Over There

My parents drove across the country from Philadelphia to visit me in LA. Going to get pizza, we came to the intersection of Ventura and Laurel Canyon. At the time, there was a Washington Mutual bank on the corner with a mural of the history of California. In the mural is a missionary, then a cowboy, a gold prospector, and then some movie stars. The mural is still there but now it's a Chase bank. Waiting on a red light, I showed my mom and dad the protesters who gather there every Friday.

"These over here," I pointed to the group in front of the bank, "they're against the war." I pointed to a much smaller group, also holding signs, on the other side of the street. "And over there, they're for the war."

I rarely discuss politics with my parents, even when it's an election year. Growing up, I got my views shaped when my dad gave me a used, hardcover Doonesbury collection for Christmas because he knew I liked comics. On both coasts, I've registered as "undecided" and the best part about the first time I voted is that the polling booths were set up where a scene from The Silence of the Lambs had filmed. It was in the lobby of the Soldiers & Sailors military museum which, for the movie, was the courthouse that Hannibal Lecter escaped from.

Dad stays pretty free of affiliations as well. When the shooting range made it mandatory that all members join the NRA, he finally signed on and was mailed a Charlton Heston silver-bullet key chain and an NRA bumper sticker. He gave me the key chain even though I already had a .38 bullet on my key ring. He'd made it for me by drilling a hole through a live round. Later, I saw a thin line of almost unnoticeable text on his van's bumper. It was the NRA sticker. He'd cut out the parts he didn't agree with and the tiny sentiment was all that remained.

On Laurel, my dad drove past both groups without honking for either. Continuing toward Enzo's Pizzeria, he asked me, "How about them, what are they for?"

"Who?"

"Them folks over there."

Dad pointed at a collection of a dozen Los Angelenos standing together, shoulder to shoulder, by the side of the boulevard.

"Those people," I informed him, "are waiting for the bus."

Boy's Life

I see the back cover of this month's Playboy is an ad for a Batman video game and I joke, wondering if this month's Boys' Life magazine has an ad for Canadian Club whisky. I call this another example of an American generation of man-boys and then skim the issue to see if this month has a cartoon by Dean Yeagle (Playboy cartoonist and animator of the Cookie Crisp cereal's Cookie Crook).

It does.

Maybe, as a generation, we know that true sophistication isn't something you can buy. So why spend your money on it? I've never ordered a round of gimlets but, at a Hollywood bar, I've ordered s'mores for everyone at my table. It came like the fondu of yesteryear, with a Sterno flame surrounded by bits of chocolate, M&Ms, and graham crackers. Wooden sticks like long chopsticks were provided to roast the marshmallows on.

At a restaurant in West Hollywood, my meal of linguini and muscles ended with a complimentary bowl of penny gum balls being brought to the table. As an adult, I know I can go to a store and buy my own gum balls. But I still got a thrill when my childhood wish of being able to just reach into a gum ball machine and grab all I wanted was finally realized. I picked out the red ones first, until I had enough to blow a bubble.

Since moving to LA, I've been to two all-adult parties at Chuck E. Cheese (they serve beer and we couldn't be bothered to drive all the way to Dave & Busters) and two birthdays with a Spider-Man bounce house. My own birthdays have been celebrated by going roller skating at a rink in Glendale. I've been in Los Angeles too long to be sure if juvenile adults are nationwide or just here; in a town where women get braces and, in August, men start discussing what they're going to be for Halloween.

Maybe this is just proportional to our growing life-expectancy. If I'm going to live a century it's okay to still read comic books and go out to dinner in a t-shirt. Perhaps this just happens to every generation as they get their youth repackaged and sold back to them. That's why diners emulate the nineteen-fifties and ice cream shops got stuck in the teens.

Or, it's that we've put off having kids and our culture wasn't designed to continue advancing. At this age, we're supposed to be surrounded by snack food and action figures but with no kids around we just keep them for ourselves. In the mid-1990s I read an article in my hometown paper, "How To Recognize A Child Predator in Your Neighborhood." The signs it said to look for was a male, still single in his adult years, who keeps, in his home, kid's movies and video games.

I hope that's not the profile they still go by, or almost every guy I know will be under suspicion.

Big in the City

When "Pirates of the Caribbean" came out I was told by co-workers that I looked like the Commodore. "Is that who Johnny Depp plays?" I asked.

"Nope."

"Is it Orlando Bloom?"

"No, it's the guy who wanted to marry Keira Knightley."

"Uh-huh. Sounds like this Commodore character goes home alone." And he did. And in a three-cornered hat I would look a lot like the stuffy British seaman. And for a long time, that's the only movie actor I'd ever been told I look like.

But, a few weeks ago I was walking through Universal Studios, next to the fake Hollywood Sign photo spot, when a tourist called over to me, "Mr. Big!"

"What?"

"You're Big?" the middle-aged woman called to me.

"Yeah, I'm big."

"I want to get a picture with you!"

She handed off her camera to her husband and scrambled around a railing to where I had stopped. This wasn't so unusual. Sometimes a Japanese tourist will want their picture with me because I'm big. At six-two and pale I think they consider me exotic. The woman approaching me wasn't Japanese but I was glad to oblige.

"You are Mr. Big, right?" she asked. I was starting to catch on, she thought I was the actor who played Mr. Big in "Sex and the City".

"Chris Noth?" I asked, but she was already posing next to me. So, I went with it. Later, she'd have photographic evidence to tell that I was absolutely not Mr. Big but in the meantime I just played along for a woman who had come to Hollywood hoping to see someone famous. Later, I looked up the statistics of this actor who plays Carrie Bradshaw's on-and-off love interest. We're the same height and both have dark hair, though he is twenty years older than me.

When Chris (Mr. Big) Noth meets a fan, he probably says something like, "Thanks for watching," or "I do it for the fans." I had to think of something that the accomplished actor would say on the street. So, I told the woman to, "Stay sexy." Because, you know, because he was in a show called "Sex and the City."

It sounded good at the time.

The Hobo Codes

Hard times in the Information Age has its own look.  It doesn't have the aesthetic of the Great Depression.  There are no Okies or dust bowls.  The sandwich board has been replaced by big cardboard arrows and bad news in the stock market doesn't come from ticker tape, it's scrolled at the bottom of twenty-four hour news networks.

At my bank, they used to keep CNN on a television that you could watch while waiting in line.  But, now, since the next piece of bad news could be that the very bank you're standing in is in serious trouble, the station has been changed to the most tedious, banal programming that cable television offers.  The NASA channel.

Last night I went to a bankrupt Circuit City and picked over the carcass of its going-out-of-business DVD section.  All movies are twenty percent off but, like when Tower Records closed, they might go lower.  Like speculating on stocks, you have to guesstimate if a $16.00 single-disk Juno or a $7.99 Ocean's Eleven will still be there when prices drop another twenty or thirty percent.

Like the elbows on a hobo's coat, the numbers on my cell phone are rubbed bare. I've mostly memorized where the letters are as I punch blank buttons to text in Coke Rewards codes.  The twelve digit codes are printed inside of Coke bottle caps and each code is worth three points.  Like a dish-water housewife trying to fill her book of Green Stamps, I've accumulated over 4,600 points.

A while back I got a sweet ihome with my points but these days there's not much offered on the Cokerewards site except magazine subscriptions.  For 200 points I can get a twelve-pack of Coke or, for a thousand points, I can get a one day admission to Universal Studios.  Nice offer, but I work there (it's where I got all the caps in the first place).

Summer tourists leaving a few thousand bottle caps for me to cash in are not the only perk of the job.  Once, a couple tickets to a Universal movie premiere trickled their way down the totem pole to me.  I brought my room mate, Ben and we walked the red carpet.  Bright lamps lit us up like the frigging sun as on-lookers and photographers on either side of us showed their disappointment that we were nobody special.

Inside the gala event, I got a taste for how the other half lives.  Bags of popcorn were set out for folks to just walk up and take.  To drink, there were bottles of water, Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite, lined up in even rows and all for free.  After the movie, the Hollywood community left their many empty Coke bottles behind in their seats.

I could have run through the aisles like a happy rat, yanking up the trash of actors, agents and producers; shoving a galaxy of redeemable bottle caps in my pockets and shouting, "Screw the shower radio, I'M GOING FOR THE SURROUND SOUND!"

But, the premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age was a classy scene and I preferred to make it from my close-to-the-screen seat to outside the theater with the sophistication of a man who doesn't scavenge bottle caps, pirate music, or hide DVDs in a doomed store so they remain unsold until prices drop.

So, if I do go into the bread lines, or have to live in a Hooverville with fingerless gloves, it'll be with a free bottle of Coke Zero and an amazingly discounted two-disk collector's edition of Once Upon a Time in the West.

Store Credit

At Amoeba Records, on the second floor, in the horror section, under F, I found the movie that I had written. This is the first time I've seen it for sale at a store.

For Christmas, Ada gave me a two-disk, Centennial Collection DVD of Sunset Boulevard. So, I took my old copy of Sunset Boulevard to Amoeba for a trade-in toward a new movie. Along with a non-special edition The Lost Boys and a copy of Ray that was given to all Universal Studios employees, I got eight bucks of store credit.

It was while browsing that I found Five Across the Eyes in a loss-prevention hard plastic case. I turned it over to read my credit of, STORY BY. There it was in capital letters; which is nice to see because my name was cut out of the actual movie along with the rest of the opening credits.

I was so jazzed to see Five Across the Eyes at a store I took a picture of it. It was a good feeling, like a benchmark of success. Though, its being at Amoeba probably means that someone purchased it online, watched it, disliked it, said, "Screw this noise," and took it there for some store credit.

Then again, I didn't dislike the movies I had brought to Amoeba and traded-in so I could buy Easy Living (1937, written by Preston Sturgess). Perhaps this guy-or-gal just got a better copy of FAtE as a Christmas gift. Maybe he-or-she got his-or-her hands on the original, uncut, two hours and five minutes version that was shown at festivals.

At least that version has my credit in it.

The Viewing

Living in Los Angeles, there's a few things I can point to and say, "Only in LA!"

For instance, when I change out of one all black t-shirt so I can put on a different, nicer all black t-shirt. Or, like today when I drove my car to get to a brunch that was only one block away. And then, when I got there, Andy Garcia was at the next table. Only in LA!

Once, when I was going to meet a gal at a Mexican restaurant I let her know I'd be showing up well-dressed because I'd be coming there straight from a viewing. She said, "Oh, cool," and it took a moment for me to put together why she thought going to a funeral parlor to see someone who died younger than me would be cool.

"Not a SCREENING," I corrected her over the phone, "a VIEWING."

"Oh."

Another time, I was in a Blockbuster picking out a movie to rent for the night. Among the choices on the new release wall was season one of Black Tie Nights, an erotic series for Cinemax made available on DVD. I knew about it because a guy I used to work with is one of the stars and, if I wanted to spend that night watching him have simulated soft-core sex, I had a coupon.

Or, maybe I could just rent Capote or Crash or The Constant Gardner.

Then, over in the new releases that start with E was Evil Bong. Evil Bong is a comedy-horror video featuring Tommy Chong and is about, I'm just guessing, a bong that kills people. It looks cheap and dumb and not what I would normally rent except I know an actress in it. A great girl who would have me over for Bar-BQs and parties where I would play with her two big slobbery dogs as her boyfriend put something on the grill for me. Good people. And, I'd heard that in Evil Bong you can see her tits.

That was the only reason I'd ever have to rent it and the exact reason I shouldn't. I was curious but couldn't justify my watching it for any non-lascivious purpose. Sometimes, I would pick up the DVD and check out the back, looking for a better reason to rent it. Maybe Mark Mothersbaugh did the score or Harry Dean Stanton had a cameo. But the back of the box was just as bad as the front and I'd put it back knowing that if I ever did rent Evil Bong it would just be so I can hit the pause button on the breasts of a friend.

Before working my way over to G and its rows of Good Night and Good Luck I lingered around Evil Bong and wondered, again, if there was some decent way I could rationalize taking it home. I figured maybe there was something I'd missed on the back of the case when I heard behind me, "Marshall?"

Crap.

Only in LA!

It was her, fully clothed and calling my name, and I was certain that I was found out. I'd have to play it cool. "What are you renting?" she asked.

"Oh, um, I haven't decided," I said, "A new release. Or..." I waved to the wall of possibilities in which Evil Bong and her lady-parts was just one of hundreds. "Something."

"You know what I really liked?"

"What?"

"Over the Hedge."

"Really?" Over the Hedge, a non-Pixar effort of computer animation with the voice of Bruce Willis as a scheming raccoon and Gary Shandling as a timid turtle was on the other side of the store, far away from Evil Bong. I wandered over to it saying, "Maybe I'll check it out."

She was browsing for something to watch on a flight to the east coast but I had already made my selection. On her recommendation I would be renting Over the Hedge. Yes, sir, that's the movie for me. And so, that night in my room, I watched Over the Hedge and, I have to say, it's a good time. The premise is fun; woodland creatures wake from hibernation to find their forest has been turned into a planned community. As they forage for food among the houses, it becomes a fun poke at modern living and American waste. It's not as enchanting or as scathing a social commentary as Wall-E but, with a Ben Folds soundtrack and nice roster of celebrity voices, it's a good animated feature.

Unfortunately, during the lean times of the writer's strike, the actress and her boyfriend moved back to New Jersey. They've gotten married and I hope they come back to Los Angeles someday. Evil Bong, however, was taken off the new release wall at Blockbuster and has been given a new spot somewhere in the comedy section...

Never to return.

Amazon After Dark

Today in the mail I got an issue of Playboy from 1982. Yesterday, one of my room mates found an unlabeled sausage, cheese and crackers platter outside our door. Though we still don't know who left it, we ate the whole thing. I do know where the 26 year-old Playboy came from, I ordered it online very late at night from a vendor on Amazon in a bleary haze after spending all day on airplanes from Philadelphia to Burbank.

On the cover is Mariel Hemingway and the text, MARIEL HEMINGWAY GETS PHYSICAL! AN EXCLUSIVE PHOTO SESSION PLUS SCENES FROM HER DARING NEW FILM, "PERSONAL BEST". I've never seen Personal Best but I am a big fan of Star 80 and Mariel Hemingway in Star 80. Star 80 was directed by Bob Fosse, co-stars Eric Roberts, and chronicles the short life of 1980 Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten. It's an excellent movie, came recommended to me by a professor, is listed as an influence in the published script of Boogie Nights, and really doesn't get the respect it should.

At a movie memorabilia shop in Burbank, I was sifting through a discount bin for screenplays. While the good scripts were kept behind the counter on a wall, selling for about twenty dollars a piece, I was going through a pile of five-buck rejects. Among several copies of Meteor Man was the screenplay for Star 80.

"What's the matter with it?" I asked the clerk, "Is it water damaged?"

"Nah," he said, "just nobody wants it."

Like Charlie Brown and his tree that just needed a little love, I bought it and took it home. The next week, for my first birthday in California, I went to another movie memorabilia store on the same block and bought a couple of posters for my blank walls. I got Chinatown and, since they didn't have The Lost Boys, I bought an original print poster for Star 80. It's in a frame now, next to my bedroom door. As for the DVD, I put off buying it in hopes that the success of Chicago would convince Warner Brothers to put out a better version like Fox did with All That Jazz. But, the only way it's available is an insulting full screen version. And that's a shame because in addition to being a well crafted story it also captures the vibrant visual tackiness of early 80's Playboy culture.

Oh, well, I bought it anyway.

Later, flipping through one of those Playboy 50th Anniversary coffee table books, I saw two pages dedicated to one photo of Mariel Hemingway doing a nude split on a gym mat. Whoa. I pulled the photo offline and used it in my Who I'd Like to Meet portion of MySpace along with Mr T. I had to wonder what the other pictures of the EXCLUSIVE PHOTO SESSION had. I figured a few pages of tasteful nudes that were almost but not quite as awesome as the one in the coffee table book. So, on a lonesome night leading up to Christmas in LA, I went online and spent $2.82 (plus $4.50 for shipping) on the April, 1982 issue featuring an interview with Ed Koch, full page ads for men's shoes, an article about the upcoming teen releases Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Grease 2, a gauzy spread of Miss April, and the promised exclusive photo session with Hemingway.

I looked forward to its arrival like Ralphie with his decoder ring. The magazine was delivered in a discreet hand-addressed manila envelope with an illegible note of thanks inside from the vendor. I paged through it at the dining room table to find that the infamous "split" picture was the only photo from that session ever published. There was nothing new for me in this ancient gentleman's magazine. It was accompanied by stills from Personal Best and an article about Mariel that ended with a tease to catch her in Bob Fosse's upcoming biopic, Star 80.

Thanks, Playboy, I will.