Faces in the Hall

Its amazing how one little conversation, or one occurrence, can jog your memory into yesteryear like nobody's business. Like everyone else today, I've been thinking about the loss of Davy Jones, and what it means in my life. Generally the Monkees get sidelined as pop-fluff by most real music junkies, and I can't deny that I'm included in that lot today. The Skeptic that I am now values a different set of musical influences, but yesteryear---oh! Yesteryear was a different time. It was a time when I remained glued to the television set as the Monkees' hijinks's worked out hysterically on screen. It was a time that, as a major tomboy, I just wanted to be a boy. Davy Jones' accent and precociousness made my inner girl scream, officially becoming my first crush.

It also became bonding material between a group of my friends in Middle School when we all felt like we didn't fit in, like we were the most awkward human beings ever to have existed. Between us, we knew about the Monkees, and for whatever reason it became "the thing" that both set us apart as goofy and wacky girls, and also a little inner secret. The popular kids were too cool to be moronic Monkees fans, but we were the ones having so much fun, laughing so hard, that even learning chess in social studies class was an adventure because we couldn't stop singing, "I'm Gonna Buy Me a Dog."

I lost the connection to the Monkees and moved wisely on to the Beatles somewhere in middle school, and I also stopped having as much fun. I remember things getting serious all of a sudden, things becoming heavier and life changing at a drastic pace as I discovered politics and injustice in the world. I drifted from "Pleasant Valley Sunday" to "Revolution" and things were never quite the same.

This concept was nailed down in Stand By Me, that classic take on coming-of-age that I watch each and every time it's on cable, no matter what I had planned to do at the time. It was a simple statement that for some didn't hit home, but lingered with me and remains deeply entrenched. The writer says towards the end: "As time went on we saw less and less of Teddy and Vern until eventually they became just two more faces in the halls. That happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant."


It's a simple explanation of growing up, of people and things fading from the forefront. Davy Jones became just another face in the hall for me, along with other semblances of childhood. Like the friends in Stand By Me...he was such an integral part of my childhood and the awakening of my boycraziness. Days like this make me wish I could close my eyes and go backwards to the times when listening to "Daydream Believer" seemed like the most wonderful thing to do...where my view of the world was not yet complicated and warped. When I wasn't so...skeptical.





Skeptically Yours.

Ghost City

The other day, I was having one of those conversations with my mother that made made me say, "listen, I don't want to be rude but I'm going to have to ask us to change topics."  I 100% know what to do if, say, I'm having a great day and I want to ruin it appropriately...I just have to ask, "hey, what's going on in Ohio?"

Los Angeles is like a city in a bubble. Things are less real here, less tragic somehow (unless you count the seemingly countless depressed and bone thin wannabe starlets). As long as you stay on Beverly Blvd (West of La Brea, of course), you're good in your little Los Angeles microchosm. Things are pretty here. Happy. People are still buying luxury cars, Platinum Motorsports is still cranking out ridiculously customized over-priced exotics, and while in the parking lot we call "traffic" at any one time there's Ferrari's to the left of you, Lambo's to the right...(here I am, stuck in the middle...dammit, now that song is stuck in my head.) 

Recently I took a friend on the quintessential Los Angeles drive carving our way along Mulholland. It's become a major tourist attraction, with those stupid chop-roof vans populating a once-quiet scenic vista, but I get it. Everyone wants a look at those homes, sitting in quiet judgement of the rest of us. It's impressive. I typically take Los Angeles visitors to those same spots, and they say mostly the same things. Usually, it's "How much do those houses cost?" A: Your soul, generally.  From the San Fernando Valley vistas, I hear: "Wow, look at this view, what the hell are we looking at?" A: Who cares? It's the valley.* 

For a dose of reality, sometimes, I make the mistake of genuinely caring about the folks that live in the midwest. That shit is as real as it gets...and my poor mother is living smack-dab inside a town that is dying around her.  There aren't any jobs, people have no money, and crime is getting overwhelming. They'll steal your shit without even thinking twice about it---and then sell it for food, and toilet paper (those assholes!! my iPod!)

It seems surreal, then, driving up to Mulholland and climbing up the stairs that overlook the Hollywood Bowl and downtown LA.  I heard tourists bitching from the summit of the hill that it was overcast and they couldn't get an amazing shot of the city, and I laughed so hard to myself that people moved away from my general area. I was not laughing at them, really, (okay, maybe a little...), because as I looked out at Los Angeles shrouded in a haze, a snake of brakelights slithering up the 101, I thought "that's so appropriate." 

Los Angeles doesn't really exist as a city---its boundaries are as hazy and undefined as the people that call it home.  We exist in a dream state, where passing Aston Martins parked on the street is as common as Chevrolets in other parts of the country.  If the "reality" of other parts of the country is that people will break the law in order to feed their families, we certainly have an alternate reality here. Its easy to think that all of LA is existing in that dream state, but the haze around the city contains the same secrets of poverty and hopelessness as any other place. Its just that we're better versed, somehow, of letting those elements exist as ghosts, just below the general rhythm of the city.

So I like for people up there overlooking this dichotomous city to see the ghostliness, the un-reality of it all, and the fact that really, the haze-obscured LA they see up here is the very most realistic of any vista they'll have the opportunity to view.

Skeptically Yours.



**I live in the valley

Mending

Some of you don't know this, but now that I have sold my motorcycle, I will tell you a dirty little secret.  Once upon a time, Bigskeptic was a dumb, dumb rider and crashed that poor little sucker.  My bike was a 2009 Moto Guzzi V7C...and it was at the same time one of the loves of my life, and also a very bad decision. I bought the damned thing based on an emotional attachment with the look, feel, sound...instead of analytically and logically.  It was the romance of the bike, the Italian-ness, how unique it was, the fact that it was mainly hand-built. I loved that damn thing. It was gorgeous. It handled like an Italian bike should...crisp and forgiving but agile.


It also handles curbs and sliding across concrete rather well, too.

The Guzzi was healed entirely in about the same amout of time as it took me.

I'm reminded of my Guzzi romance because on Tuesday I was rear ended in my CT, which pissed off my previous whiplash injury from the Guzzi crash.  I spent Valentine's Day with cops and EMTs and nurses and doctors and xray techs...and honestly, my crash/police assistance/ambulance ride/hospital ranks right up there with some of my previous VDay experiences. 

I'm a little stoved up, and my neck is still pretty sore, but I'm alright. You'd think that after so many injuries from sports and bikes and being clumsy...wrists, ankles, knees, hips, neck, etc, that I would be more likely to sit back and take inventory and decide in Animal Farm terms: Two Wheels Bad Four Wheels Good.  While my first motorized love will always be the four wheeled type, I can't stop thinking of life on only two.

Ya see, motorcycles scare me.  They do---honestly, I have a deep reverence for them, a slight fear of what they are capable of doing both to your body and to your adrenaline. Just like everyone else, I know people that were killed on bikes. Some of them were doing impossibly stupid shit, and some of them were just cruising along.  I tend to be of the cruiser variety on a bike, and have zero daredevil temptation. I don't want to be owned by fear, but I'm also not going to tempt fate.

My desire for a bike started after reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." The author, Pirsig, says: “To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.”  We say the same thing time and again---that it's not the destination but the journey. I see so many people on a terribly boring journey day to day, traveling within these safe little boundaries they've defined for themselves. I've hurt myself along the way, and I hate to scare those that worry about me, but I do believe I will continue on the side of the mountain without as much regard to the top.  I will always think more with my heart than my head politically, in purchases, in love, and of course---with my cars and bikes.

Skeptically Yours.

Acceptable loss.

If you haven't noticed, I have several things that I really love.  Passions...you know, the stuff that really moves you, makes you feel, makes you smile, makes you mad...

I have plenty of passion. It's actually one of my biggest flaws/best traits.  Passion has led me into a lot of trouble, falling in love with people or things that would hurt me, haunt me.  It's also had a positive effect of filling me up completely, until I feel like I could burst open at the seams.  J.M. Barrie said that fairies could only feel one emotion at a time, because they were so small that it filled them and overwhelmed them.  Tinkerbell was so full of jealous rage that she attempted to murder Wendy (why was this left out of the Disney Version? It would have been so much more watchable!) ...and while I've never felt QUITE like that, I understand how overwhelming the feelings can be when you're confronted with your passions.  Plus, I'm small, so I relate better than some. 


Also, I have fairy wings.

Mine's a concise list: music, animals, literature, cars. 

And when one of them appears to be under threat, I have the habit of jumping on my soapbox, taking up arms, and shouting, "I'll kill you Wendy! You bitch!"  Figuratively, of course.

This time around, I haven't done much jumping, and just accepted that to be happy, I have to lose some of the things that I thought I really wanted. In this case, it has to do with my Nova, which is entering Iteration #10 or #11 (can't remember...) after multiple rebuilds and phases and destruction.  I thought I wanted an LS3 and a 4L60E transmission (layman's terms for my not-car savvy readers...bad ass engine and transmission)...but I wasn't willing to trade my happiness and freedom. Staying in my cage meant a Corvette drive train. Leaving meant my plain old Disco Nova in her stock form: slow.

So I'll take slow. I'll take it, because at least I'll be able to jump in my POS and cruise off without being told it's too loud, it attracts too much male attention, it's not safe.  It may be/do all of those things, but I think of something else that J.M. Barrie said: "Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned.”


Before my manuscript is burned, for Christ's sake, I want to listen to all the music I can, rescue all the animals I can, read all the books I can, and drive that old, slow Nova with the windows down and the sun on me as much as I can.  There's freedom in those passions, and to preserve that, I'll take the other losses. 



My slow, rusty, off-year Nova. I know you can't deal with the level of awesome, so I kept the picture small.

 Skeptically Yours.