NATIVE INTELLIGENCE: Dems & Tancredo?

A new post written by yours truly at Native Intelligence:

As if there wasn't already reason enough to watch tonight's debate at Dartmouth, yours truly will be one of several featured participants in a real-time, online discussion of the exchange between the Democratic contenders for the White House.

Also featured in the real-time chat will be:

Elizabeth Blackney, host of The Media Lizzy Show. Media Lizzy's blog says she "brings a fresh, and sometimes naughty, perspective to her show. Remember, politricks - is just politics - with a finale. Join the afterglow."

Lynda Waddington of Essential Estrogen, a blog dedicated to women who "strive to bring the female attributes of integrity, cooperation and true compassion into our public policies." It is written by women who reside in Iowa.

And ...

Congressman Tom Tancredo, a Republican whose hardline stand on immigration is ... uh ... well ... hard (he reportedly told a reporter this summer that he "loved the symbolism" of a pitchfork and a torch when asked if the implements might provide fodder for ...

Read the complete post at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

'Getting My Scripts Done Is Plan B'

The West Hollywood Book Fair is Sunday.

This YouTube video was taped at last year's event. The interview with a woman named Mikki Karotkan is rather amusing:

"I know how to write a query letter. I know how to call a production company. Actually, getting my scripts done is Plan B. I got sick of Plan B. They got on my nerves and I said I'm going back to Plan A, finish my prose, get a literary agent and they can come to me ... "

But wait, there's more. Now there's that pesky problem of getting a literary agent.

"Literary agents usually don't even return the self-addressed-stamped-envelope, which is frustrating. Can't you just write 'NO' inside and send it back?"

That Plan A (actually writing the scripts) sounds like the best approach, but most writers would plunge into despair if they received their SASE back with the word 'NO' scratched inside. Sometimes no answer is better than a 'NO!' answer.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Is This THAT Bukowski?

By TJ Sullivan
[CROSSPOST: First posted Sept. 24, 2007, at Native Intelligence.]


Are we still talking about THAT Charles Bukowski, the one who lived in LA and wrote and did many of the things described last year in The New York Times?

"... his nearly constant drunkenness; his bar-fights; his arrests; his whoring; his volcanic feuds with editors, friends and the women who dared take up with him; his liquor-induced hemorrhages and vomiting spells and apartment-smashing rampages ..."

In the week since I wrote about Bukowski's influence on the LA Literary scene, I've begun to wonder if I might be thinking of a different writer than the one who lived in the East Hollywood bungalow that's on its way through the city's hoops of preservation.

The Los Angeles Times provided scant detail in its endorsement Saturday of the local effort to preserve 5124 De Longpre Ave, a squat stucco bungalow that the late author and poet once rented. The editorial referenced a "hard-knock life," a "hard life," and "grit," but nothing that approached the sureness of Bukowski's aim when throwing a radio through a window.

It's what was left out that ought to bother Bukowski's admirers and critics alike.

If indeed the bungalow is the last of the rented residences left standing, then why not wonder aloud whether Bukowski might have helped knock the others down one booze-sodden punch at a time? It's no stretch to suggest that, if those walls could talk, they'd either stutter like a traumatized crime victim, or get up in your face and spit something like: "Bring it on you ugly mother!"

THAT was Bukowski, not this clever, sentimental adaptation that almost makes him sound like a prolific writer who enjoyed the company of women, got in a tussle now and then, and consumed more than two glasses of wine at fireside each evening.

I'm not talking about factual inaccuracies, although there has been one of those. Bukowski is not LA's "native son," as described by the preservation effort blog, which used the term in a form letter to the Cultural Heritage Commission. He was born in Germany.

This is about communicating the essence of an artist.

For example, the LA Times editorial was factually accurate, but the poem it chose to quote — Crucifix in a Deathhand" — was about as typical of Bukowski's work as "High Hopes" was of Frank Sinatra's career.

"Crucifix" is safe, almost lacy, and Bukowski was neither of those.

If we must engage in this search for approval from beyond the grave, then why not quote from "The Tragedy of the Leaves," which appeared on page 15 of "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame" in 1983?

"... and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both."

Why not pull a couple lines from "Old Man, Dead in a Room," which first appeared in the small magazine "The Outsider" in 1961?

"... and as my grey hands
drop a last desperate pen
in some cheap room
they will find me there
and never know
my name
my meaning
nor the treasure
of my escape."

Even the elementary lines of "B as in Bullshit," which was first published in the New York Quarterly in 1989, offers a better sense of what Bukowski might think of all this:

"B able to love
B able to feel superior
B able to understand that too much education is a fart in the dark
B able to dislike poets and poetry
B able to understand that the rich can be poor in spirit
B able to understand that the poor live better than the rich
B able to understand that shit is necessary
B aware that in every life a little bit of shit must fall
B aware that a hell of a lot more shit falls on some more than on others
B aware that many dumb bastards crawl the earth ..."

Bukowski was hard bits and sharp pieces, not just the few tender lines that seem to have become popular in the effort to court bureaucrats and politicians.

Bukowski was a writer, but not one of these bespectacled ones (I am bespectacled, so save the hate mail). There were no cream-colored suits in Bukowski's wardrobe; no Panama hats either, at least none that we shouldn't expect to have been ringed in sweat and dulled by road dirt and dried blood.

Bukowski told it like it was, but his truth was a writer's truth, something completely different from its distant cousin, journalistic fact. Bukowski's work was a reflection on and of the experiences he lived. As for what he thought outside the margins, there's plenty of accounts online that illustrate his notorious brashness, such as how he would sometimes hector the audience at his readings.

Bukowski was incendiary, given to outrageousness, like the time he was "caught on film, drunk, praising Idi Amin and Hitler." At one point in his life he "supported himself writing for skin magazines like 'Hustler' with humorous and very cynical pieces such as the provocatively entitled Western-spoof 'Stop Staring at My Tites, Mister...'"

He's also credited as the "probably the best selling poet America produced after World War II."

Many people might find Bukowski's life shameful. Others will see it as typical of an artistic temperament and worthy of forgiveness. Regardless, the greatest shame of all would be for anyone to conveniently omit or curtail the most vibrant parts of his life in an attempt to honor it. Salute him, or spurn him, but make it clear that we're talking about that most rare of individuals, THAT Bukowski.

Remember, as he wrote:

"... there'll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry."

— "To The Whore Who Took My Poems," By Charles Bukowski, "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame" (1983)

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Seismic Activity On The Bukowski Fault

By TJ Sullivan
[CROSSPOST: First posted Sept. 18, 2007, at Native Intelligence]


It was while burdened with my usual load of literary LA baggage that I tripped over a particularly bold pronouncement that protruded from a Time Magazine article this week.

The piece told of a local effort to preserve author and poet Charles Bukowski's bungalow at 5124 De Longpre Avenue in East Hollywood [just a block from the intersection of W. Sunset Blvd and N. Normandie Ave]. The bit of the story that made me stumble was in the lead paragraph, the part that said Bukowski's residence is "... the epicenter of a cultural earthquake that continues to rock Los Angeles's literary landscape."

Really? A place in which Bukowski flopped and farted on a regular basis is the epicenter of a cultural quake that continues to rock LA's literary landscape? What magnitude are we talking? Wait, I have to read that again.

"... the epicenter of a cultural earthquake that continues to rock Los Angeles's literary landscape."

Where's this rocking going on and did the TV guys get footage of whatever might have been shaken from the shelves of the nearest Barnes & Noble?

Like I said, I've got literary baggage. In addition to having been one of the many LA writers who regularly attended poetry readings in the late 1990s, I used to be the co-host of the now-defunct Midnight Special Bookstore's open-mic night, and, without a doubt, I can confirm that Bukowski's work influenced many young LA writers from all parts of the world.

Friday after Friday, both washed and unwashed poets squeezed into Santa Monica's literary Mecca and claimed five minutes at the mike to relate with hard words and sloppy details their own antisocial attributes and exploits. Some provided not only tales of ugly one-night stands gone sober, but the residential addresses of each louse and a few suggestions about what to shout [or throw] at a particular window or door after 3 AM. Spittle-laced profanities often flew from the back of the store to the front, and helped gather standing-room-only crowds of onlookers who slowed down to gawk at our messy lives as they might an accident on the 405. It was the sort of thing you don't see at today's chain-store readings (many of which have been sanitized for your protection). Of course, the chains that censor their readings are the same booksellers that put special places like the Midnight Special out of business, and subdued anything close to the cultural earthquake of which Bukowski may, or may not, have been a part. But, what's done is done.

So what would Bukowski say about this cultural earthquake thing nowadays, I mean, say if he were offered an opportunity to read at a corporately cleansed bookstore? WWBD? [What would Bukowski do?] To answer that we need only calculate how many carefully chosen curse words and lewd acts could fit through a whiskey-soaked microphone before the manager was able to wrestle the power cord from the amp.

Corporate bookstores aren't about cultural earthquakes. Nor do they seem interested in airing the unfettered self-expression of today's would-be Bukowskis. It’s too much for our all-too-sensitive consumers, the type of folks, I guess, who are more offended by Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction than by a brutal sport that writer George Will once described as "a mistake" that "combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings." It's not my intent to bash football, but rather to defend it with enthusiasm equal to my defense of a wardrobe snafu that sent TIVO recorders into overdrive for weeks. Are we all expected to be as kind and gentle, as, um, Sally Field? Er, maybe not after her Emmy snafu. [She's lucky she wasn't tasered.]

LA's poetry scene has deteriorated more with each death of an independent bookstore (as well as the demise of many independent coffee shops) during the past 10 years. And LA has lost something vital as a result. The city is lucky to have the many fine poets who continue to seek out venues, and especially the mom-and-pops that continue to allow uncensored performances. But they're still fewer and farther between.

Nonetheless, attend any reading in LA and you'll find what I did a decade ago — talented and typical Los Angelenos, but typical only in that most of them are from somewhere else, like New York, Minnesota, Louisiana, Texas, etc... They may be here now, but they read Bukowski back there. My first Bukowski book was a gift from a girl I dated in Kentucky, long before I ever imagined that I'd end up in Los Angeles. She copied one of his shorter poems on the inside cover: "As the spirit wanes the form appears."

This landscape is waning.

Maybe the cultural earthquake referenced in Time is the one that started up north with Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs. If so, it's in error, for Bukowski never would have counted himself, or his readers, among the masses of "angel-headed hipsters." He was something different, physically and emotionally older than the others; drunker, perhaps, with no interest in the experimentation, the guitar, or the patchouli.

If Bukowski was part of any cultural rumble it was one of his own making. He wrote for no one but Charles, endured rejection after rejection, educated himself along the way and rebuilt himself into a bullheaded bastard who knew his work was better than much of the trash chosen for publication instead of his. He was tenacious, like a stewbum with a bottle of wine and no corkscrew. He knew what many young writers seem to have trouble learning in this Internet age when anyone can stick a poem in a Web site and call it publication. Bukowski knew that a writer writes and writes and writes and damns the rejections all to hell. Bukowski wrote because writing was a form of pleasure.

Without doubt, Bukowski continues to be an influence in LA, but no more noticeably than Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver, Hunter S. Thompson, or countless others.

Let's say Charles Bukowski continues to rock LA's literary landscape. Then what in God's name have poetic giants like Maya Angelou done to it, and why hasn't the literary arm of FEMA responded to help pull us from the rubble?

Perhaps this is just another unfortunate example of East-coast bias. Maybe assigning Bukowski the stature of "a cultural earthquake" is a way to rationalize that an important writer actually emerged from the depths of this burbalicious conurbation instead of someplace more literary, like New York, or Paris. Maybe some minds flash "LOL and OMG" when confronted with the notion that people in Los Angeles might actually be writers, not to mention readers. Readers in LA? WTF?

LA has been and continues to be the home of many great writers and poets, some of whom are from here, and some of whom are not. As Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich said so well in a 1997 column that's often misattributed as a commencement speech by author Kurt Vonnegut, everyone should move around in life.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Writers like and unlike Bukowski rock the literary landscape of many places. Thus the cliché "But I'm big in Japan."

And let's not forget the local poets and writers who've done their own share of rocking, artists like Michele Serros, whose recorded performance poetry from the late 1990s remains a cherished part of my collection.

As for the bungalow, Curbed LA blogs it has yet to be swayed by the effort to preserve it, and Time says Bukowski himself might not have cared much about the place. The conclusion of the Time story says "... it's definitely a lot of effort for a man whose gravestone reads simply, 'Don't Try.'"

Then again ... maybe Bukowski meant "don't try" but rather shut your mouth and go do what you love simply for the joy of it. If something good happens, by God, enjoy that. Drink to it even. Have a sandwich!

That appears to be what he meant when he reportedly said this:

"What do you do? How do you write, create? You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it."

So maybe this particular issue of Time is good for something after all — the next ugly bug that comes to me.

-30-

* RELATED: An Incomplete List Of LA Writers, with links to their Web sites.
** RELATED UPDATE: CBS 2 LOS ANGELES reported on its Web site that LA's Cultural Heritage Commission decided Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007, to tour the Hollywood bungalow before making a final determination about whether to designate it as a historic-cultural monument.

*** RELATED LA TIMES EDITORIAL: The Los Angeles Times argued in favor of preservation in an editorial that appeared in the print edition, Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

NATIVE INTELLIGENCE: Is This Still THAT Buke?

A new post at Native Intelligence:

... If indeed the bungalow is the last of the rented residences left standing, then why not wonder aloud whether Bukowski might have helped knock the others down one booze-sodden punch at a time? It's no stretch to suggest that, if those walls could talk, they'd either stutter like a traumatized crime victim, or get up in your face and spit something like: "Bring it on you ugly mother!"

THAT was Bukowski, not this clever, sentimental adaptation that almost makes him sound like a prolific writer who enjoyed the company of women, got in a tussle now and then, and consumed more than two glasses of wine at fireside each evening ...

Read the rest at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Where In The World Is 'LA City Nerd?'

Still no word regarding what happened to LA City Nerd. The entire Web site has been locked up, supposedly for "invited readers" only, but I've yet to find anyone able to get past the sign-in wall.

Metroblogging LA doesn't seem to know. Neither does Franklin Ave.

Anybody hear from him, or her, or whoever the self-styled 'Nerd' may be?


— TJ Sullivan in LA

NATIVE INTELLIGENCE: The Bukowski Fault?

A new post at Native Intelligence:

It was while burdened with my usual load of literary LA baggage that I tripped over a particularly bold pronouncement that protruded from a Time Magazine article this week.

The piece told of a local effort to preserve author and poet Charles Bukowski's bungalow at 5124 De Longpre Avenue in East Hollywood [just a block from the intersection of W. Sunset Blvd and N. Normandie Ave]. The bit of the story that made me stumble was in the lead paragraph, the part that said Bukowski's residence is "... the epicenter of a cultural earthquake that continues to rock Los Angeles's literary landscape."

Really? A place in which Bukowski flopped and farted on a regular basis is the epicenter of a cultural quake that continues to rock LA's literary landscape? What magnitude are we talking? ...

Read the rest at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Bee Might Feel The Sting Of ABQ Trib Closure

I missed this one a couple weeks ago when I posted a collection of links to blog posts regarding the likely closure of The Albuquerque Tribune ...

It sounds as though Albuquerque's Regional Spelling Bee might become collateral damage, a sad situation indeed, not just for the community, but for the company that owns The Trib, The E.W. Scripps Company.

This was in the latest post on the regional bee:

The Trib is sending letters out this week concerning the regional bee. Basically, we're saying what we know now: The Trib will close if no buyer is found. We've heard rumors that we're going to be shut down any time from Sept. 30 to Jan. 1.

Scripps is sponsor of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. [The Bee celebrated its 80th year in 2007 (there was no Bee during World War II years 1943, 1944, and 1945). Its history is detailed in a Wikipedia entry.]

Check this out: A list of champions and their winning words that goes back to 1925. Click here.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

The Landlord Won't Give A Receipt ...

Can a landlord and/or building manager legally refuse to provide a receipt for payment of rent?

It seems like something an apartment renter should be entitled to by law. And, indeed, it is a law (specifically California Civ. Code § 1499), which says:

"A debtor has a right to require from his creditor a written receipt for any property delivered in performance of his obligation."

Although some may assume that payment of rent by check will suffice, since a canceled check can function as a receipt, there are many conceivable situations in which a canceled check may not be enough. Whatever the reason, whether for financial purposes, or simply as a consumer protection, renters in California have a legal right to be provided a receipt upon presentation of payment.

NOLO explains it to landlords this way:

Many states require landlords to give tenants a receipt for the rent. This protects tenants who pay in cash, who would have no other way to prove that they did indeed pay the rent if they are challenged by the landlord. Although most tenants now pay by check or credit card, landlords in these states must still issue receipts if asked. And if the check bounces, the fact that you gave the tenant a receipt for that rubber check will not hinder you in your attempts to get the tenant to pay.

Many states give tenants a "renters' tax credit," which they can take when they file their income taxes, and tenants who pay in cash will need that receipt to back up their deduction.

It would also seem a particularly prudent practice for renters in Los Angeles whose units are protected by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO), especially if it ever becomes necessary for a tenant to prove that payments were made promptly.

Although the vast majority of property owners and renters are honest and responsible folks, sometimes people get taken advantage of on both sides of the transaction. It's one reason why paper documents like leases, for example, replaced the spit handshakes of the Wild West.

The soaring cost of rent in Los Angeles has already proved temptation enough to inspire at least one "ruse to evict low-rent-paying tenants." The Los Angeles City Council closed one particular loophole earlier this year, but the need for watchfulness remains just as surely as the old adage "get it in writing" still holds true.

Besides, this shouldn't be a big deal.

Receipts are simple slips of paper provided routinely for the purchase of $1 packets of chewing gum. Shouldn't the same standard be applied for the average rent payment of $1,607 a month (average rent as of 2Q 2007)? It's not a composition. It's initials (or a signature), a dollar amount and a date.

However, if the landlord still refuses to provide a receipt, Los Angeles County renters can file a complaint at the county's Department of Consumer Affairs. Just click on the Complaint Form link.

(By the way, the DCA responds to such consumer-related questions via e-mail. Follow this link to their Ask Us A Question page.)

— TJ Sullivan in LA

So Much For Peak Season

The Los Angeles Times reported today that Southern California's dismal home-sales figures last month ranked it as the worst August in 15 years:

Sales last month were the worst for any August since 1992, according to research firm DataQuick Information Systems. Last month 17,755 homes were sold in the six-county region, compared with 27,875 a year earlier, for a 36.3% drop.

The story also included the usual expression of uncertainty about what it all means. John Karevoll, DataQuick's chief analyst, was quoted as saying: "Things are slow, but the big question is, 'Is this a normal post-cycle lull or is the sky falling?' I don't think we know yet."

* * * Also, while we're on the subject of housing ... A hat tip is long overdue to Curbed LA, which has does an outstanding job with its original daily reporting and considerable linkage to all things housing in Los Angeles. Definitely worth a regular visit.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

Right Back After This ... (cough)

I know, I know.

I was supposed to be back late last week, and I was, except ... I caught a post-vacation cold, my first cold in more than two years, and, well ... what day is today?

The fuzz is still in my head, so it's going to be a couple more days before I return to regular strength.

— TJ Sullivan in LA