Reflected image

Playing around with reflections. This is a mannequin in a shop window on South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

Cool toy

 My brother-in-law  shared a cool toy with me. It's a little clip-on lens for your I-phone - the Olloclip. You get a fish-eye, a wide-angle, and a macro lens. Fun to play with.

Cool, huh?

Family visit

We are sprucing up the house, stocking the refrigerator, and clearing our calendars because this week we have family visiting.

Our son is coming from London. [The Man I Love]'s brother and his wife, Kurly are coming from Tampa. The last time we were all together, we were exploring London. Now we'll explore Los Angeles together.

UPDATE: A little glitch. Our son's flight from London was delayed several hours, and then he emailed us that they boarded the passengers and then abruptly evacuated them from the plane. I guess we'll find out more eventually. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: Our son's flight was cancelled - a fuel line leak. He's staying overnight at the airport and will arrive on the same flight tomorrow.

Parks and Rec

Is anyone a fan of the NBC series "Parks and Recreation"?

It's been on since spring of 2009 and stars Amy Poehler as a perky blonde mid-level bureaucrat in a small-town municipal Parks Department.

If you're a fan of the show, please note that it's not really a very accurate picture of the way a public agency operates. The wacky issues brought up in the show - marrying gay penguins; filling in gravel pits; council members' sex scandals -  aren't really very realistic, compared to the real issues citizens ask their public officials to solve.

Although I'm really enjoying it, I'm a newcomer to the show. I started watching it for the first time in the last couple of weeks, since I started my new job...as a mid-level bureaucrat in - oh, well, you figure it out.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Hippy chick

This past weekend I wandered down to our little community center and stopped in at Bouboulina, a funky little boutique that's been dressing Topanga's hippy chicks for decades.

Get on yer tie-dye, girl!

A Paletography of Los Angeles - Pucker up!

Pinatas outside Paleteria Limon

 A very typical California strip mall - modern, stucco-faced, with fake tile and quasi-Spanish detail, flanked in by shiny new model Camrys, Hyundais and SUVs - nevertheless reveals the demography of the small community of Maywood, 97% of whose residents identified themselves as Latino in the 2010 census.

Here a dulceria, selling Mexican sweets and candies, and a zapateria, or shoe store, flank the Paleteria Limon, a frozen fruit bar store so popular the line was going out the door the day we visited.

A sip of sangrita

Our first night at our hotel in Mexico City, [The Man I Love] and I went to the cocktail lounge for drinks. Most of our group had beer, but one man ordered a shot of tequila. It arrived with a small glass of what looked like tomato juice, and a little dish of lime wedges.

Very unlike the famous frat-boy ritual of lime-salt-tequila in a single knocked-back gulp, he carefully sipped the tequila, sipped the juice, bit on a lime wedge, and repeated the process.

"What are you having, Steve?" someone asked.

"This is a shot of tequila and sangrita."

Hot under the covers

Here in Southern California we are going through a heat wave - and what better way to celebrate a heat wave than with a sexy, sultry song written by the quintessential Hollywood composer, Henry Mancini?

When a musical composition - or song - is recorded by another musician who puts his own spin on it, it's called a "cover version"  Here are some cover versions of Mancini's song, imprinted by some serious musicians. Which one do you like best?


Johnny Hartman. This was recorded in 1964.


Sarah Vaughn, recorded in 1965.


Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66, sung by the incomparable Lani Hall, in 1966.


Or you could get a little out there, with Pat Metheny,  released in 2011.

I'm waiting to discover the punk or heavy metal version. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics:

His gaze

Swept over me now
a slow hot wind

Some days
It's too warm to fight
A slow hot wind

There in the shade
Like a cool drink waiting
She sat with slow fire in her eyes
Just waiting

Some days
It's too warm to fight
A slow hot wind

Listen to them all and tell me which one makes you the hottest....or which is the coolest. (Hartman is pretty hot - and pretty cool - don't you think?)

UPDATE:   Well, it's just like Southern California weather to make a liar out of me - I scheduled this post to run a little while after writing it, and our weather has famously turned. Nonetheless, these jazz greats are worth getting hot and bothered over.

Escape the heat and get away

Seaside resorts, with their climate tempered by ocean breezes, have been popular with the elite as early as the 18th century, when the French Riviera became fashionable.

And why not? A temperate climate, tropical gardens, the blue sea and picturesque ancient Roman ruins made it a great place to relax when the weather heats up.

Here in Southern California, our own coastline mimics the Mediterranean - in climate, of course, but also visually. Our early 20th century real estate developers created communities that mimicked the picturesque seaside resort towns and villages of Southern France and Italy. Castellammare, in Pacific Palisades, was an Italian-themed development that attracted Hollywood superstars like John Barrymore, Joseph Cotten, and Thelma Todd.