Surviving 3rd Grade by Cooper

When I walked in late after 9:00 a.m., it was the second day. I had missed the first. I had no idea where I was going that day. I was lonely and scared. I didn't know how I would survive.

I made lots of allies like Miles, Solomon, and Nikolai. In time, I had perfected my skills at stuff like multiplication and reading. I got better at writing complete stories, and, finally, long division. 

I think my situation in 4th grade will be a lot like my situation in 3rd grade, but I'll still work more on my survival skills and I'll have my allies to help me survive.

I think I'm ready to pilot my plane to the 4th grade.

Me, too.

No parade unless Lakers pay

Can the City of L.A. really afford to pay $1 million for 1/2 of a victory parade to fete the Lakers? The mayor says to forgo this opportunity is "untenable," but laying off teachers and city workers, cutting essential services - that he can live with.

Is Villaraigosa completely tone deaf? Is he aware of the hungry teachers camped out at the school district headquarters? They're on day 20 of their strike. What about the student walk-outs. (He's famous for participating in such an action, when he was a student at Roosevelt High.) These stories are all over the paper and easy to find on YouTube.

Earlier on Sunday, the mayor covered himself in a rainbow flag and rode in West Hollywood's annual gay pride parade - traditionally, one of the most creative occasions in our fair metropolis - a veritable celebration of crepe paper and extra large cheerleader uniforms. (Think about what the girls of Christopher Street West could do with a million bucks!)

Ironically, about a week before His Honor vowed to "put the [gay marriage] issue back on the ballot," protesters gathered at Hollywood Forever cemetery to voice their discontent about cuts in the fight against HIV/AIDS, estimated to be $80 million, state-wide. Villaraigosa wasn't even there. Will he miss the $2 million Laker parade? No way, Kobe.

We have real needs in this community - gay, straight, kids, the elderly, fighting crime, saving our schools, zero waste, creating jobs. I think turning away from our citizens is "untenable." Will we sleep any easier in our beds if we have a parade?

And why can't the Lakers pay for the whole thing? Why quibble about money at a time like this, when to be magnanimous would go so far in solidifying the devotion of fans throughout this city? People are nuts about their Lakers, with the flags and the outfits, the car rocking and the bonfires.

They should take a page out of David Cooley's book, a WeHo cafe owner who donated $5,000 to the Fairfax High School band instead of spending the money to build a float for Gay Pride. The Laker victory parade will cover a two-mile route through some of the most distressed neighborhoods in this city. Pay for your own parade, Jerry, Kobe, Phil.

Sign the petition saying NO to an LA-paid parade.

Call the Lakers' senior VP of business operations and marketing, Tim Harris, (310) 426-6000.

Sound off about summer school

In about 19 days, the nation's second largest school district will shut its doors and put 700,000 kids between the ages of 5 and 18 out on our streets. If you think your park programs, your food courts, and your Apple store camps are crowded now, wait until next month.

Many of LAUSD's students are among the state's most challenged learners, and they need the instruction, structure, and consistency summer school provides. Other kids just need a place to be and something to do for a few hours a days.

California also has the fourth-highest rate of unemployment in the U.S., and parents looking for work or forced to make do with a smaller monthly income won't be spending money on fancy - or maybe even modestly priced - summer camps. Now more than ever this city needs to provide free services to its children and families.

What's even harder to understand is that district is the midst of multi-billion-dollar building frenzy - the largest construction project in the West. Despite draconian budget cuts and the pink slips sent to thousands of LAUSD teachers this spring, construction of new schools continues unabated. In Downtown L.A. alone there are a dozen new schools, including the soon-to-open high school for the arts and the 2,500-student mega-plex Roybal Learning Center. These new campuses are inviting, innovative works of architecture - and as soon as they're open, they'll be mothballed about 25% of the year.

 

Somehow the numbers and priorities need to be re-calculated to put the students' needs first.

Angelenos, are we really ready to give up on 700,000 of our kids so easily? Is this truly the best we can do?

By the way, if you want to sound off about summer school, KPCC would like to hear from you. 

To Protect and, whatever, don't bother us

Nothing says "we don't care" like a lame website, and the LAPD has one of the lamest. The first thing you'll see if you visit is that crime is down. Their website is my only evidence of this. I find no corroboration in the daily paper or on the news, but then I can't find information about anything I see or hear about in the paper or on the news. Plus, as anyone who has watched The Wire knows, cops jack stats. As anyone who has read the current LA Weekly knows, Bill Bratton is the statistics jacker-in-chief.

There must be some kind of chicanery behind Chief Bratton and Mayor Villaraigosa's assertions that crime is down to its 1956 levels, and Friday night, I had a strong feeling I was witnessing the latest round of "book cooking." Black and whites were everywhere, cruising the Los Feliz Art Walk, shining their spots, barking on the mike - "Stay on the sidewalk!" - and generally acting like extras on Southland.

Why hasn't that show been cancelled yet? I need to do a quick riff on Southland, which I looked forward to with anticipation. I love cop shows, from Dragnet and Adam 12 to Police Woman to NYPD Blue and beyond. But Southland's a non-starter. It's super-TV-ish. It doesn't know where it falls on the police meta-narrative continuum, and it is so basic, it feels contrived.

My beefs include the ridiculous: even in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles (which I learned from the LAPD website is 468 square miles, not the 500 the Southland website rounds up to) cops do not cover a beat from South Central to Echo Park to the Hollywood Hills, and furthermore, they don't give tickets in West Hollywood for two reasons - a) cops don't give tickets except during organized sweeps, like New Year's Eve or last Friday night, when they haul out the portable paddy wagons and b) WeHo is outside of the LAPD's jurisdiction. That prime territory belongs to the LA County Sheriff. (I get it: the extra 32 square miles in Southland's LA must include WeHo.)

On the larger scale, I am not interested in the characters. They are all so conventionally flawed with good hearts underneath. The first season of The Shield inured me against rookies who have their "faith shaken," as the episode recap states, and actually get to kill a person their first day on the job. The dialog feels ripped from a ride-along . After five seasons of The Wire, I know enough about "natural police" to know there aren't any in Southland.

Which brings us back to the website and its lameness.
As I said, I know there was a crackdown taking place this weekend - I saw it in full force, everywhere I went, all evening.
There's nothing about that in the paper or on the local news. There's nothing about it on the LAPD website.

Instead there's info about swine flu, the 2010 U.S. census, and earthquake preparedness (which is over now - it's May, not April - and the irony is, we actually had an earthquake on May 1. Wasn't that lucky).
You may not have thought these topics were within the purview of the LAPD. You would have been wrong. I guess since crime has dropped so dramatically and resources are tight, the LAPD is branching out.

Maybe resources aren't as tight as we've been told: the LAPD is hiring. Starting pay is $56,522 a year, all the coffee you can drink, and the chance to murder someone your very first day! Oops, that's only only on TV.

If you're into TV, you can watch LAPD tv online. There are numerous "talking head" speeches from the Chief, and a couple of unintelligible silent videos. Don't miss this one:
Titled "15 year old girl attacked," this 16-second security camera video is probably somehow related to the attempted rape of a young girl outside King Middle School. Since there is absolutely no audio, no date, no information, and no captioning, you'll have to trust my sleuthing.

I was beginning to think I'd stumbled on to the website for Mayberry R.F.D., when, oh, wait, here at the BOTTOM of the page, there's a Most Wanted list, a Most Wanted Gang Members list, and information about various rewards. Wouldn't you think this info would go near the TOP of the page - maybe before the outdated story about earthquake preparedness and the non-story about H1N1?

Suffice it to say that the LAPD has no Twitter feed, no official Facebook presence, and no "breaking news" on their site or in their blog. If you want to know what's happening in your neighborhood, please just figure it for yourself. Chances are you'll find nothing in the paper, nothing on the news, nothing online.

Maybe you can talk to a cop next time you're eating at Palermo's (they're closed on Tuesdays). And when he or she tells you they've got it under control, you can breath a sigh of relief, pat yourself on the back for being so friendly to a person in uniform, and keep telling yourself, crime is down, it's down, it's down. If you ever doubt that for a moment, revisit the website. You will see the statistics. No news. No information. No details. Just the facts.

Schedule for The Hollywood Mom

6:30 a.m. Wake up. Think about world peace. Go on Facebook.

7:00 a.m. Wake up kids. Update Twitter status. Think about Linked In.

7:30 a.m. Schedule conference (w/ husband).

7:45 a.m. Personal car - middle school. 

8:15 a.m. Personal car - elementary school.

8:50 a.m. Von's is open; The Hollywood Mom may stop by for cat food and to say hello, and all staff will appear very happy to see her.

9:15 a.m. Return home. Think about world financial markets. Go on Facebook.

9:30 a.m. Play Bejeweled Blitz while reading through other people's tweets and status updates.

10:00 a.m. Do the dishes. Think about filing lots of papers piled up on filing cabinet.

10:15 a.m. Meeting with New Jersey branch (sister) (on phone)

11:00 a.m. High level negotiations with Wells Fargo (on phone)

11:15 a.m. Higher level negotiations with J. Crew (on phone)

11:30 a.m. Receive text message from daughter. Results of history test are in: 90%. Prepare press release for husband.

11:35 a.m. Unscheduled event: Discover son's lunch under bed where dog is trying to open and consume. Personal car to Hollywood for delivery. Son appears simultaneously relieved and nonplussed. Crisis averted.

noon Run into ____________ at school office. Lunch on Larchmont. Published agenda: School Fundraiser coming up next month. Actual topic of meeting: people we know in common and hold wide-ranging opinions of.

1:00 p.m. Monetary Policy meeting with husband, on phone, as in, Did you pay the car insurance? No, I thought you paid the car insurance. And then, but you always pay the car insurance - you have a relationship with them. No, I only pay when you forget. Transcript available through the Freedom of Information Act.

2:50 p.m. Personal car arrives at elementary school. No idea what I've done or where I've been since 1:00 p.m., but I have fewer overdue library books than I did when I left, which feels like an accomplishment.

3:15 p.m. Personal car arrives at middle school. Debriefing commences. Most days it feels like 5 miles is 4 miles too far for this hungry, angry, tired constituency to travel. Possible bailout to Village Pizza or Sam's Bagels.

4:15 p.m. Personal car arrives home. Think about dinner. Go on Facebook.

4:30 p.m. Strategic objectives meeting: how will two children faced with limited electronic resources watch what they want to watch, play the games they want to play, and visit the websites they want to visit without killing each other? Oh, and do homework.

4:40 p.m. Ice cream man!!! (shuttle diplomacy, East Side)

6:15 p.m. Husband/father arrives home. No idea what's been going on all afternoon but dinner is not only not ready, it hasn't even been started. 

6:20 p.m. Personal car to Boot Camp class, accompanied by son, who has been bribed into going with the promise of a grilled cheese sandwich at snack bar. Pressure on the domestic monetary supply relieves pressure on the sibling rivalry quotient. And hunger.

8:30 p.m. Personal car returns home. Sit down to watch something on DVR. 

8:40 p.m.  Schedule change: Emergency communication from daughter. Poster project demonstrating seismic activity of tectonic plates due in morning has not only not been finished, it hasn't even been started. Ten minutes are wasted being mad.

11:00 p.m. All family participants are asleep - except cat who's just beginning his day. Head for bed but first check Facebook. Daughter is online in another room! Want to reprimand her but end up online chatting instead.

11:15 p.m. Now I'm mad. Take away computer. Ignore the unpublishable look on her face. Get in bed. Think about getting a job. Might not have time for it. 'Night.

Freeze Frame: Truly Enjoyable, Unremarkable Day

I want to hang on to the little things - the moments of an unremarkable Sunday. The sounds of the birds chirping in the backyard at the end of an afternoon, louder and closer than the street noise or the freeway.

Seeing a hummingbird just an arm's length away, out the back window.

The punctuation of an impromptu ping pong game in the unfinished attic overhead - Jim taking time out from his work, distracting Cooper from a fight with his sister by challenging him to a match. More than once, the ball escapes down the stairs. It makes that hollow sound, so distinct - a

n echo of church basements, suburban garages, and renovated

 rec rooms across America. 

A black cat and a white dog curled up in different zones on the bed while I read a novel from start to finish in a day. A friend wrote and gave me this book as a gift. (That's actually pretty remarkable - both the fact that I have friends and neighbors who write fantastic books, as well as t

he novel itself: Angels Crest by Leslie Schwartz. I can't wait to call her tomorrow and tell her

 how terrific it was, how much I enjoyed her writing.)

I saw a French film at the DGA today, Welcome, about Iraqi 

immigrants trying to make their way from France to England. I always thought we Americans were the most intolerant and xenophobic people in the world. Turns out, we might not be. We can be fined for hiring undocumented workers, but in France - if this movie is accurate - people can be arrested for "harboring" or helping them - giving them warm jackets. Wow.

Went to a barbeque on Benton, saw some friends and ate two hot dogs. Delicious. Drank the first pull from Coryander's Diet Coke then handed it back to her. She didn't mind. I knew she wouldn't. 

Got a call from a man who spoke very little English. Said he found a book on a bus stop with my name and number in it. Met him at the library on Alvarado and Sunset moments later. He brought two little kids with him and gave me the book. Thanks, I said. Dana thought he might have wanted a reward. Maybe, but it didn't seem so. While I was waiting for him, I saw Heather get on a bus, heading for the Festival of Books at UCLA. 

Text messages and phone calls: Blaire is back from Chicago, Amanda and I are playing phone tag, Susan slept until 10, Devon is putting her kitchen back together and running off to Tom's play, Jane missed her softball game, Greg is too busy to go to the movies, Ann is also at the Festival of Books, Dana figured out Facebook for her Treo, George is having a long and leisurely breakfast. 

These are the days when I'm in my village, and I know I'm not alone.

Laid-off Lethargy

A lot of people know I lost my job about three weeks ago, and lest I appear to be a particularly well-adjusted or mature person, I want to confess, I watched three movies during the daytime yesterday:

• What We Do is Secret about Darby Crash and The Germs. It's hard to believe I was just down the freeway in college during the rise of LA Punk and never, not once, not ever came up here to see any of the bands that I'm constantly reading about and watching documentaries about now. I guess I was just so busy being a big fish in a mini pond.
  
• I've Loved You So Long. Really good "sister" movie, and I never noticed before how much Kristin Scott Thomas looks like Lauren Hutton. Next time I'm in a car with my sister and I feel like she's not telling me something, I'm going to try and remember to say, "Tell me. I'm not other people." I also think I want to get my haircut like that sister's.
  
• East Side, West Side, which made me long for a New York that never really existed anywhere but on Hollywood backlots. When I got off the Carey Bus in Midtown during spring break 1981, the New York I saw had absolutely nothing in common with the New York I was expecting. It turned out to be amazing in a thousand other ways, but it was nothing like cinematic New York the way Panda Express is nothing like Chinese food. East Side, West Side was all about adultery and nightclubs. Made me miss Mad Men.

I'll let you know what I'm going to watch next.