San Fernando Valley

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NY Times: The Los Angeles of Ry Cooder and Mister Jalopy

Over on Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy says: A few months ago, Ry Cooder and I went out to the dry lakes with the Old Crow Speed Shop, the Bobby Green Bellytanker and the New York Times. The article (by Lawrence Downes, and photos by Eric Grigorian) is out tomorrow and it is wonderful. There is the Los Angeles that people imagine of red carpet premieres, Botox lunches, velvet rope nightclubs, Venice bodybuilders and tony boutiques. It is not a fable. That is real. Or, at least, it physically exists. Then, there is the Los Angeles that I know. Aerospace surplus hardware stores, smoky and ashtray-less Koreatown English hunt club bars in crumbling hotel basements, perfect beer buzz lunches at the Farmer's Market in filtered sunlight, the wild dogs of Pacoima, sprawling thrift stores, trolling junkyards for old diaries and Polaroids, the drag races at Pomona, chrome plating shops, backyards stacked with 300 bicycles, gold miners eager to show their biggest nuggets, fishing for carp in the Los Angeles River, optimists taking over art museums, the nicad battery selection at Electronic City, the metal patination case at Industrial Metal Supply, Kit Kraft Hobby, the gem vault at the Natural History Museum, the szechuan peppercorns of Alhambra, the churlish bartenders at Hop Louie, the sneaker shops of Little Tokyo, the imported coldcuts at Monte Carlo Deli, the Japanese garden on the roof of the New Otani Hotel, the bicycle swap at the Encino Velodrome, the DDR kids at the Santa Monica Pier, the mustard at Philipes, the dimsum carts of Monterey Park, the carnitas at Carrillos, the buffalo at Hart Park, the Kris Special at the Waystation, the netsuke room at LACMA, the Remington Rolling Block at the Backwoods Inn, the coffee shop at the LA Police Academy, the abandoned restaurant with leather walls at Union Station, the yardage of the Garment District, the abandoned fire station in the Toy District with the quartersawn oak lockers viewable through the crack in the door, the first two rows of lowrider history at the Pomona Auto Swap, Abe Lincoln's hat at the Huntington Library, the camillia forest of Descanso Garden, the bolt room of Roscoe Hardware that is hidden in a kitchen remodeling home center, the genius at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the chile pepper booth at the Grand Central Market, sneaking to the top balcony of the Bradbury Building, the threadbare and dented Variety Arts Center, the orange groves of the 126 and secret utility salvage yard in the northeast San Fernando Valley. Ry and I share this Los Angeles and it was fun to show it to Lawrence. He did us proud. Los Angeles tries to throw itself away everyday but we are still gold prospectors, hot rodders and guitarists. Our fundamental awesomeness will not be impinged. I agree; what Mister Jalopy write above comes closer than anyone to nailing why I love Los Angeles. Ry Cooder?s American West...

WHEN WEIRD, SPACE MIME WAS STILL POPULAR AT AMUSEMENT PARKS

LAST NIGHT, I was talking to some people in our nation's capital about THE BATTLE OF GALACTICA. (I was talking to them the way I normally talk to people, BEHIND A PODIUM, USING A MICROPHONE.) As I trust you recall, this was a dark ride on the Universal Studios Tour in the early eighties that was ENTIRELY NON FICTIONAL, and which I visited when I was a human child. The ride was a BSG 1.0 tie-in in which your Universal Studios tram is captured by Cylons who apparently are attempting to invade the San Fernando Valley. They then hold your tram hostage in a makeshift space station, shooting their lasers around until you are rescued by two Colonial Warriors. (WHY do these trams get into so much trouble? The answer is unknown.) As I stressed to the people of Washington, it is important to know that the Colonial Warriors were not animatronic -- they were played by ACTUAL HUMAN ACTORS. (The Cylons, by contrast, were indeed animatronic, which I guess is another way of saying they were played by ACTUAL INHUMAN ROBOTS). BUT: what I did not discover until years later, as I was piecing together my strange memories of this attraction via internet, was that these actors NEVER SPOKE. Instead, their lines were pre-recorded years before, presumably by other, better actors, and played over a loudspeaker -- a weird kind of torture which makes the ride now seem much more scary. RECENTLY I discovered some amazing behind the scenes videos of the ride, presumably shot by these very actors, including one in which you actually follow along behind a Colonial Warrior as he runs through the ride doing his weird space mime, gesturing his head as though he were speaking. See "Following a Hero" -- the video portion begins after a series of stills. I AM ESPECIALLY FOND of the video of the Battle of Galactica break room called "Back Stage at Battle of Galactica." See if you can spot the barbell, the completely incongruous map on the wall, and the man dressed as a Colonial Warrior writing a letter home. A letter which presumably contains only the word "WHY?" written over and over and over. AS AN accidental TV personality and wholly fraudulent "actor," I often enjoy looking at this video whenever my head gets too big (usually at 10AM, and then again at 4PM). MANY THANKS INDEED to Dale Long of byyourcommand.net, which is pretty much your one stop shop for BATTLE OF GALACTICA photos and videos. That is all....