Sunday, October 16, 2011

Random Scenes of Hollywood

Sunset Boulevard and Ivar.

11 comments:

Larkspur said...

Mostly I'm a low-tech root-gathering DFH-type, but oh how I love neon. If I had extra money, I would decorate with it. If I had extra money I would buy extra delicious food-stuffs, neither roots nor berries, and invite other humans to my neon-lit dwelling, and it would be like a party or whatever. The humans would need to bring their own tunes, though, for at present I have no tune-dispensing device. Extra money could solve that, I reckon.

Chris Vosburg said...

Oh man-- nice shot, Scott!

LA skyline at dawn and dusk has been gorgeous lately, yes?

Chris Vosburg said...

You all may remember that a couple weeks ago, the Upper Atmospheric Research Station, having done its job, crashed to earth, but what you don't know is how close it came to some serious mayhem, as in:

The projected orbital pass following the one on which it actually hit the atmosphere and broke up would have been over Los Angeles on a southwest to northeast track (roughly 8pm sat) and it gets better: not Los Angeles, actually, but slightly to the north:

Malibu!

Serious, the line passed directly over the Bu, and if the plucky little satellite had managed to hang in orbit a few hours longer...

Yes, I know, people would have been hurt. Yes, I know, property damage in the millions, yes I know.

Yes, I know, it's monstrous of me even to think about it, but I went to sleep Friday night with a smile on my face, dreaming of flaming satellite chunks slamming into a multilmillion dollar beach house.

[laughing] Was that wrong?

M. Bouffant said...

LA skyline at dawn and dusk has been gorgeous lately, yes?

Sure has. (At dusk anyway. Don't ask me about dawn.) Almost got off the Gold Line train at Chinatown yesterday to get a few shots of clouds that looked silver w/ the sun reflecting on them.

Anntichrist S. Coulter said...

No, Vosburg, that's not wrong at all... actually, your restraint is admirable. Misplaced, but admirable.

I remember, 8 mos. or so ago, some fucking celebutard's house got singed by a wildfire (whilst REAL people's homes were fucking obliterated) and every fucking "news" copter in SoCal was hovering over THAT. Fuck 'em. They should've had a fiery collision and crashed upon her fat head. THAT would've been epic.

Anntichrist S. Coulter said...

Lovely cloudscape, btw, Scott. Very cotton-candy-ish.

Scott said...

Thanks, glad you guys enjoyed it.

And Chris, yes: the smog has been painting the sky with a very colorful palette of photo-chemicals lately.

Larkspur, Nature Girl said...

Hey, guys, I'm old, and I grew up in the Detroit area, and I remember how beautiful the sunsets were, all blazing chrome yellow and gold. I also used to love the smell of gasoline, and I enjoyed seeing the rainbows it made on the pavement, mixed with water.

Our dirt and gravel road got saturated several times each summer with some oily and surely toxic coating.

I remember swimming in Saginaw Bay and thinking the water tasted vaguely chemical-ish. This was probably during a summer in which I got one of many serious sunburns.

I am definitely going to leave my body to science. There are probably valuable chemicals in me. I'm surprised I'm not dead, and thankful that I neglected to reproduce. If I were a 1950s post-atom bomb character, I'd already be sporting forehead limbs and spiky spine weapons, and ESP or whatever.

In any case, this time of year usually produces great sunsets, just from the dry summer and the dust. Also I love harvest moons. Also harvest spiders. They are everywhere, has anyone else noticed? Big plump spiders hovering in sturdy webs. Apparently they are bulking up prior to hatching their younguns. I wonder if any of them will have nine legs.

Anntichrist S. Coulter said...

I'll tradeja a handful of bebe nine-legged mutants for the black widows, brown recluses & female "daddy longlegs" that incessantly fight me for dominance here in L'Ghetto de Hell.

Chris Vosburg said...

It may surprise many of you to learn that smog in L.A. is nothing now compared to what used to lie heavy like a blanket on us back in the sixties and seventies. Serious, all that fussing about air-quality in the interim actually bore positive results.

I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, where smog used to pile up against the foothills of the San Gabriels, and I actually had trouble breathing, as a ten-year-old, after those especially hard-fought little league games.

Santa Ana (or Santana, if you like) wind conditions, which blew from the desert to the sea, were a merciful break in that they blew all the smog out to sea-- temporarily-- where we ate it on Catalina Island (when I was a boarding school student there in the late sixties/early seventies).

MST3K fans can see exactly what this looked like, from the mainland point of view, by checking out the final scenes in Mitchell, in which Joe Don Baker chases after Scotch-swilling power-boater Martin Balsam (and Merlin Olson, in an early attempt at "acting") in a helicopter out in the channel.

See that band of yellowish orange sludge on the west horizon? A different color altogether from what we see now, Yuk.

Chris Vosburg said...

M Bouffant: Almost got off the Gold Line train at Chinatown

Have you had your picture taken yet straddling the bent-over bronze woman at the Lincoln/Cypress station just north of Chinatown? A favorite stop for tourists (especially Germans, for some reason)!

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