I'm done bashing LA...

Just in case this Law of Attraction stuff is legit (what you think is what you get), I've decided to stop bashing LA in this blog and in conversation... to stop focusing on the negative aspects of living here. I've had two people tell me that they hated LA for at least the first year they lived here, and then one day they realized they loved it and still do years later. So to attract that kind of positive experience, here are some things that I really like in LA:

• The Getty Center is an impressive art collection in an architecturally stunning complex of buildings and plazas situated in a jaw-droppingly gorgeous landscape.

• A few months ago some mystery guerilla-urban-artist installed what I came to call "The Yellow Birds of Happiness" at random intersections around town. Every time I saw one of these whimsical birds dangling over a busy intersection, it put a smile on my face and lifted my spirits! They were up for weeks, but one by one they've disappeared just as mysteriously as they arrived.
  

• Our apartment building has a heated swimming pool! How cool is that?
  

• We've met some really nice people in our building and elsewhere - and, of course, we love our existing friends and family members who live in LA.
  

• I've just begun to discover a thriving LA bicycle community online. I have great expectations that bicycling will be the key that unlocks Los Angeles for me and gives me a place to fit in, just like it did in Austin. Here's a bike blog I like from a part of town we want to move to.

• I enjoy the novelty of being able to see a beach and ocean whenever I want to.

• Also online, I found the Dervaes family of Pasadena - striving for an ecologically sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle while building an organic farming business on their standard little suburban plot. Their efforts inspire me.
  

• I enjoy watching local TV host/interviewer Huell Howser. With childlike curiosity, gregarious cheerful demeanor, and a big goofy microphone in hand, he goes places we'd all like to go and asks the questions we'd all like to ask, and he always seems genuinely excited about his subjects. Check out this amateur video some dude shot while he was exploring a new city park as he boldly interrupts Huell interviewing the superintendent of the park for his TV show. Without skipping a beat Huell starts to interview the dude with both cameras rolling. It's beautiful. Huell is cool.
  

• And the latest wonderful thing I've discovered here is the Lake Shrine. It's a little-known meditation center with a small lake surrounded by beautiful gardens and lots of little benches to sit on and contemplate everything or nothing at all. It's incredibly peaceful, and open to the public, and FREE! Lorie & I went there last weekend for the first time and took these pics:

This site began life many decades ago (1940's?) as an excavated hole to get fill dirt for nearby construction. Over the years runoff from the hills and a nearby spring keeps the lake filled.


Why is there an authentic replica of a Dutch windmill on the shore? Because this used to be the home of some movie director, of course!













Shot from the windmill side of the lake.







A very cool lush shaded grotto with a curving stone bench inside just out of view to the left. The niche on the right behind the ferns contains Mary and baby Jesus. There are icons from all the major religions scattered around this property.

Extraterrestrial Folk Songs

I met up with my friend, Karen, Friday night. She suggested seeing this performance artist/singer that a friend of hers likes a lot. I don't usually like going to see performance art so much, nor live music by folks I don't know, but something got in me and I thought, 'Oh, be game, Lorie.'

So, this singer performed at this trendy vintage/clothing store on Beverly. Petite, brunette, olive skin, Norma Desmond eyes, 40s, red kimono top that was too big for her. There was a keyboard set up, and a covered table behind a mic stand. There were maybe ten people in the entire space when she and her accompanist began.

She removed the cover on the table, exposing assorted piles of squeeze toys, a Mr. Microphone, plastic whistles, miscellaneous bunches of industrial foils and tin, and some sort of antenna-thing. And, then the music started. And, then she began to sing. In extraterrestrial language.

Oh yeah, just my thing.

Thank God she had a pretty voice at least. And, the accompanist was very good - you could tell they had this sort of jazz improv vibe going between them.

But, when she stepped rhythmically on a whole bag of squeeze toys during one composition, well... Let's just say it didn't speak to me like, say, Mozart.

I was reminded of this theater festival in Austin called Frontera Fest where, years ago, Ken and I saw a performance by naked folks in full body paint setting candles on the floor to some sort of tone poem/music accompaniment. Only, our chick Friday night wasn't naked. And, that's okay by me. She didn't really need to be.

She also reminded me of another Austin musician - Guy Forsyth - because he plays a saw like a fiddle. Kind of like she played the antenna-thing to make these Jetson-esque wiggle, whooping tones.

The final sublime touch for me, for the evening, though, was watching the observant, orthodox Jewish couples with their toddlers in strollers stop in mid-step outside the big picture window of the store. Like I said, some of the actual music was catchy, and I could see them trying to figure out what language she was singing in. Was it Hebrew? Russian? It's not Armenian... Good gracious, she's singing in gibberish! And, they'd scoot past, almost a little huffy.

Ah, Culture LA-style.