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2:56 a.m. The first place I take people who come to visit me here in California is the little section of Venice where the canals still flow and the ducks still swim and the real estate prices continue to go up and up and up. We really wanted to live on the canals when we first laid eyes on them, but alas. They are a magical place, and last night they were even more so -- with the annual Christmas boat parade. However, you're going to just have to take my word for it this time, and maybe if I eke out a thousand words, I'll be able to make up for the fact that I have no pictures of the parade, no panoramic shots of the canals, no night snaps of all the pretty lights glittering and flickering off the water. You see, I went to a party to watch the boats and I just had too much ... fun. More fun than I've had in a long time, and I usually have some kind of harmless fun most days. But the canals are magic and the magic makes you all giddy and you forget that you have a brain and a camera with you. |
I took pictures on the way to the party, however. One of the streets leading up to the canals has a building with a long, flat wall and on the wall is a mural that is important and dear to the hearts of the people here. The mural tells the story of what the canals used to be like in the '60s, back when the authorities were trying to clean the place up and people weren't overbuilding their tiny lots with million-dollar castles. The steam roller in the mural was filling in some of the canals, I believe. The protestors were throwing themselves in front of The Man. Around these parts, you don't mess with real estate. The history of that protest is a bit murky. I don't think any citizens were flattened. Local people say that not very long ago, a different dispute between Venice and the city of Los Angeles kept the canals from being opened to the ocean and sluiced regularly, the way they are now. Therefore, a house on the canals was sort of like a house on a big, backed-up sewage creek ... and so hippies and artists and various undesirables were the only people willing to live there. |
Well, that was then. This is now. Pristine, clean, serene. A photo op every inch of the way. I hang my head in abject shame, but once the boats started to glide by and the good times started to roll, I just ... Well, you know. Had loads of fun, met nice people, some of them very famous, came home and fell asleep in the middle of the X-Files, to give you some idea. I don't like to name-drop, either, so I won't. What I will do is go back this week if I have the time and take some proper pictures, maybe muse on the secret of life and stuff, and give you more for your visit here than some quick glimpses and oblique references to people way way cooler than myself. If this is your first visit here to my space on the web, I beg you to come back -- how about tomorrow? I'll have my wits back from the dry cleaners by then, I'm sure. I'm just really grateful that the mobile security force that patrols the canals wasn't arresting people for slacking off last night, or I'd be writing this from the local hoosgaw and banging on the bars with my mug. Actually -- I wouldn't be banging. If you get my drift. |
Merely press the tree.
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