Thoughts In Grey

Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade 2010!

I paddled in the Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade again this year, my fourth of doing this. The first year I just tossed my kayak in the water and paddled around. Year 2, I actually decorated a bit and had a few people from SCOA join me in kayaks of their own. Last year, we tried to make a major SCOA event of it, with a decorating party in advance. Unfortunately, last year's weather didn't lend itself to much advance work, as the rain stopped only about 4 hours before the parade started.

This year, 82 degree weather ensured that the paddling and decorating would be great, but I was paddling on my own. At the last minute, my neighbor decided to dress as her "Mommy Whorebucks" character and tag along behind me on an inflatable donut. It was the second year in the red kayak, but this time I decided to re-re-reverse the order of things and put the Christmas tree on the back again. Still multi-denominational, but at least this way I can see where I'm going, even with the new, larger tree and better lights. Several people told me I had the best tree in the parade, which sort of surprised me because prior to two years ago I had never put together a Christmas tree in my entire life! As usual I was blasting Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," because it's still the only Christmas tune I have available.

I was tossing candy to the kids at the many parties that line the canals and occasionally to people photographing me from the footbridges. I've apparently become somewhat of an institution, because some of them know I'm coming and are waiting for me. Next year I think I need to stock up with a bit more, because for the second year in a row I was a bit short at the very end.

It's interesting to see these photos, because from water level it wasn't obvious how spread out everybody got this year. In some of these photos you can't even see another boat, though there were about 50 in total.

I've been busy with work and other things, so it's taken a bit of time to collect all the photos. Two different people were taking pictures, and I have a set of "water level" images of my own. Rather than trying to make one cohesive story of these disparate sets, I'll present them separately.

First up, my friend Veronica's photos, taken from various points along the parade route:

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My friend Mary took a bunch too, including some overhead shots of me passing under one of the bridges and the last remaining partiers at James Beach later that evening. God, I need to lose some weight!

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And finally my own "water level view."

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 -mg

 

Christmas Eve 2010 Brief Notes

As I'm Jewish, this time of year always has me feeling a bit left out. So I'm taking it easy and trying not to think too much about anything too serious, which is always tough for me.

• Clio's death continues to rattle through my consciousness. I've gone back and forth about the notion of finding a new girl to round out the household, but for now am holding off. For starters, I just don't feel all that enthusiastic about another cat, and going to "meet" them has mostly left me depressed. More importantly, Chaos seems to be slowly coming into his own and I'm seeing a side of him that has never been there before. Getting to know him on his own terms seems worthwhile.
• Markets have been doing not much of anything. While the bubbleheads on CNBC find something to be excited about every day, the reality is that what little movement we've had recently is fairly inconsequential. Yet I'm feeling somewhat uneasy about the complacency that seems to be out there. Between Europe, our municipalities and the employment rate, there is stuff to worry about out there!
• As usual, the Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade was a blast and I had the usual party before and after. Unfortunately, no other paddlers this year, but I got to go out there on my own anyway and my neighbor "Mommy Whorebucks" decided to dress up and directed me to tow her. The best part is that rather than the cold and rainy weather we had last year, it was over 80 degrees! Even in LA, paddling in a kayak in the evening in December in shorts is not really all that common. [Pictures below.] Over the course of the past four  years, I seem to have become an institution around here. Kids see me coming and start yelling that they want candy. Those post-Halloween sales pay off! 
• One of the more interesting things about the parade is that our local councilman, Bill Rosendahl, showed up to open the festivities. A few months ago his relationship with the Canals Association could have best been described as rocky. The fact that he was invited to open things shows how much the political winds have changed around here.
• Much of the change has been driven by the web, and most particularly by a lot of "citizen journalism" and discussion on our local info website, YoVenice! Formerly, others owned the agenda. That has changed, and fast.
• Since I've lived here, I've wanted to go out at dawn to capture some images in the neighborhood, especially in the canals. somehow I never have done it. Tomorrow should be suitably abandoned and empty for me to try, and maybe experiment with some HDR imaging as well. Sunday may be even better, with some interesting weather expected.
• Jon's back from Tokyo on Monday morning. High time. Got to head over to his place and plug in the refrigerator tomorrow.
• Annual garage cleanup has revealed some gems. It seems I have an extra set of Oakely sunglasses, two extra sets of snow goggles, a pair of old skis I really don't think I want anymore and a bunch of tools I completely forgot about. I don't even remember buying some of this stuff and suspect some items were just abandoned in my car, my locker, or some other location where it was forgotten.
• I've got a refrigerator full of food and am cooking slowly. Not so much because I'm interested in a holiday meal as that it's just feeling nice to do it. First time since Clio's death that I've felt like cooking much. Chaos seems to appreciate the fresh scraps.
• For some reason, I was so tired last night I couldn't even think of any grievances to air. Not going to let that happen again.

-mg

Environmentalist Democrats? Not around here.

This is my mail.

Not all of my mail, mind you. This is just today's mail. It is roughly the same as yesterday's and the day before's. In fact, this is pretty much what the contents of my mailbox have looked like for several weeks.

I find it ironic how many of these useless mailings tout the candidates' commitment to the environment, because virtually all of this stuff is going to end up in the landfills of southern California. It's a gift to the archaeologists of the future who may be able to sort through the stuff and conclude that our society died of hypocrisy. They'll be able to examine this mail because landfills really don't promote decomposition in any meaningful way. Really they are just large tombs for our garbage that will most likely be there for several millenia. This is especially true in dry places like Southern California, but isn't all that different in wetter climates either. The "caps" on top of all modern landfills are designed to keep us people away from whatever nasty stuff may be in there, but also tend to keep out moisture, earthworms and helpful bacteria which would promote better decomposition. Like the bits of food waste that can still be found in the Native American ruins of the southwest and the Egyptian deserts, our political junk mail is likely to be around for a long time.

I'll be doing my best to see that this stuff gets recylcled rather than landfilled, but it's almost impossible do so. The coated glossy cardboard they use is hard to recycle into anything else and mostly it ends up in landfills because it's less expensive and often less environmentally damaging to just chop down new trees and make more of it from scratch.

Yet it should have been easy to prevent. The Democrats should have been able to get together and say "we want to be the party of environmental causes" and act in a manner so as to prevent any candidate in their primary from using this highly destructive method of non-communication. (Does anybody really read these things? My own observation suggests they never make it past the closest trash can.) They may not be able to hold off other parties, but certainly they could try to take the lead on something. And I haven't seen any of these "green" Democrats talking about the $4.5m that their buddies in the legislature spend in sending us this kind of crap year-in and year-out. Personally, I can't think of any better place to start balancing the state budget.

Instead, they prefer to have me, and apparently the vast bulk of the public, continue to see them as nothing but opportunistic and hypocritical scum. All of them.

Which is part of the reason I won't be voting for anybody in this primary. (The other being that I don't recall ever registering as a Democrat, so don't see why I would be eligible to vote in their primary to begin with.)

Finally, I do want to thank the coalition of local nurses, health care workers, public safety officers, classroom teachers and other public service workers' organizations, who decided to send me a "free gift" (is there any other kind, really?) on behalf of candidate Nick Karno. Yes, that's a little bag of Jelly Bellies. I'm not sure why. But it was nice of those nurses and health care workers to send a bunch of flavored sugar to a guy whose dad and two of four grandparents died of diabetic complications. These are the same people who claim they have the solution to our health crisis, sending me candy. Yeah, right...

mg

Poor Business Planning

Originally uploaded by MichaelGat

The owners of this obsolete KFC at the edge of Culver City and Los Angeles have found a new use for their property. But isn't this rather foolish? Wouldn't it have made sense to keep a KFC counter going as well? While I can applaud them for jumping into California's #1 growth industry, I have to wonder how they failed to note the symbiotic relationship between the stuff they're currently selling and fast food? Wouldn't a sharp business mind have tried to take advantage of real business synergies between the two?

I suspect the current operators didn't think things though. Of course, less-than-clear thinking is probably an occupational hazard.

Got to give them props for coming up with the name Kind For Cures, leveraging the previous occupant's brand name.

mg