SPRIIIIIIING BREAK! YEAH! (PT. 3)

Rancho de Cahuenga- Signing place of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the great Mexican land (smash and) grab.




It's somewhat telling about how salient Mexico is within the popular American historical narrative...



...when we decide to take a location that symbolizes a huge turning point in American-Mexican relations (in the state with the highest population of Mexicans, of course) and just run it over without much thought, every day.




Somewhat appalling, y'know?







OH! HAY! IS THAT THE UNIVERSAL STUDIOS BACKLOT ACROSS THE STREET!? OMG!


Anyway, the reason I was in this area was to help mi mama move some stuff around in her office. She's an accountant for a firm that deals in big time Hollywood entertainment law, and here's the guest lobby literature to prove it!




The best of the bunch.




The best of the best of the bunch. Appropriately, this was the only portrait sketch in the entire book. I was stoked.




The best of the worst of the bunch- Super Yacht World magazine-

Because not everyone can fit through the channels of succes:


"MAKE WAY FOR SUCCESS, YOU FUCKING TINY YACHT OWNING LOSER!"
I'm assuming this means that the next step up will be a yacht that resembles the Death Star both aesthetically, and in its dimensions.




This is a safe for all the watches you're s'posed to keep on the yacht. See, rich people are just as tacky as you and me.


Sometimes I wonder if my hatred for Eric Clapton is warranted, or if I'm just being a contrarian prick. I'm glad this magazine has inadvertently put the nail in the coffin of my great mental conundrum.




What can you say, dude clearly has the blues.




Yacht life is stressful. Time for some yoga.





Release party/reading for Sam McPheeter's novel, Loom Of Ruin



I highly recommend picking it up--260 pages of McPheeters' style storytelling at its best.




Also, this funny quote is tagged onto the back cover:
"Is Sam McPheeters our generation's Andy Kaufman?"- Kathleen Hanna




This mythical creature got on the phone with his lawyer as soon as I broke it to him that HORSE THE BAND had already been used. Oh, L.A.


My last day found me rained and snowed out of a 10 mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, so my alternate plan involved driving down Sepulveda Blvd from Sylmar all the way to Culver City. It was probably on the most interesting L.A. area drives I've ever taken. One day I'll drive the entirety of Sepulveda, and perhaps do a little picto-historical post about the experience.

The ultimate goal of the drive was to check out the latest exhibit at the Center For Land Use Interpretation".



CLUI's latest is Initial Points: Anchors of America's Grid, and is highly recommended.


They also have one of my favorite bookstores in all of L.A., filled with nothing but books on natural resources, infrastructure, landscape management, landscape sociology, etc. Unfortunately, every time I visit this place I seem to be unemployed and/or broke, so, you know, fuck my life!



Considering how broke I was, I decided to take an iPhone pic of this picture/essay zine, and more specifically an essay detailing the opening night of the Bellagio. Well, that didn't turn out too well, as most of this shit is indecipherable. Anyway, the essay ends by stating that the first song played at the inaugural Bellagio fountain show was "Hey Big Spender"- a song about prostitution.


Also of note is CLIU's rad bathroom decor...





...so make sure to take a dump if you're there!


I took a quick minute to stop by Headline records, where I discovered that this is happening-

SPRIIIIIIING BREAK! YEAH! (PT. 2)

Continuing on with the saga of wandering around in L.A. -

While searching for one of the least-visited areas in the Santa Monica Mountains, Tuna Canyon's Big Rock Lateral overlook point, I ended up inadvertently finding another gem, the Old Topanga Road Fire Lookout point.


A drive in the mountains behind Malibu is nice enough that you don't really get too worried when you realized that you might have missed the turn off you were looking for. Besides, maybe that unintentional side trip will have you encountering some massive dilapidated radio tower which leads you to wondering just how exactly you can get up to see the damn thing. Sure enough, I found an overlook spot maintained by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservation Authority that seemed to have a trailhead somewhere nearby. (By the way, click on the SMCA link if you ever plan on visiting this area, and then thank me later!)




After accidentally hiking around the perimeter of this hill to the base of a hill that provided no access to the tower, I did what I learned to do as a kid who grew up amongst the hills and the chaparral of Souther California-- I bounded straight up the damn hill. Yeah, it's not typically what I would endorse doing, but oh well. As an added bonus, after brushing up against all the vegetation on the way up, I was coated with a scent familiarly specific to chaparral vegetation--something along the lines of sage and other shrubs-- a scent that brings back awesome childhood memories of running around in the hills behind my neighborhood.



















L.A. Smog meets Santa Monica Bay fog.



Mt. Baldy as seen from Old Topanga Fire Lookout point.



Beautiful San Fernando Valley and the Newhall Pass way in the background.



As soon as I found my way down to the Tuna Canyon Big Rock Lateral overlook, I got a sweet view of the Radio tower from down below. Wow.



...As well as the fog creeping from over the Pacific as the sun went down.

(Fog creeping in .gif below)

That peninsula all the way in the background is Point Dume, home to John Fante's short story, "My Dog Stupid", and the "Dr. Seuss plant" (Giant Coreopsis).



Having to take my sister to LAX the next day gave us an opportunity to search around for someplace to eat before we bid her adieu. While subjecting my family to my El Segundo shortcuts, we stumble upon The Proud Bird. If you're into the history of corporate airline industry, experimental air craft, or the U.S. Air Force, it's worth a visit as there are interesting photos and artifacts to be found all over the place. Oh yeah, the food and drink was good, too, even if it was the exact same menu as another airplane-themed restaurant near the Van Nuys airport. I came to find out that a corporate restaurant chain owns both restaurants as well as a many other similar ones nationwide, of course.

SPRIIIIIIING BREAK! YEAH! (PT. 1)

A few weeks ago I went on a little spring break trip to visit my family in Los Angeles. A few things happened, followed by a few more, and so on. Here's a multiple-part photo journal of events that mattered to me while I was there. Enjoy!





After years passing this sign millions of times (at least) since the age of 6, I finally decided to indulge my curiosity and visit the mysterious highway exit known as Zzyzx Rd. Originally known as a government outpost Soda Springs, CA was rechristened Zzyzx in 1934. Zzyzx was founded by a crackpot evangelist who split his time between hosting a radio show in L.A. and managing his health spa and hotel in Zzyzx. Its strange name was claimed to be a real word, which he used to properly name his spa so that it would be "the last word in health".








Kelso Dunes as seen from Zzyzx.




After the federal government dubiously "reclaimed" the land on the technicalities of mining claim laws, the Cal State university system took the land over in 1976 and manages it to this day. CSU nows operates a Mojave Desert research center in the converted health spa and hotel facilities that the original owner built. Soda springs still exists on the grounds of Zzyzx, and is actually the last existing habitat for the endangered Mohave Tui Chub, the only fish currently native to San Bernardino County.



After taking my sweet time at Zzyzx, I decided to extend the usual, tedious trip between L.A. and Vegas into an extended field trip. Next stop: Vasquez Rocks.





While most recognize this place from scenes in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey and a plethora of other films of varying quality, the Vasquez Rocks were initially known for being a favorite hideout for the notorious Tiburcio Vasquez. As a kid, the Vasquez Rocks were a favorite boy scout hiking spot of mine, to the point that I was pretty well-versed in the history of their infamous namesake.



Despite growing up in within the educated Spanish ruling class, at age 17 Vasquez descended into a outlaw lifestyle which included ample amounts of robbery, theft, prison breaks, and womanizing. Since he was usually on the run, he found the canyons around the Vasquez Rocks to be an ideal hiding place.



Siltstone conglomerate in the foreground. CA Hwy 14 and the San Gabriel Mts in the background.

The Limnic Eruption: The Deadliest Dutch Oven You'll Ever Encounter.

Since hearing about it on the Probably Science podcast last night, I've been obsessing over Cameroon's Lake Nyos and its infamous 1986 limnic eruption. This is seriously the most fucked up thing ever. What's a limnic eruption? Think about the annoying carbon dioxide-induced explosion that happens anytime you open a bottle of seltzer, then multiply that times five billion on the scale of size and deadliness. In the case of Lake Nyos, 1,800 people unexpectedly died due to the vast amount of carbon dioxide fog released into the atmosphere within a 12 mile radius of the lake's limnic eruption!

Oh yeah, let's not forget about the 300-foot-tall fountain of carbon-infused water that shot up into the sky, and subsequently caused an 80-foot-high tsunami to decimate the lake's shoreline!

(Lake Nyos tsunami aftermath, 1986)

Now, don't get too worked up about this. Your friendly, local, massive body of water isn't going to turn on you anytime soon. Limnic eruptions are extremely rare due to the environmental factors required to induce them. Since Lake Nyos is located in a tectonically active region, the lake's benthic zone (the lowest stratified depth zone in a body of water) is gradually fed small amounts of dissolved carbon and gasses through seeps and springs that exist around and below the lake. Since this gaseous layer is so dense, it never mixes with the top layer, and the layer's stagnation allows for vast amounts of these gasses to accumulate over time. Once this highly volatile layer is finally ignited by some type of disturbance - a landslide in the case of Lake Nyos - a limnic eruption occurs, releasing all those accumulated noxious gasses in one fell, and extremely destructive, swoop.

For an abridged, yet still significantly more detail-heavy version of the catastrophic and forensic details behind the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster, be sure to check out this article - The Strangest Disaster of the 20th Century.

For an even more detailed (and melodramatic) chronology of the events which occurred at Lake Nyos in 1986, you have to check out the BBC documentary below. As a bonus, this documentary treats us to some more pants-shitting details about another potentially disastrous lake, Lake Kivu, whose ingenious residents extract natural methane from its lowest depths for energy use. Oh, it's also located right next to an active volcano which can potentially ignite that methane and cause a natural disaster that would completely shit all over the Lake Nyos disaster. Holy shit, and good night!

No... none... falling out!

This ridiculous guitar reminds me, all weekend long was thinking about how sick the 2nd Adolescents album would have been if the 1st album lineup had stayed together to record in in, what '83 or so?






Rikk Agnew's songs as exhibited on the "All By Myself" LP and early D.I. were clearly written for a potential 2nd Adolescents LP. The majority of those songs were more melodic and epic sounding- total 'Kids Of The Blackhole' vibe. The imagination picks up on album full of similar, classic heavy hitters when listening to the harmonies and vocals as they were done by the Adolescents.








On Tony Adolescent's side of the fence, he sang for The Abandoned. Since I don't know much of their history besides their music, their vibe was more "Nardcore" meets the Adolescents. Pretty raging stuff, but never quite gets there. Regardless, Tony's vocals still go for it.


Will do a little more investigating to see what happened to this period of the band, and whether this potential 2nd Adolescents LP was ever on the verge of happening. Seems like it would've been better than the first album, in theory.





BONUS!



Steve Soto and Frank Agnew playing rythm and doing harmonies on the 1st Legal Weapon LP, circa '82. Great album, though the next 2 would be the best. Still, the harmonies!

Additionally, here's Rikk and Frank Agnew playing with Der Stab, probably around '81. Joe Wood, second lead singer of TSOL, on bass.