It's Not Tundra

Saturday morning I got up, put on my snappy all-cotton genuine Japanese kimono and walked downstairs. I turned at the bottom of the stairs, heading for the kitchen and then stopped, thought for a second and walked back to the front door. Did I really see what I thought I saw? Why, yes. I did see what I thought I saw. There was a dead deer on my front lawn. Now that was something I never saw in L.A. Dead cats once in awhile, yes, usually with their innards chewed out by a coyote who went only for the tasty parts. Perhaps by a raccoon. I'm not Daniel frikkin ' Boone. But not a deer. You'd see them sometimes in the Hollywood Hills, very occasionally. A few times I'd seen them at the corner of Coldwater and Mulhullond and they WERE near Dead Man's Curve, but the deer were alive. Once during a heavy rain I'd seen a family of deer on the 405. Well, actually I'd seen them on the side of the 405. Traffic moves slow but still not slow enough for deer. But even thos...

What the hell, right? She was in a crosswalk at a school. She backed into a crosswalk, saw people in it and then drove by close enough that putting my arms out, I hit her car. Let her take her lumps and maybe learn a lesson. And to use the word “Car” or “Van”. She wouldn’t let it go, she thinks she’s in her rights. Let the guys with the badge handle it. So we sit down to wait. It’s midafternoon and it’s getting hotter, probably in the nineties. I buy the kids water. I’m hungry and I’d like to get home and do some work. I call the guy I’m working for to see if there’s anything pressing. I know there are some animation models waiting for me but being a freelance producer, I could work my own hours most of the time. He’s aghast when I tell him the story and wants me to call him back and tell him what the police do. I call Patricia and tell her what went on. She’s not aghast, just tired of the sum of the shitty parts of living there. I see the Odyssey. It drives back and forth a ...

Understand: When I first moved to California, I was told that there was only one thing holy and that was the crosswalk under California law. You have to stop when there are people in the crosswalk. Even if there’s no light, if there are two parallel white lines on the pavement and they aren’t cocaine, you gotta stop. I’ve seen old ladies dragging shopping carts across Ventura Boulevard at 8:45 in the morning and cars, even cars carrying very important movie executives, stop to let her hobble across. Admittedly, this rule had become a little less firm in the popular consciousness than it was when I was first there. Pedestrians once beset me when I tried to make a legal-in-New York right on red and the people in the cross walk attacked like villagers in a Frankenstein movie. Now cars creep into the cross walk, they wait until the pedestrian is out of their lane and gun it. But a SCHOOL? Crosswalks in a school SHOULD be sacrosanct. They’re not, but if you’re going to run your over...

FIFTEEN MONTHS EARLIER: The Honda Odyssey that was the FINAL indignity. Let me explain what a typical L.A. afternoon was for me and how it led to my personal physical contact with an American-Made Japanese vehicle. My son and daughter were in the highly gifted magnet program in the L.A. school system. This got them a smaller class size and a more demanding curriculum and, at least in elementary school, a school that we liked better. [1] But it also meant that after second grade they were no longer in the school that was two blocks down the street. They were bused to the magnet school. When you apply to the magnet program, you’re assigned to the first school that has an opening no matter where it is. My son’s elementary school was about eight miles away. My daughter’s middle school was about nine miles away. Every morning my son would have to be taken two blocks to the school down the street to get his elementary school bus. My daughter would have to be taken about four miles...