If you live in our fair city, you’ve seen Hollywood production crews on location sometimes around town.
One recent morning, I’m sipping a triple espresso on ice outside Sweet Lady Jane Café & Bakery when a guy – sunglasses dangling on vest – appears at my table saying:
“You’re in my shot.”
I see lights and a camera behind him. A black clapperboard chalked up with the word, “SiliQ”. His shot’s probably for one of those pharmaceutical commercials that seem to last for five minutes. A tall actress stands at the corner of 17th Street: fortyish, pale blue blouse and slacks. She’s about to stroll along Montana Avenue, playing one of the attractive people you see in the ads, living life to the fullest.
“Can you move?” asks the director.
“No thanks,” I reply.
“Huh?”
“I’m fine, really.”
“No … we’re filming here.”
There is no filming notification posted on my table. No blue sawhorses around, marking the crew’s territory. He says this will take fifteen minutes – tops. No problem, I say. I’ll just finish up my book (Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth – highly recommended!), overdue at our local library across the intersection.
photo by Satsui Nohado
“You’re not gonna move?”
“Can’t you just maybe move over a little, so I’m not in your shot?”
“You want me to re-set my entire crew.”
“What I want is for you to buy me a coffee.”
“Oh, come on!”
No, you come on, Doc Hollywood. I’m only here twenty-five years, but Santa Monicans know how this game gets played. I say (as the kids do today), “All. I’m. Asking. For. Is. Another. Espresso.” Preferably iced.
He says flatly, “You’re really gonna do this.”
I sense frustration. Exasperation escalates. Familiar juices stirring up inside me – which happens sometimes on caffeine, or alcohol or drugs. So now I’m set to go off on the guy with, like, “Get the (bleep) out of my face, you (bleeping motherbleeper)!“ That’s when anger management class kicks in. And what we learned last night was: “Anything can happen.” Meaning: I get to decide – in the space between feeling the emotion and expressing it – how I respond. Our therapist Greg says, “Freedom is between.” His methods for your madness include: taking deep breaths; asking yourself what would be a better outcome than blowing your stack; and why mess with some person’s poor life? (Even if he is a jerk who could easily come across with a cup of coffee.)
I dial it down. “Keep it on the d” – which is what my girlfriend calls it. Meaning: be deliberate. Proceed with all deliberate speed. The director asks if I could maybe slump down in my seat because I’m just at the edge of his frame. Can do, boss! A tall woman in pale blue – with a new prescription for life – passes my table, strolling west along the avenue …
“Cut! Moving On!”
You know, it’s amazing how a work of art can affect you. (Holding a mirror up to one’s nature, etc.) Philip Roth’s antihero in Sabbath’s Theater – Sabbath – is a sixty-something, ornery loser, fighting everything he hates in the world. I just turned sixty-something, and owe seventy-five cents for an overdue book. I hand a buck across the counter to Kathy, one of the delightful SMPL Montana Branch librarians, and say: “Keep the change! I support your fine institution!” She smiles. Kathy lives here, too, and knows I am not to be messed with.
Speaking of conversations, the other day in a New York Times’ new feature called “Here to Help,” came this offering: HOW TO HAVE MORE ENGAGING EVERYDAY CONVERSATIONS.
Wow! The New York Times has spoken! I guess I don’t have to offer any more tips now do I?
I’ll link to the article at the bottom of this column, but here is the opening of their story:
” Ask people what they miss most about college, and many will mention something similar: the intellectual stimulation of living near hundreds of thousands of potential friends, studying physics, psychology and literature, with the time to talk over a meal or some drinks late into the night. But there are ways to keep that conversational spirit alive no matter where you are. Here are three pieces of advice.
Unite around a common interest
Be friendly, open and polite
Don’t overthink it “
I want to add these most excellent convo kickstarters from my friend Nick O’Connor, lines he says he heard Spalding Grey try out:
What do you do for fun?
What happened to you on the way over here?
So as I head to a college reunion in Middletown, Connecticut, I’ll leave you this link to the Times column and make sure that as I walky the old campus I talky into the night with me old college chums…
How do you make conversation at the border? With those super-serious federal agents on the line between Mexico and the U.S.?
Recently I crossed the border and came right back again. I’m no coyote; I was the boyfriend. Aviva is an Israeli and I was helping her get a new visa. She was required to leave the country every six months to get a new visa in order to come back for six more. During those six months, she did grad school experiments at UCLA. Brilliant woman.
To make it more than just a quick turnaround, we drove down to Rosarito Beach for a romantic weekend. I love Mexico and showed Aviva where Americans go to retire in cliff houses that cost less than $100,000, while the same would be $4 million in El Norte. Having trekked through India and Tibet, Aviva said to her Rosarito, “looks like Gaza.”
Oh well. Lots of sand I guess.
After all day at the Tijuana consulate, processing her visa, we drank celebratory smoothies, got some jicama to take back to my mother and bought seashell necklaces because beautiful little children broke our hearts selling them to us.
After another day down there, we drove back north, sitting for an hour before getting back into the good ol’ USA. But first we were greeted by an American officer in green fatigues at the welcome-back booth. And here’s a fine how-do-you-do: after glancing at our passports, he slapped an orange sticker onto my windshield and only said with a single wave of his hand, “The brown building over there.”
Secondary Inspection Area.
Uh oh.
Suddenly a blue-clad officer-slash-agent came out of the brown building and appeared at the passenger window, speaking Hebrew.
So that’s how to converse with a border guard: Speak their language! (Not me, but Aviva sure could.)
Somehow we’d found the Border Patrol’s “Middle East expert.” A friendly young agent named Kohn. Kohn said Aviva was the second Israeli he helped today. (Or delayed, depending on how you look at it.)
“You know, it would take a lot longer if you didn’t get me,” Kohn bragged. “I’m your one-man homeland security.” I’m thinking, hey, this is the busiest border crossing in the world. Why not just try and have an enjoyable conversation?
Israel, said Kohn, “is a special interest country.” That meant — he told Aviva he was really sorry– he had to “treat her this way, like all the Arab countries.”
(Later, on that U.S. Customs Comment Card where you evaluated whether “the officer was: patient/courteous/careful/abused his authority/rude/or unprofessional,” Aviva could add: “Apologetic.”)
There is a convincing swagger to these agents. I heard a another guard nearby demanding, “Papeles!” These are busy, no-nonsense individuals. Our agent Kohn looked like he could easily toss my Toyota back over the border. In fact, he busted people while we waited: two guys with tattoos and an American flag on the back of their California pickup.
“Smuggling previous deports,” Kohn informed us as we watched them being led away. He meant they were a coyote and a rider.
Turns out, Aviva needed an “I-94” form. That’s what Kohn said, reading her passport. A visa says you are allowed to enter the United States and the I-94 reports when you entered.
He noticed something else on her passport and asked her: “Why were you in Jordan?”
It was 1997, she told him. Every Israeli went to visit Jordan. It was okay to do that then.
He wanted to know what she did at the university.
“Research biology.”
“All it takes is a little vial,” he warned. “It could kill a lot of people.”
But Aviva looks like Aviva so he kept smiling. Kohn told us he didn’t like Mexico. Then he told us why: “They say there’s a hundred thousand dollars on our heads. Every one of us who works here.”
Suddenly his shift was over and he had to go grab another agent to run Aviva’s parents’ names though the database. We sat another 40 minutes, observing two playful “explosive detection canines” being petted by a few officers. Such comical pups!
We saw Mexicans walking by with their hands behind their backs. We saw a plastic bag of pot as big as a bed pillow. Confiscation is an impressive thing — unless it’s being done to you. I worried they’d find my hunk of jicama. Or the generic Viagra I purchased in one of the many Tijuana farmacias — “Que es disfuncion erectile?” — for my buddies back in Los Angeles.
“This is unbelievable,” said Aviva as one bust after another went down around us. “Look, he goes to a car,” she pointed to a sniffing spaniel.
“Dogs always go to cars,” I said, hot and tired after two hours now.
After Aviva’s parents check out on the computer, she paid $6 for the I-94. (The visa was $104, about a thousand pesos) Soon we were driving in California. I told her how I really didn’t believe in borders. We should be free citizens, like that philosopher whatsisname wrote, “students of the world with no princes over us.”
“You have many ideas,” Aviva said. “Why don’t you run for president?”
I thought of Trump and the big border wall he wants to build. Aviva said she wants me to take her to Canada to do this next time.
150 miles later, we reach home with the visa and smuggled jicama.
The fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time.
David Foster Wallace
I’m not fearless. But I will try and talk to anyone. Even a rock:
See the large boulder above my head? This is your intrepid folk journalist covering breaking news: part of an embankment is crashing down onto the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu, California.
I interviewed stuck drivers, highway repair people. Later I interviewed the rock.
Heck, I’ll interview anyone.
(with Sigmund Freud)
But a folk journalist mostly prefers talking to real folks. Good folks like you and you and you too out there. (A publisher saw me do it in a restaurant and suggested I write a book about it called, “PLEASED TO MEET ME.” That’s taken from the title of an lp by the band The Replacements.)
My niece noticed how I draw conversation out of her three year-old. She says I should hire myself out as a Kid Whisperer.
You know, borrow children from their parents and bring them back more conversant.
Is there a market for such a skill?
And how does kid whispering work?
When the toddler describes an action he recently took — he went to the playground, had pizza, or a bowel movement, etc — I follow with:
“And then what happened?”
“And then what?”
“What happened next?”
If he describes the picture on the page of the children’s book he’s reading, I’ll say: “Go on!”
When I do this, I’m imitating my grandmother, Adeline Krasnick of blessed memory, a great conversationalist known to all as Nana. Nana always seemed so interested in what we had to tell her. “Go on!” is sort of like saying, “You don’t say,” which Nana also said frequently. (Funny how saying you don’t say actually stimulates conversing.)
And sometimes, my three year-old grandnephew will go on and tell me more.
Here I am about to do some kid whispering with him:
Every difficult conversation, starts with a sentence.
As seen on VEEP, an HBO show, April 24 2016
My friend Stu sent me the following vimeo. In it, his son Zachary is trying to get his convo on with a member of the opposite sex. Short and sweet and to the point about those feelings you feel under pressure to be yourself in a youthful one-to-one:
“This button’s goin’ on eBay,” says the security guard guiding us to our seats at the Springsteen concert in the L.A. Sports Arena Tuesday night, the first of three shows before they tear “the dump” down. That’s the name Bruce gave it and the night is billed that way: The Dump That Jumps.
I took this picture of the button [Above] pinned to the chest of the guard. Her name is Gloria and I tell her Bruce wrote a song about her, but I don’t sing it to her, I just want a picture before her button goes on eBay.
An Open Conversation to The Ladies Who Loge
Dear You Two Gals who were near me singing full-throated like me into the face of that blast back, the kind you can only receive from a nine-piece rock and roll band playing live. Such a high-spirited musical message, delivered with unstoppable untoppable energy. The E Street eight pretty much blew me away.
I also enjoyed almost sitting with you two at the concert last night. You may have been in the Loge section behind me (on the Arena Risers) but I felt we really connected. Especially when I waved and looked at you often back there. Like we were all family, didn’t you?
Springsteen makes that happen in the hall.
“He seems like such a nice guy,” my sister sitting next to me says. Yes. Look at all the friends he has. He’s got lots. And when we all sing “Wrecking Ball” together, because that’s what’s coming to the Sports Arena after the band’s last concert this weekend, we perform it as a farewell tribute. More than ten-thousand of us; it feels like a civic moment, one that we shall never see the likes of again.
Probably. Right?
I mean, just as JFK will only be nominated once in his life and it took place in this building in 1960, these will be the last shows here, although Bruce began playing here in the 1980s.
JFK got Democratic nomination at Sports Arena in July, 1960
The Los Angeles Memorial Coluseum Sports Arena. Just below the USC campus. JFK was right here at the dawn of rock and roll, the Beatles and all of that hope.
Bruce may be God for a lot of people in here, but it’s Nils Lofgren who puts the shiver in me. Drove it in deep, rounded it off, spun it around. He’s a swirling dirging droning guitar dervish. He stuck in the shiv and I shook for the life of me. (Nils is a mad hatter who used to do backflips on stage too)
So energetic! At some points the show was too much really — too much energy. I had to sit down. Like when they did, “Baby I’m a Rocker,” immediately I thought well, “Baby no, I’m not a rocker.”
Not like that, anyway! I mean where do they get it? This family band who swear they, “would drive all night/ just to buy you a pair of shoes/and to taste your tender charms.” That’s deep, deep love.
Soon come thoughts of like, who am I to be receiving all this? What did I do to deserve these inspiring stories of faith, hope, anger, rebellion, imprisonment, freedom, sex and love. So energetic, as I said, all lined up nine in a row like that! Like BRUCE: THE MUSICAL. Playing every song in a row from The River lps create a concept kind of concert. His up and down adventures and finally breaking free leaving home on “Independence Day” with a plaintive cry from his harmonica. Other songs popped up like double bubble bubblegum Bruce, especially “Hungry Heart,” a branded pop topper all the way (and his first #1 single). But I looked and you two were definitely happy hoppy teeny-bopping, recognizing we are family when Clarence Clemons’ nephew seems to hit every single sax note originally blasted by the Big Man.
I need to sit down, take a drink of water and think about this. Okay, here’s my energy: I’m living in that Dylan world where “it’s doom alone that counts.” First my father went, then my favorite uncle, now the near and dear older brother I never had. It’s too much doom doom doom and did I mention I’m trying on my third SSRI this week?
So thanks Boss. Appreciate the release. This religious experience I only get from live rock and roll.
I am happy to hear him play “Human Touch.” I saw you singing it up there in the loge behind me. A song about conversation, after all:
You might need somethin’ to hold on to When all the answers, they don’t amount to much Somebody that you could just to talk to And a little of that human touch
Wow. You gals looked like you were having such a great time. In my mood it sounds at times like The Dirges and Drones concert. The crush of two pianos and five guitars at one point a buzz snapping at my head in high pitch like the sound mix was off — probably my hearing was.
“One fast song, one slow,” right, that’s Bruce at heart as I explained to my sister. He’s more than heart. He is the heart and soul of integrity. Singing, “Two hearts are better than one/two hearts can get the job done” sends a straight ahead gut-or-just-above-it-level truth that gets into everyone who sings along.
I believe in the love that you gave me I believe in the faith that can save me I believe in the hope And I pray that some day it may raise me Above these Badlands
For the ones who had a notion A notion deep inside That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive
I would follow his stirring storytelling anywhere. And I have for so many years, seeing him play in NYC, D.C. and England. No wonder it is meaningful for me. Overwhelming at times, this fullness brings tears. Wondering how I will get through this “Lonesome Day,” Bruce asks me to join in :
And you know it will be, or it is at least right now, which brings such tremendous release.
Speaking of dirging and droning and weeping, how sad was the band’s rendition of the title cut? “The River” started down and then at the chorus dropped another notch entirely, like the song just drops off the table in a change of gears, like the slowed-down chorus in “Strawberry Fields.” [SEE PREVIOUS WALKY.TALKY POST where George Martin explains how he edited together two sides of that Beatles classic] But this seems the darkest, hardest slog the show has to pull through:
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true/Or is it something worse?
And a ghostly feminine “woooooooooo” reaches from “The River” into another realm (LA TIMES says it was Bruce in falsetto). Church comes with “The Rising” as Bruce stands in stark white light and “Lonesome Day” brings the group hug everyone needs. Then comes the Benediction of “Thunder Road” and we hear it thunder as only arena rock can, while you’re walking up the concrete steps underneath on the way out.
Oh-oh come take my hand/Riding out tonight to case the promised land
The Beatles are Love and Bruce is Togetherness. All of us dancing in the dark trying to write our story. A union prayer book as big as the world. We use it when we sing and rejoice, sharing one voice. And of course, following Bruce’s story. His myth. A helluva lot better than following the Ted Cruz myth. That path is so depressing, aint it, death and sickness all around –if they’d told me this was what adulthood was really about I’d have tried to have more fun as a young person. More fun with you ladies in the Loge!
My sister describes it this way when I drop her off at her hotel in Santa Monica: “Music surpasses life. You know?”
Wow. That was something I’d never thought of before.
“You’re right,” I say.
“What’s the word I’m looking for?” she asks and then Googles it:
“’Transcends.’”
Yes! She has had a transcendent experience. Just like me. Still believing in the power of music to transcend our daily lives. Now to take the energy from this concert and spread it wherever we go. It will take us a while to recover, hopefully.
