I Love L.A. is a song written by the talented Randy Newman, who holds a record also-ran for the Academy Awards till he got an Oscar © for "Monsters,Inc." One of his uncles, Alfred Newman, the composing music streak is with the Newmans, wrote "Conquest" -- one of the two well-known University of Southern California marching band staples, also a song of film soundtrack. Given USC's latest tournaments we should call Conquest how The West Was Lost. That quarterback from U of T was unforgettably hungry for the title; two years or three ago was it?
The irony lost is read between the lines of the mordacity of Randy Newman's lyrics, in which he is criticizing our plethora of villages, Greater Los Angeles. Wikipedia says he feels ambivalent about Los Angeles. I guess we all love the sunny days when we can cruise by to the sound of the Beach Boys. We cultivate our bermudas and slightly pampered manners, uncouth ignorant wannabes nouveau riche Los Angelinos that we are. Or plain obese immigrants ignorant of each other.
Nic and I have been on a project of identification of the revitalization of downtown and south central. Our first homes were on and off USC campus, an area quite similar to the ghetto shown in "White Men Can't Jump." The 1992 Rodney King riots created empty lots on Vermont past USC. Ours are long boulevards and avenues. During the latest riots the media announced repeatedly there were no police on the street. There was a party for Chief Gates. Rodney King -- Can't we get along? -- lent his name to the riots of spring 1992.
How to ignore the studied indifference of people passing by beggars; calling the police on loiterers, the fascination of bargains in Chinatown, ice-cream and ceramic work in Little Tokyo, La Placita and Olvera Street, all walking distance from each other, if people walked in L.A.The first day I got here I went to Watts. For a "brasileira," culturally, how could I tell it was a ghetto when all houses had TV antennas, were made of stucco, in the trademark cacayellow of projects? It's lawns and cars that gave away where was safe and where wasn't. Yellow lawns; old cars, litter clogging the sewers if it rains.
For crime strikes mostly poor areas. Money for protection at MacArthur Park, in the Rampart division area of the pol-ice killed a baby last week. Salvatrucha 13, from El Salvador, has made inroads all the way to the midwest and east coast.Speed, ice, crystal meth can be made at home and smoked. We know from Stephen Soderbergh's exposé where Traffic is really coming from. The Village Voice wrote a long time ago on how crime rates having fallen in NYC is a sac of bull hype. The poor continue threatened. In Los Angeles it's not much different. The shooting death of a baby in an errant bullet of a gangbanger charging protection of a street vendor on Sixth and Alvarado reinforces what the
V V saw happen in NYC. Protection for the rich and the invisibility of the poor.
This attitude is pervasive in greater Los Ageles. The Santa Ana hot winds bring a smell of burned frijoles and migraines. Fires. The ghetto as we saw it last week has more gates, fear and dirt. More pawnbrokers, churchfronts, hot pillows (motels.) Some construction. Silence.
In Rio the gates barring beggars or strangers, cement cones on sidewalks, barriers to joy, are at least democratic. The favelas are next to the rich. There's protection for none.
Here we have had our incidents, masked by the press. Steve Lopez tells it like it is. In 2007 we still love L.A.
Embedding of 1980s video disabled. This was L.A. No more, baby.
Typed and written on a MacProBook by Tina Oiticica for Anarchic_Universe.
P.S. [email protected]. When I saw his wording of joy of sharing his Nobel Peace Prize I went stiff. The really funny person in the family is the writer daughter. My latest bet for a good Democratic Party ticket would be HIll and Bill Richardson. Maybe that will be another story some other time. Definetely giving up on Bill Maher's baloney.
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