Month: August 2008

He Ain’t Sleeping…He’s Just Dead

Every culture is entitled to its rituals. But when you mummify a guy and stash his body in the spare bedroom, you may be taking things a little too far. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times attests the King of Toraja has endured or enjoyed this fate, depending how you look at it, for the past five years. Apparently, you can’t lay the guy to rest until you slaughter enough Water Buffalo and Pigs to send him off in grand style. We’re talking here of dozens of Water Buffalo and hundreds of pigs for the big celebration. This, they claim, shows respect and allows the deceased to earn his rightful place in the heavens.  I guess.

Once upon a time the Indians practices Sati, where it was considered an honor for the wife of the deceased to throw herself on his funeral pyre. Men, naturally, didn’t follow this practice. Legend has it that women would hurl themselves on the flames because of their undying love for their husbands. Or as a preference not to suffer the fate of widowhood. I would want to know what the women have to say. And if they had once believed it, which I doubt, clearly they have smartened up. Sati is no longer practiced, or at least as a common occurrence.

I remember seeing picture of Eva Peron, Evita to those into the musical of the same name, preserved in wax and gracing the table of her dictator husband Juan. As with the King of Toraja, flowers abounded. Dead flowers, dead body. Starts to sound like a Graham Parsons song. But there she was, hanging around until the aggrieved could finally part with her. There are many stories like that and some were captured in a book reviewed in either the New York or LA Times some years ago.

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What are they doing, signing him up for online dating? Dead guy looking for fun time with live girl. Doesn’t like to take long walks in the moonlight. I don’t know. But apparently the Torajans save up a long time and spend much of their lives planning their death. They fatten up the Water Buffalo and the pigs. It’s a big deal dying, or at leas the funeral. It makes you wonder what they get out of living if dying is such a festive event.

They say relatives talk to the dead guy while he is lying in his casket. Kind of vampire like, ain’t it? So do lonely women write him letters and ask to become his girlfriend? Do gun advocates demonstrate the cold dead hands theory? Is his casket the right accessory for a flat screen TV?

And perhaps, most importantly, especially for the PETA people, what do the Water Buffalo and the Pigs think about all this. I dare say they are not much up for the celebration.

Hot Buttered Corn Syrup and the Changing Public Taste

Time was when you eat or drank something sweet it was usually sugar cane or honey that made it that way. Your sodas, ice cream, cakes, whatever were made with sugar, unless you bought it at the emerging health foods stores. Then it might have been made with honey or molasses. Occasionally, maple syrup escaped its role as topping gourmet pancakes and waffles to satisfy your sweet tooth.

Corn syrup was rare. Corn syrup was the poor man’s sweetener. And then the food and beverage companies realized they could save a few cents per serving, and they started added corn sweetener to your snacks and drinks. Corn syrup was not only cheaper, they needed less to make food and drink as sweet or sweeter than sugar would. High fructose corn syrup–nothing like it.

Which is true. Apparently, it has no source in nature and the body has difficulty recognizing it as food and tends to store it more as fat than the body would store sugar cane or honey. At least that is the theory or argument posed by the alleged health nuts of the world. The Corn Refiners Association says otherwise. As do the companies who bought high fructose corn syrup and used it in their food and beverages. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times, captures the controversy pretty well.

But then, as some argue, when you look around, people are fatter. Forget the nice words like obese and overweight. People are fat. The fat rolls over their waistline, pudges out their arms and legs, extends their rear ends and causes their jowls to hang like a Bull Dog’s. And people have gotten fatter since we started consuming corn syrup in grand style. At its peak, the individual in America consumed almost 64 pounds of corn syrup a year. Now it is down to just over 56 pounds per person. That’s a lot of sweetener.

Diabetes is up, people are fatter, and related illnesses has climbed significantly. The purveyors of corn sweetener will tell you the obesity increase is due to caloric increase and the sedentary life. We are fat because we are couch potatoes, is the prevailing wisdom. It has nothing to do with the corn syrup we ingest every year.
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Well now a lot of people aren’t buying it. Literally. They haven’t been buying it for a number of years. So the good people who have been giving you bad foods are turning back to making their foods and beverages with sugar cane. They even boast their food products are “natural” and some even trumpet the health benefits of the sugar cane compared to corn syrup. Hey, anything for a buck.

I have to marvel over the miracle of the free market. This is the law of supply and demand at its finest. People no longer want something they fear is unhealthy in their foods and drinks and the manufacturers are forced to respond. The vendors re-arrange the furniture, so to speak, and spend the extra few cents on the ingredients and take the extra trouble to ship and store the more cumbersome sugar cane. Pretty amazing, eh?

But what is also amazing is that it took this long. For years now there have been health concerns about corn syrup. As the nation grew larger, the controversy stayed small. Until recently. As it has been said so many times over so many conditions, a change has come at last.

In the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, Galco’s a little Hispanic grocery has been for years carrying soft drinks with real cane sugar for many years. It is in fact the absolute Mecca for cane syrup soft drinks with aisle after aisle of cases of soft drinks from all over the world. Galco’s carried everything from the popular blends to the obscure. The owners let you mix and match. Galco’s serves excellent sandwiches, too, which presents a good excuse to wash them down with a bottle or two of Mexican or Irish soda pop.

As for the corn syrup, turn it into ethanol and put put it in your car. If your car gets fat, then you will know what to blame.

New Meaning to the Term, Cheap Date

Time was when someone told you they were a cheap date, it was regarded with humor. It was cute, something that was enticing, sweet, and implied that your prospective paramour was a person of simpler tastes. Of course, this wasn’t always the case, or even often the case, and a few dates into the relationship and those simpler tastes ratcheted up to more expensive forays around the town.

Then we had a couple, few decades of excess, spelled out perhaps by the more austere nineties and early twenty first century. Then happy days were here again. People dined, parties, bought custom clothes and borrowed heavily with equity loans on their properties that they believed would never stop appreciating. Many lived deep in debt but didn’t worry about it, since there was always more money from somewhere. And besides, living large was so much fun.

And then came reality. The economy went into a stall, housing prices plummeted and the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, hey, you too can buy a million dollar house for only $3,000 a month, knocked the proverbial wind out of our economic sails. Then came the insane increase in the prise of fuel, and the even more insane increase in the price of everything else.

So here we are, instead of the premium vodka and caviar weekends, the frequent trips to wherever we wanted to go, and even the eating out at Applebee’s three times a week, are becoming for most of us a fading memory. Even the rich feel the pinch and are complaining. I guess when your investment portfolio takes a 25% hit and your developing nations stocks fail to develop, it’s time to tighten the belt somewhat.

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Who knows? For dates, couple may start going for walks and packing picnic baskets. In time they may discover that at least half the food you eat in restaurants, while convenient, is often pretty lousy. It is actually fun to make food in your own kitchen, talking while preparing. If you are a new couple, it is a good way to really get to know each other without having to go through the usual rote speech questionnaire.

Perhaps, as the old song mistakenly attests, not all the best things in life are free. But some of the things can prove inexpensive. Hey, sex can be cost effective. And unlike most of the movies we see and meals we eat, you may even remember it a couple of days after you did it. Cap it off with more modest romantic gestures. They are appreciated, endearing and it shows you are making an effort to trasncend the usual doldrums of the economic downturn.

In times when just buying gasoline and basic groceries is putting a dent in the budget, perhaps the simpler lifestyle may be a necessity. But then it may also be desirable. Less pressure and fewer hoops to jump through to impress someone in ways that often don’t matter anyway. I mean, what woman really wants expensive jewelry? just kidding. All right, some of the better things in life definitely do cost money.

But who knows? With fewer nights out and fewer distractions, maybe you’ll even have to talk to each other.

The Paparazzi Go Surfing

Last Thursday, several performers, testified at Los Angeles City Hall about the tribulations of the dreaded Paparazzi. Dutifully, the performers pronounced to City Councilman Dennis P. Zine’s stalwart task force how they were put upon, set upon and otherwise infringed upon by an uncaring, avaricious bunch of tabloid journalists who make their living following celebrities around. Of course no one offered how the Paparazzi could boost careers as well as hinder personal lives.

Sometimes getting photographed or getting written up in the tabloids is a trade off. You are annoyed, even hounded. Your business, as they say, it out on the street. But in return you receive more public exposure. It’s fair to say career have never really been made or broken by the Paparazzi. But careers have been boosted and lives have been damaged. The recent romp through the Beverly Hilton hotel and the subsequent cornering of former Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate, John Edwards, who had allegedly been visiting his mistress and love child, I’m sure did little to boost his chances for a cabinet position.

Then there is the recent situation up in Malibu where some of the youthful denizens decided to experiment with some notion of honor by intimidating the Paparazzi who were there to take photos of Matthew McConaughey who was surfing. I can well understand that McConaughey wanted his privacy but the notion of nobility among the privileged Malibu surfer dudes is about as laughable as another Brittany Spears beaver shot.

I remember when celebrities and aspiring performers had their publicists and managers tip the Paparazzi to ensure the tabloid media was present for whatever was deemed a seminal event. Like when dinner that night at Spago with a new love interest that would attract a lot more coverage than a mere dinner with friends. There was always some tipoff, some tempest in a teapot that could play out like scandal that the tabloids could embrace and for which the celebrity would benefit.
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I also remember hanging out for an hour or so with one famed Paparazzi photographer. He and his sometime partner were considered gruff and callous. They were infamous for taking photos in the most unusual ways, like one burying the other in sand and cover him with a newspaper, the popping out when the target strode past. Or using a really long lens to snare a shot of a really famous political personality who was topless on her private beach.

The day I sat with this photographer he showed me photographs he had taken not for the tabloids but for himself. They were photographs of famous people, of course. But the photos were sensitive and captured aspects of personality I hadn’t seen in other photos. There was one particular photo of the Kennedy matriarchy that was taken back when Rose Kennedy was still alive. The photographer had struck a bargain and offered that if the Kennedy women would pose for the photo, he would leave them alone. Well at least for the rest of the day. He took the photo and kept his word. They went on their way. The photo remains, and I still think about that photo from time to time. For the supposed gruff guy, the crass Paparazzi, there was artistic sensitivity working underneath.

But let’s face it, the world has changed and its hunger for photos and information about famous people defies all logic. I mean how much can you really care about someone else life? But more on that some other time. It is sufficient here to remark that celebrities have been hounded beyond any common dignity. Princess Diana was the most notable instance, and all conspiracy theories aside, what went on that fateful night in Paris’ Pont d’Alma Tunnel may have well been caused by an overzealous tabloid media.

The media can be ruthless. The path to celebrity can also be ruthless. When you sign aboard, you may get more than you bargained for. So at the end of the day, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the restaurant.

Federal Agents Have Mistaken Osama Bin Laden for a Pot Plant

I feel safer this week than I did last. Much safer. Why? Not because the intrepid strategists of our federal government arrested Osama Bin Laden. Not because they have vanquished the Taliban in Afghanistan. And certainly not because they arrested every violent street gang member in Los Angeles and shipped back the illegal gangsters to wherever it was that they came from.

Instead of all that, Drug Enforcement Agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City. According to the Los Angeles Times, they arrested a single employee, a disabled former Marine. This daring raid occurred the same day the Appellate State Court in San Diego ruled that federal law does not preempt California’s Medical Marijuana Laws.

Now everybody knows there are two types that visit the medical marijuana dispensaries around California. There are the people who are genuinely ill or even terminal, who use it to relieve the ailments and side effects caused by any number of diseases and their associative treatments. And then there is everyone else.

Dispensaries are not hard to find. Often the big green neon marijuana leaf in the window serves as a definite giveaway. And their patrons are not hard to spot. Drive down any major street during the weekend and you will find pot customers patiently standing outside their favorite dispensaries, waiting for the place to open its doors. And getting the card that will give you legal permission to buy marijuana, from what I have been told, is not hard to obtain. You just talk to the doctor about your ailments, fork over some money, and here’s your card.

Now Culver City has a history. Many of the great and formerly great film studios are and have been located there. The old MGM, with its two Leo Lions at the entrance graced one part of Culver City. The studio’s famous musicals were all shot there, including “The Wizard of Oz,” where the Munchkins allegedly cavorted with sexual rhapsody, not having never before seen so many of their own kind in one place at one time. This tale is part of Hollywood myth or legend, depending on which you prefer.

Now that great MGM lot is part of Sony Entertainment. The old back lots, with all of the sets, from Andy Hardy to Biblical Epics, were long ago sold of for condominiums. The old Culver Studios enjoys yet another incarnation. And the curious can see the main building, which served as the exterior for Tara in “Gone With the Wind.” That Battle of Atlanta, Daryl Zanuck style, he being the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” was fought in Culver City. The famous train station sequence, with all the Confederate wounded lying in wait for the evacuating locomotives was shot on that land. Today the wounded could slake their thirst with a quick stop at Trader Joe’s.
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Other than action films, Culver City’s history is not particularly violent. It is not a dangerous community. In fact, it is anything but, since Culver City is enjoying a comprehensive rejuvenation. It is now a destination where film studios, old and new, coexist with trendy restaurants, movies theaters, the Kirk Douglas legitimate theater, boutiques, home furnishings outlets, and, apparently, a marijuana dispensary. The biggest danger is perhaps getting run over by a stroller, or clobbered by a hand holding couple too ensconced in romance to notice you walking in front of them. You may also suffer a seizure when you read the prices at some of the more trendy restaurants, or see how long the waiting line is for anything, anywhere.

But you won’t be mugged, chances are. And you wouldn’t notice the pot dispensary and the people buying their weed to either alleviate the pain or provide entertainment. But the Feds did notice. On the day the California Appeals Court ruled that the Federal agencies should concentrate on other things, like the rampant smuggling and the incumbent violence on the border. But that may prove a challenge.

Now it has been a long time since marijuana was any kind of issue to me. Age and responsibility has a way of supplanting certain desires. But if I was truly ill, or suffered the side effects I know friends of mine have suffered from, I would be thinking about something, anything, that would ease the pain and discomfort. If you are really sick or terminal you aren’t worried about dying from marijuana. If if it’d just to enjoy yourself, then arguments can be made for against its use or, more directly, adult use.

But that is not my argument. Mine is to wonder why we are bothering with this nonsense when we have so many other challenges. When we have real crime, and, as I noted earlier, the borders are rife with killing and smuggling. Thousands have died in the Mexican Drug Wars, and that war has spilled over into the States.

And then there is a matter of money. We are broke. We are borrowing money from China. And we are using it for what, exactly? By acting this misdirected, you would think the DEA is high on grass.