Gehry Ga-reen

I should be arrested for taking this photo while driving 80 mph on the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5).

This is Frank Gehry's Team Disney building in Anaheim, housing the crack Imagineering creative crew. Unfortunately, the usual elegantly crumpled Gehry designs are reserved for the interior side of the building. But...on clear days when I drive northbound and L.A. County-bound to work, I'm showered with an amazing green glow reflected off the treated stainless steel panels. Love that. It's like opening the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, or opening the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Meandering Nothings of People I Admire

Jesus was a socialist...at least I've always thought so. He didn't discriminate and he hung out with the dregs of society; prostitutes, tax collectors and so forth and put stuck up Pharisees in their places. He influenced Ghandi who influenced Martin Luther King, who influenced Cesar Chavez and countless other people.

What's my point, you say? I have none. This is a tribute to one of my favorite actors and humanitarians, Paul Newman. When I was a kid, I used to watch whatever old Newman movies shown on TV. (Thank you, KDOC, KTLA, and KCOP!) I saw the stinker, Silver Chalice, where Newman in toga talked like a thug the entire film, and I saw gems like Hud, Cool Hand Luke, and the Hustler. It wasn't until I saw Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me about the life of Rocky Graziano that really made a fan out of me. And of course, there was Slap Shot which made me laugh my guts off.

Then I saw a documentary about Martin Luther King's famous speech about racial equality in Washington in 1963 that sealed my worship of PN. He was there, marching with MLK at a time where the klan and tons of other kooks bludgeoned those who dared participate in demonstrations for equal rights.

On a stupid note, our birthdays were only two days apart, and I'd always thought we were sorta kinspirits. We were both liberals and aquarians to boot.

Anyway, I admire Jesus' grit and Ghandi's quiet persistence. MLK's staunch belief in human dignity bowled me over as did Cesar Chavez' persistence (though he was one of the first Minutemen). Newman doesn't quite make the list of the above heroes, but he is up there with Muhammad Ali and Aung San Suu Kyi, Clarence Darrow, and the Doctors Without Borders volunteers.

BaddicusFinch gave me the book, In Pursuit of the Common Good: Twenty-Five Years of Improving the World, One Salad Dressing At A Time by Newman and A.E. Hotchner years ago, and it cemented the importance to the world of this one particular hero of mine. What a humanitarian. What a stalwart citizen. I love you man!

The Adventures of Big Boy in Downey

As a kid I loved Bob's Big Boy. I could care less about the food, and I wasn't the type to run up and hug a plastic statue with a pompadour. I was in for the free comic book, the Adventures of Big Boy. I'd grab a copy on the way into the restaurant, and I'd read front to back. I even read the letters to Big Boy...funny, I remember one from a girl oddly named Keith.

You don't see too many Big Boy restaurants anymore. Aside from the historic Bob's in Toluca Lake, you won't find too many thriving locations. And last month the one on Wilshire in Los Angeles was demo'd to make way for a BMW lot.

But...Bob's is coming to Downey, on the site of the Johnie's Broiler restaurant that was almost completely demolished without permits January 2007. The restaurant will be rebuilt to recapture the original Googie design, and with luck should be up and running next year. The mess is finally cleaned up, but those pesky taggers have had their way with the chub sign.

Yucca do it!

Our pal Lizette showed us her spiffy hillside house in Oceanside a couple weeks back. She cooked up a batch of delicious yucca with a tremendous garlic-onion-olive oil-lime (G.O.OO.L.) concoction, and ever since we've been on a huge yucca kick.

Yesterday I was in Hollywood for a conference, and I had some time to stroll the neighborhood. Couldn't miss the newish 54-unit condo development at 6735 Yucca Street. You know, it actually looks like our yucca dish. The concrete walls remind me of the yucca, and the redwood siding would be the GOOOL. Somebody really needs to keep up the landscaping (the side salad?) there...

Sherlock Holmes Doused by Guy Ritchie

Dunno about you, but a pet peeve of mine is seeing film stars in magazines dripping in bucket water looking all sexy. Madonna's done it, so has Mel Gibson, Christian Bale, and even Viggo Mortensen. How embarrassing is that. And my point is...that style of corniness should pass like gas and never be seen again.

When I heard that Guy Ritchie was going to direct a new Sherlock Holmes movie, I rolled my eyes. I read and reread the complete volumes when I was eleven, and I feel that I ought to be heard about this subject. Sherlock, after all, has been my father for years (in my head) even though he was a dope fiend. My mother, incidentally, was Irene Adler, the only person that ever eluded the great detective. Then I read that Robert Downey, Jr. was going to play the great sleuth himself.

At this point, I started picturing my father lathered in sea water, his houndstooth hat dripping over his nose and cape. Holy fuck, I though, they're going to ruin my main man. First of all, Robert Downey is SHORT and he is American. Secondly, Jude Law is going to play Watson who is TALLER than Downey.

Sherlock Holmes is over 6 feet tall. His nose is aquiline or hawkish. Downey is too pretty. Jude Law is even prettier. Watson was a military guy stationed in India. He was kinda old already. Sherlock and Watson didn't meet until they were already in in their 40's.

Please don't massacre my little world of 221B Baker Street, Guy Ritchie. Stick to your imitation Tarantino and Scorsese movies. Leave my dad alone! Don't let him roll around in the sand while you douse him with cold ocean water until his sex appeal is milked out of his pores.

Meet the Mathlete

We often wake up on weekends and take in a morning run at the Santa Ana College track. Today I was feeling kinda under the weather, so I tagged along and brought a book. Instead of reading I looked at the new (well, about a year old) athletic complex. As I admired the row of exterior metal fins, I was struck by the mathematical soundness of the design. Equal spacing, structurally correct. Maybe I was having a Beautiful Mind moment...

I used to be a math whiz. Numbers and new mathematical concepts would come easy to me, and I actually had fun solving equations. My last hurrah was probably in 9th grade when I won a tricked out HP calculator in a math competition held at Stanford University. Then I can only chalk my stagnation to laziness...spent too much time listening to the radio, fell behind on my homework, started taking long naps after school. I coasted my way through high school, and in my undergrad years I didn't take a single math class. I tested out on day one, and never looked back.

And that calculator...EzraPounded sold it on eBay a year back for about $15o. Even my depleted, laughable mathabilities of today figure that's not bad for a 20-year old contraption.

Bananas for Santa Ana

Santa Ana is the Barney Rubble of Orange County. You know, after about five television seasons in the '60s, the producers never even bothered to tell the viewers where poor Barney worked. No respect.

One of OC's more depressed cities, Santa Ana is also one of the most neglected. We have one library, for instance, and we have to pay $2.oo to rent video tapes - that's right, 2 bones for VHS! But BaddicusFinch wrote extensively the library issue, so I won't spend any more time belaboring our sad state of affairs.

While crime has let up in most OC cities, Santa Ana's went down from last year but at a lower rate compared to other cities. A few high visbility shootings have rocked the town in recent weeks. This may all sound depressing, but I have to say that I love this city. I'd lived on the Westside most of my adult life and when we moved here I was depressed as hell until we started exploring.

There's downtown Santa Ana where the Artist's Village, the Spurgeon clock tower, and my favorite pupusa spot are located, Santa Ana College where I run the track every morning, the wild parrots I see and hear everyday, and sundry other joys this city brings me.

I have to say that I despise two things about SA. One is the Bowers Museum which charges New York museum rates and screws Santa Ana residents by not giving us enough free days despite millions of dollars in grants they're getting from the city.

The second thing I hate are the stupid taggers the make our already messed up streets more crappy. I don't mind tagging - good artistic tagging like the Urban Guerrillas type with giant eggheads and such. But just ugly initials for pissing territory, forget about it. BaddicusFinch has the graffiti hotline programmed on his phone. The first sign of tagging, he calls them up.

Anyway, enough about the negative. We're near all sorts of good places like Little Saigon, a Korean enclave in Garden Grove, the Middle Eastern hub along Brookhurst in Anaheim, and a lot more. For foodies this area is Mecca.

So don't despair, Santa Ana. You are loved like our friend, Barney Rubble.