with Rich and me in Catford.

On our second of three dates, we took the tube back to a house on the nice part of town, where he was staying. We made out in the kitchen where he cooked. Him standing and me sitting on the counter. We watched the footie on the couch and were together upstairs. I only saw him once after that, retreating from my new-found freedom.

Roger was probably second. Midwestern, part native American, an urban cowboy with the belt buckle to prove it. When I lay with him, I couldn't help but run my fingers over the knob in his collarbone where a break had healed badly. He'd broken it at a rodeo when he was young. I would sit in his bedroom and watch him practice the pipes.

Tony was true rough, a near homeless skinhead sometime junkie that we took in after he got out of prison. He was from the old neighborhood: years before, I used to hang out at with him and his girlfriend before he got into trouble. All the time in the prison yard had made him tough. Tony was basically straight, but he got me off anyway. I kicked him out when I found out he was using meth, but, I miss him to this day. I saw him a couple of years later with his new wife.

Cory was young and wore his heart on his sleeve. I tried to keep him at a distance, so that I wouldn't hurt him too much when I left, and in doing so I hurt him a lot. He never understood how I could be with him and still see no future in us, as if love could somehow overcome the fortress around my heart.

Andrew knew my heart wasn't in it for the time we were together. He could read me so well. His insight frightened me. He was skinny and strange. He was, on paper, everything I wanted, but, he was a grown up. I wasn't ready to be a grown up. I wanted another shot at young love.

Of all of them Andrew is the only one to have given me a gift: a rubber duck.

Brian was two days and one night on AIDS Lifecycle 4. A hard-drinking bartenter and artist from Philly, he was everything I'd ever hoped for, and fate was cruel to introduce me to him and then take him away. I was too sensible to track him down afterwards, and I regret it.

Of all of them, he is the only one for whom I have a photo.

There were others, fleeting, whose names I can't remember.

I once wanted to be married for life. Still do, I guess. But sometimes all you can hope for is life with some of the rough edges filed off.

A Shift in Power, Sort Of

For me, this election was indeed a referendum on the president and the Iraq war. Usually I pick and choose my candidates based on how the represent So Cal, but, this time I went straight blue. I don't know if it will help or hurt.

Thousands of American soldiers have died, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died.

If I drove my car instead of riding my bike, did I kill them?

If I drive the 30 miles from my house to my fancy job, instead of seeking a closer house or a closer job, did I kill them?

If I ran the heater instead of putting on a sweater, did I kill them?

If I threw up my hands and waited for an election instead of marching in the street, did I kill them?

If I marched in the street and added to our political polarization, did I kill them?

If I voted for Feinstein and Watson, did I make things better?

I don't know.

Sometimes peace, bread, work, and freedom are more important than ideology. Sometimes the ends don't justify the means.

Election Day at Last

At 7:00am, I walked the 8 blocks to the local elementary school cafeteria to cast my vote in the current election. It was a brilliant sunny morning with a cloudless Santa-Ana-cleaned sky. There were two separate polling places in the cafeteria. My polling place was at the "orange" table.

There were 5 poll workers at the table, African-American, mostly elderly women. One looked me up by last name to find my address and had me sign next to my name. Three others checked identical lists of addresses and crossed me off. Internally, there was that feeling I get as a white person claiming my stake as a member of the neighborhood in front of my a group of black neighbors.

The election form for Los Angeles is a long narrow card with a grid of circular dots. It slots into a plastic frame where white cards with names of candidates and propositions have black arrows that point to dots on the form. A small, stubby black pen is tied to the plastic frame and is used to ink the dots. I was dissapointed to find that the arrows on the white cards didn't point exactly to the dots but instead a little below them, sometimes making it less that clear which dot I was supposed to choose.

I took the ballot to the last election worker at the table, where she tore off the ballot receipt from the top and gave it to me, and then placed the inked section into a locked box.

From what I could tell, at 7:30am at Virginia Road elementary school polling place, all was well. No bogus security guards, no electioneering, no corrupt Diebold voting machines, no unnecessary scarcity of ballots or voting machines. I hope it stays that way.

I was so poor...

I ran across an article on Yahoo News about a poor high school's debating team. The first line of the article begins...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Over the years, Jane Rinehart has taught a debater so poor that his home was heated with a kitchen stove cranked up to 500 degrees with its door open and the burners blasting.

Hey! That's what we did when I was a kid. I didn't realize I was a poor inner-city youth.

;-)

Obsession and Video Games

I have always been obsessive by nature, and nothing brings it out in me more than videogames. I can't just play a videogame, I have to finish it.

There a just a handful of videogames that I walked away from unfinished: Tomb Raider Chronicles, Jak 2, Tony Hawk 4. It still bothers me that I couldn't finish them.

But one thing I do try not to be is a completionist, a one-hundred-percenter. I probably never got more than 80% complete on any of the Grand Theft Auto games, and I certainly didn't get all the special weapons from Final Fantasy X.

The reason I never make the 100% is because the last remaining tasks to get the complete are always so boring.

So I've done all the missions in Bully, and I'm picking up a few extra percent just to see what's left. I've mowed 15 lawns, bought hundreds of items of clothing, played enough of the boring carnival games to get enough tickets to buy all the prizes. Nothing left to do but collect a bunch of G&G cards and smash a bunch of gnomes. But I can't go on. Too boring.

I mean c'mon. Mow 15 lawns? Is this entertainment? No. It is just like my other weekend chores.

So, I'll give up now at 90.7%.

Circa Survive, Thursday, Rise Against, Nov 4 at the Bren

On the way to the Bren, the other headlight on my already one-eyed truck burnt out, so I drove there with my high beams on, which made me look like an asshole.

I knew the first opener "Billy Talent", and I have the latest Rise Against CD, but, I didn't know much about Circa Survive or Thursday.

Last time I saw Billy Talent was at the Juno awards a couple of years ago. I missed Billy Talent this time since I was holding tickets and waiting for a lost buddy to show up. Irvine and UCI can be confusing places to drive around for the uninitiated.

Circa Survive: I don't know what to say. I had some difficulty with the singer, and couldn't get into it. They remind me a little of old Radiohead or perhaps Ours, but, the singer wasn't always on pitch. It was distracting, with their cover of the Duran Duran song "Ordinary World" being particulary bad.

They had their fans, and they did fine, but, if a band is going to be about the singing, the singing should be better.

Thursday: Solid, energetic. The lead singer was skinny and a little glam, with echoes of AFI. I liked them enough, but, they were always blasting away full force. There were only a couple of songs that layed down a groove and then built up to something, and I wished there was more of that. They played their single "5, 4, 3, 2, 1" which I'd heard of someplace.

Rise Against: I was a little burnt out by the time the took the stage. I started off the show sitting in the stands, since my blown-out hip throbbed from all the standing.

But eventually I couldn't help but be drawn in. The greatest song of the main set was, for me, probably "Drones". Before the song began, the singer said something like "I still believe that people can change things and that music can change things." There, in the pit, among those strangers, I had one of those rare experiences when I was present in the moment, not listening to the never-ending negative monologue in my head that tells me that I'm different and unworthy and evil and alone. For that moment I was unified and united with my comrades. Those moments are what make punk great.

In the encore, they did "Swing Life Away". I love that song so much. I long to be part of the image it evokes.

But, as always, I'm walking back to my car and the spell passes, and I yet again feel different and unworthy and alone.

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Some other bloggers that saw the show: Roger, Wolfer