God bless times zones. This is a weekly diary, written on Sundays, and this day grew so long that I nearly ran out of time to write it. But mentally, I’m on L.A. time, and on the west coast, we’re in the clear. The habit is saved.
My week started in L.A., where I wrote a few stories and did some social experimentation. The fiancé wanted to see stand-up comedy, and we went to Flappers in Burbank for what was advertised as “Celebrity Drop-In Night.” Like “no trans fats,” celebrity is a very flexible term. Six comics got the stage, most of whom had been on TV, which you have to be at least a little famous to get on - famous or embarrassing. Their most shared credit was “Conan,” which has been off the air for most of the Biden administration. The headliner was a Russian immigrant who seemed like he could be famous, with a studied Borat vibe and a sincere-sounding wish for us to “kill Putin together.”
We had fun, no matter how I just made it sound. Like the quality of bar-band music in Nashville, the quality of main-stage stand-up in L.A. County is very high. It’s less self-censored than an outsider would expect, and I think the pre-show instruction to turn off cell phones helps. No one is worried about being filmed laughing; at worst a few men on first dates are nervous about revealing how funny they find the sexist jokes. Reubens-style portraits of some club regulars were hung outside the restroom, including one of Jeff Garlin, who had been performing every Sunday. The canceled had a home here.
On Wednesday morning, we went to a meeting of the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, a 98-year old civic society that venerates ham and eggs through a secret handshake - left and right and left, like flipping an egg. The simple breakfast, with choice of poached or scrambled egg, fuels members for the singing of “God Bless America” and the club’s own songs; for solving a cryptogram; for a competition between tables for the best spoken introduction of guests; and for a special guest lecture. We unfortunately drew a lousy one of those, the author of a book about “The Jeffersons” who repeatedly told us that God directed her to write it. I don’t do well, watching people embarrass themselves in public. This was a lot for 14 hours interrupted by sleep; first watching comedians reveal too much about their career desperation and sexual hang-ups, then watching an author of a small-press book struggle through an unprepared speech.
I’m putting a negative sheen on this. It really was a lot of fun. You see why people putter around on those Shriner’s carts, summoning some of their childhood silliness by goofing around in a pay-for club. We might come back.
Most of the rest of the week was taken up by work, there and in Chicago. I came to cover the race for mayor, and how the incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, was struggling even to make the top-two runoff. I hadn’t been here since March 2020, right before that year’s primary, for the last story I wrote before the pandemic. Marie Newman, a progressive Democrat who was about to beat one of the party’s last anti-abortion congressman, helpfully pointed her elbow at people expecting a handshake. She schooled them on the new normal, which changed before I left; this was the very brief period when restaurants were seating only every other table, hoping the restrictions would stop there. I worked nonstop, taking Sunday night off to catch up with a friend I hadn’t seen since my book tour, a period in which he’d had a kid and been radicalized by pandemic school restrictions.
Not wanting to bring much home, I made one stop on Madison, getting wicked wool socks at a Carhartt outlet and two books at Myopic. I’ll start the pop diary there.
The best thing I read. Not much competition, with Emily Bazelon’s “Charged” beating out James Ivory’s memoir “Solid Ivory.” Bazelon’s book was published in 2019, capturing the movement to de-carcerate black America at its most optimistic moment; new DAs in place, crime down despite the doomy predictions. Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx was a white hat in Bazelon’s story, and while in Chicago I heard the mayor accuse her of handing out innocence slips “like candy” to criminals.
“Solid Ivory” had a lot less going on. I’d been watching Ivory’s movies over the last two weeks, intrigued because you hear so few people discuss them anymore. Ivory, after his “Call Me By Your Name” script won the Oscar, got a little burst of attention, and put together some recollections that lapse in and out of memoir. He writes in detail about his erotic awakening and his f-buddy relationship with Bruce Chatwin, but relatively not much about Ismail Merchant. For hardcore fans only.
The best thing I heard. Light music week. I heard only one new piece: “Gloria,” a choral song by the British singer Sam Smith, which he performed on Saturday Night Live over a death-still Sharon Stone. It was memorable, but I couldn’t hum it right now. I had more fun with “Booyakasha,” the new episode of TrueAnon, in which Brace and Liz ripped through Prince Harry’s book.
The best thing I saw. “Seeing Red,” a 40-year old documentary about America’s defeated communists. After an introductory clip of Ronald Reagan delivering an oogedy-boogedy script about communism on his GE show, it’s pretty linear, tracing the lives of communist party members who, except for Pete Seeger, felt that they’d wasted their lives in a glorious cause. (Seeger at least got some gigs.)
The best thing I ate: Brain tacos at La Chaparrita Taqueria, the palm-sized kind that are usually ordered in threes at least. (The menu offered set prices for seis and cinco platters.) Served with three in-house sauces, surrounded by leftover shrine figures and imported oils from Mexico.
Back next week, reporting from Orange County.
I really liked your word craft on the third paragraph, it definitely conveyed the vibe and finished with a nice kicker. Unerehearsed speeches I always find cringey for the audience because they are recounting their own school age memories while it's going on and it's just am unpleasant experience for all. The prince Harry book pod and Reagan documentary sound cool, will check them out. Hope you enjoy the O.C.!