Featuring Fred Brathwaite aka Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quinones and Leonard McGurr aka Futura 2000 with guest curator Patti Astor. 3 Kings on view September 17 through October 8, 2011 at Subliminal Projects Gallery, 1331 W Sunset Blvd.

3 Kings on view September 17 through October 8, 2011
Subliminal Projects Gallery
1331 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

To view more photos of this recent exhibit visit Erwin Recinos on Flickr.

“Whores and Great Poets Part One: Never Trust a Man Who Doesn’t Like Baseball”

Leonard Planchon has a first-rate hangover and a two-day beard. He is clutching a longneck bottle of MGD as if it were the last thing in the world he could hold onto.

“Did I ever tell you, Gus, that I was born during the 1955 Dodgers-Yankees World Series?” Leonard says, not looking at me but staring absently at the tireless energy of the ESPN anchors on the mute flatscreen plasma TV behind the bar.

It’s a gray Wednesday afternoon; the “board-certified meteorologist” on Channel Seven news suggested, in a funereal tone, that there was a 30 percent chance of rain, a weak, disorganized system approaching L.A. from the north, setting up the sort of condition that’s not quite sweater weather but too cool for shirtsleeves, a climate that awakens my irritable disposition, making this a perfect day for hiding out in a bar like Dusty’s, where my foul mood will not be noted, observed, or commented upon.

I had been pondering a Bukowski poem, The Suicide Kid, about a guy who “went to the worst if bars hoping to get killed” but all he succeeds in doing is “getting drunk again” and the drinks keep coming as bar patrons keep buying for the guy, when Leonard mentioned his 1955 birthday, apropos of nothing, just making what passes for conversation in a dive bar on a gray Wednesday afternoon in Highland Park.

“I was born in ’58, the year the Dodgers moved to L.A.,” I tell Leonard as I flag the bartender, a curvy, heavily-tattooed Latina femme fatale named Diane, for another round of beers.

“My dad was a sportswriter for the New York Herald,” Leonard began as Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire begins to blast on the jukebox in the corner near the pool table. “While my mom was in the hospital in labor — a long one, almost fourteen hours — Dad was running, literally running, back and forth between the maternity ward where there were no TV sets anywhere and a litttle neighborhood beer bar on the corner to watch Game Two of the series. When the game was over he rushed back to the hospital, scribbled his copy in a looseleaf notebook and sent it to the Herald offices by flagging down a cabbie and giving him precise instructions where to go and who to deliver the notebook to.” Leonard paused to clink our beer bottles together in salute as he started in on his fresh one. “And that is why I never trust a man doesn’t like baseball.”

I don’t quite follow Leonard’s logic but I nod my agreement anyway; get two writers together in a bar and the conversation will invariably turn to the esoteric and sublime; later on that night, or perhaps some night two weeks from now, I’ll suddenly grasp what he was saying; writers speak in shorthand to each other, at least the good ones do.

“I need a writing project, Gus,” he tells me with sudden urgency, looking at me as if I have an idea to sell or share with him. If I had any ideas I would be writing them instead of straddling a bar stool next to another broken-down scribbler. “Something to put my name back out there after all that bullshit with the network over Castaway Chef. Hey — you wanna go down to El Sombrero for a margarita? My treat.”

“Sure,” I said after a considerable pause; a down-and-outer never wants to appear too eager at the prospect of a free drink.

“We can take my car,” Leonard says. “I just need to swing by my place and change clothes real quick.”

And that began my ill-fated afternoon and evening on the town with Leonard Planchon.

(c) 2011-12, Rodger Jacobs, All Rights Reserved

Part Two coming next Friday!

August 6 – 29, 2010
Fri & Sat @ 8pm
Sun @ 5pm

Get ready boys and girls for another thrilling episode of El Verde! Born as an alien from the not so far away world of Mexico, mild mannered Arturo Sanchez came to the United States to live an ordinary life. But after a freak elote accident, Arturo became… El Verde!!

www.casa0101.org for tickets and info.

Equator Books ~ Venice

“There’s a boy who fogs his world and now he’s getting lazy
There’s no motivation and frustration makes him crazy
He makes a plan to take a stand but always ends up sitting.
Someone help him up or he’s gonna end up quitting.” ~ Green Day

Crenshaw Blvd. ~ Hyde Park

Via Lost in a Supermarket

The excellent blog LA NOIR reminds us that today marks 50 years since the last breath was taken by one of this city’s defining authors, Raymond Chandler. Here’s an excerpt from The Long Goodbye:

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox’s left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other.

There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn’t quite. Nothing can.

The attendant was the usual half-tough character in a white coat with the name of the restaurant stitched across the front of it in red. He was getting fed up.

“Look, mister,” he said with an edge to his voice, “would you mind a whole lot pulling your leg into the car so I can kind of shut the door? Or should I open it all the way so you can fall out?”

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. It didn’t bother him enough to give him the shakes. At The Dancers they get the sort of people that disillusion you about what a lot of golfing money can do for the personality.

A low-swung foreign speedster with no top drifted into the parking lot and a man got out of it and used the dash lighter on a long cigarette. He was wearing a pullover check shirt, yellow slacks, and riding boots. He strolled off trailing clouds of incense, not even bothering to look towards the Rolls-Royce. He probably thought it was corny. At the foot of the steps up to the terrace he paused to stick a monocle in his eye.

The girl said with a nice burst of charm: “I have a wonderful idea, darling. Why don’t we just take a cab to your place and get your convertible out? It’s such a wonderful night for a run up the coast to Montecito. I know some people there who are throwing a dance around the pool.”

The white-haired lad said politely: “Awfully sorry, but I don’t have it any more. I was compelled to sell it.” From his voice and articulation you wouldn’t have known he had had anything stronger than orange juice to drink.

“Sold it, darling? How do you mean?” She slid away from him along the seat but her voice slid away a lot farther than that.

“I mean I had to,” he said. “For eating money.”

“Oh, I see.” A slice of spumoni wouldn’t have melted on her now.

The attendant had the white-haired boy right where he could reach him — in a low-income bracket. “Look, buster,” he said, “I’ve got to put a car away. See you some more some other time — maybe.”

He let the door swing open. The drunk promptly slid off the seat and landed on the blacktop on the seat of his pants. So I went over and dropped my nickel. I guess it’s always a mistake to interfere with a drunk. Even if he knows and likes you he is always liable to haul off and poke you in the teeth. I got him under the arms and got him up on his feet.

“Thank you so very much,” he said politely.

The girl slid under the wheel. “He gets so goddam English when he’s loaded,” she said in a stainless-steel voice. “Thanks for catching him.”

“I’ll get him in the back of the car,” I said.

“I’m terribly sorry. I’m late for an engagement.” She let the clutch in and the Rolls started to glide. “He’s just a lost dog,” she added with a cool smile. “Perhaps you can find a home for him. He’s housebroken — more or less.”

And the Rolls ticked down the entrance driveway onto Sunset Boulevard, made a right turn, and was gone. I was looking after her when the attendant came back. And I was still holding the man up and he was now sound asleep.

“Well, that’s one way of doing it,” I told the white coat.

“Sure,” he said cynically. “Why waste it on a lush? Them curves and all.”

“You know him?”

“I heard the dame call him Terry. Otherwise I don’t know him from a cow’s caboose. But I only been here two weeks.”

“Get my car, will you?” I gave him the ticket.

By the time he brought my Olds over I felt as if I was holding up a sack of lead. The white coat helped me get him into the front seat. The customer opened an eye and thanked us and went to sleep again.

“He’s the politest drunk I ever met,” I said to the white coat.

“They come all sizes and shapes and all kinds of manners,” he said. “And they’re all bums. Looks like this one had a plastic job one time.”

“Yeah.” I gave him a dollar and he thanked me. He was right about the plastic job. The right side of my new friend’s face was frozen and whitish and seamed with thin fine scars. The skin had a glossy look along the scars. A plastic job and a pretty drastic one.

“Whatcha aim to do with him?”

“Take him home and sober him up enough to tell me where he lives.”

The white coat grinned at me. “Okay, sucker. If it was me, I’d just drop him in the gutter and keep going. Them booze hounds just make a man a lot of trouble for no fun. I got a philosophy about them things. The way the competition is nowadays a guy has to save his strength to protect hisself in the clinches.”

“I can see you’ve made a big success out of it,” I said.

He looked puzzled and then he started to get mad, but by that time I was in the car and moving.

He was partly right of course. Terry Lennox made me plenty of trouble. But after all that’s my line of work.

I was living that year in a house on Yucca Avenue in the Laurel Canyon district. It was a small hillside house on a dead-end street with a long flight of redwood steps to the front door and a grove of eucalyptus trees across the way. It was furnished, and it belonged to a woman who had gone to Idaho to live with her widowed daughter for a while. The rent was low, partly because the owner wanted to be able to come back on short notice, and partly because of the steps. She was getting too old to face them every time she came home.

I got the drunk up them somehow. He was eager to help but his legs were rubber and he kept falling asleep in the middle of an apologetic sentence. I got the door unlocked and dragged him inside and spread him on the long couch, threw a rug over him and let him go back to sleep. He snored like a grampus for an hour. Then he came awake all of a sudden and wanted to go to the bathroom. When he came back he looked at me peeringly, squinting his eyes, and wanted to know where the hell he was. I told him. He said his name was Terry Lennox and that he lived in an apartment in Westwood and no one was waiting up for him. His voice was clear and unslurred.

He said he could handle a cup of black coffee. When I brought it he sipped it carefully holding the saucer close under the cup.

“How come I’m here?” he asked, looking around.

“You squiffed out at The Dancers in a Rolls. Your girl friend ditched you.”

“Quite,” he said. “No doubt she was entirely justified.”

“You English?”

“I’ve lived there. I wasn’t born there. If I might call a taxi, I’ll take myself off.”

“You’ve got one waiting.”

He made the steps on his own going down. He didn’t say much on the way to Westwood, except that it was very kind of me and he was sorry to be such a nuisance. He had probably said it so often and to so many people that it was automatic.

His apartment was small and stuffy and impersonal. He might have moved in that afternoon. On a coffee table in front of a hard green davenport there was a half empty Scotch bottle and melted ice in a bowl and three empty fizzwater bottles and two glasses and a glass ash tray loaded with stubs with and without lipstick. There wasn’t a photograph or a personal article of any kind in the place. It might have been a hotel room rented for a meeting or a farewell, for a few drinks and a talk, for a roll in the hay. It didn’t look like a place where anyone lived.

He offered me a drink. I said no thanks. I didn’t sit down. When I left he thanked me some more, but not as if I had climbed a mountain for him, nor as if it was nothing at all. He was a little shaky and a little shy but polite as hell. He stood in the open door until the automatic elevator came up and I got into it. Whatever he didn’t have he had manners.

He hadn’t mentioned the girl again. Also, he hadn’t mentioned that he had no job and no prospects and that almost his last dollar had gone into paying the check at The Dancers for a bit of high class fluff that couldn’t stick around long enough to make sure he didn’t get tossed in the sneezer by some prowl car boys, or rolled by a tough hackie and dumped out in a vacant lot.

On the way down in the elevator I had an impulse to go back up and take the Scotch bottle away from him. But it wasn’t any of my business and it never does any good anyway. They always find a way to get it if they have to have it.

I drove home chewing my lip. I’m supposed to be tough but there was something about the guy that got me. I didn’t know what it was unless it was the white hair and the scarred face and the clear voice and the politeness. Maybe that was enough. There was no reason why I should ever see him again. He was just a lost dog, like the girl said.

Copyright © 1953 by Raymond Chandler

New serial fiction from Rodger Jacobs… Part I is here

A human voice, distinctly male, called out from behind a walnut tree. I was momentarily distracted by a salamander crossing the trail – they are not very tasty, though certainly reliable for a quick jolt of energy. I scrambled behind a grove of eucalyptus trees after the man’s voice startled me with its urgency and near proximity.

“Abigail! Abigail? Where the hell did you go?”

Abigail. That must be the name of the female human who turned to stone when I spoke to her. She was in the brush where she fainted, lying very still and breathing in small shallow gasps. She had to be in shock.

“Hey!” He was looking directly at me, an odd-looking human male with massive shoulders. His backpack, blue shorts, and white shirt exactly matched those of the female. They could have been twins. He had an ugly face with primitive features fixed in a grimace suggesting one who is on the verge of defecating.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” I warned him when he stooped to pick up a large gray rock. “I’m likely to bite your ass and send you home with a story no one will ever believe.”

His large head darted around on those powerful shoulders; he had no neck to speak of, only a chin that dissolved into his clavicle.

“Who said that?” He was holding the rock high above his head, poised to strike, his unpleasant face red with anger and primal fear, frantically looking about for the source of the voice.

I took a hesitant step toward him. “I said it. What do you think? A tree said it? Have you ever seen a talking tree? Good God, you humans can be dumb asses sometimes.”

He dropped the rock clutched in his beefy hand and extended one thick leg in mid-stride before he realized that he had forgotten exactly how to put one foot in front of another. He collapsed in the brush next to his Abigail. They looked rather sweet laying there together and I would have stayed and savored the moment – humans are, after all, awfully tender when they are quiet and not moving about – but I had my own female to find before she, too, was struck down by something unforeseeable.

New serial fiction from Rodger Jacobs…

Her fresh scent lingered on a clump of dry brown manzanita at a point where the trail forked. Traveling north would take her back into the park and the rolling hills and rambling thicket but her journey was decidedly southern, away from the wilderness and toward the human dens. If she got anywhere near the winding paved roadways, the hot asphalt and the careening steel carriers that transported humans from one den to the next, her path would be cut short. I would probably find her at the side of the road, lying in a patch of dry brush waiting to die.

I know more about humans than most coyotes have the right or privilege to know. I once lived among them. I can speak their language but only to a select few. I know their customs and I know their ways. If I was going to find her, I would have to go back into their world again. Their hunting and grazing field is large, hemmed in one edge by the sand-blown Land of the Ancestors and the other by the vast body of water they call an ocean.

A human appeared on the trail below me, a young female wearing short blue pants that exposed her tan white legs and a shirt that barely cupped her swaying bulbous breasts. She wore a backpack and a look of fixed determination on her sweaty brow. I stepped forward quietly.

“Excuse me,” I said in my most polite tone. “Will that trail take me to Los Feliz Boulevard?”

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as if she had been thunderstruck, she opened her painted lips as if to speak but no words came forth, and she collapsed in the brush. This is what normally happens when I try to talk to humans.

Rodger Jacob’s noir parody serial enters the final two thrilling episodes!

It was then that the ground trembled with a vengeance. At first I heard a loud slam that I mistook for the steel loading ramp of a delivery truck smacking the asphalt. You’re familiar with that sound, right? But there was no delivery truck in sight and suddenly the sky itself began to shake or perhaps it was the ground below my feet that had suddenly abandoned all natural laws and began churning like quicksand. It was an earthquake, alright, one mother of a shaker that would bring down the rafters of the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel, killing my girl Zivi in the process, but I would only learn this way after the fact, after my own body was laid out on a slab in the L.A. morgue with a bunch of other stiffs who suddenly got chatty. They knew all about Zivi. They knew all about me, more maybe than I knew about myself. Did you know, for instance, that I was a cop? A narcotics agent, I’ve been told. And that girl in the bar? The one who caused all of this ruckus in the first place? Well, she was a quarry of mine and I had her cornered like a canary in a coal mine until she slipped a hallucinogenic compound in my cocktail while I had my eyes trained on the black midget and the tall albino, all dead now at the hands of the man wielding the killer typewriter.

Or were they real at all?

The earthquake. That’s the only thing that’s certain. The earthquake had really happened.

Previously…

Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books ~ 240 Long Beach Blvd. ~ Long Beach