Jill Murray

I ended my hiatus from breaking last night with back-to-back Break and Break-Fusion classes with Helen at Studio Sweatshop. I so missed the feeling of my hands on the floor and my elbows on my knees, and my weight on my head, etc, etc… It felt amazing to get back to it.

I decided to go back to the beginning with Break I, and reset all my footwork (that stuff down on the floor, with your feet running circles around your hands) in such a way that it’s less likely to hurt my body. I forgot that going back to the beginning would also mean re-doing basic top rock (the dancing upright on the floor and acting badass part). Since I don’t really need to think about those steps, I decided to take it as an opportunity to work on what my arms were doing. It was fun, and a good reminder that there’s always a way to get something out of an exercise, even when you lack humility or feel too cool for school.

Incidentally, the class reminded me of the proper name of the step I taught in a workshop at Marianopolis College recently. “Two-step.” Because… it has… two… steps. Super-complicated, I know. I’m just going to pretend I forgot because so many moves have more than one name. Yeah. That’s it.

Looking back over these photos, I can still remember the exact temperature (brisk) and smell (outdoorsy) of the air in this place on this day.

The trails that lead from to and around the Observatory in Griffith Park give you amazing views of all of LA, from the city to the sky.

The iconic sign.

We hiked around the hills, through the scruffy California orange-green ground-vegetation colour and texture combo that I find so specifically appealing, I would like to grab onto it and hold so tight as to never be wrenched away. Cecil pointed out the spots where you can still see evidence of the devastating fires that swept through the hills a few years ago.

The sun was setting, and the city softened behind us.

The crows flew over the moon.

The sun didn’t go quietly.

(I’m thinking: trumpet sounds.)

The moment clearly called for a high-five.

And the dusky city almost begged for one of its own.

And then the observatory mooned us.

Sigh.

When we continue (Monday): Lisa Yee!

The neighborhood in LA that Cecil calls “home” has another name, and that name is Silverlake.

Normally when I’m in a new city, I like to find out how it works at an infrastructural level– subways, traffic, sanitation– and how these details impact or reflect back on the people who live there.

I’ve already discussed the whole car thing, and there was no sewer museum to be found on this trip, but I did manage to get in some good wandering with my camera, capturing some of the finer details that make Silverlake Silverlake.

First up, a human being:

This is the Walking Man of Silverlake, and this is what he does: he walks. All day. Every day. Sometimes he reads the newspaper while walking. That is all.

Intelligentsia Coffee is in the neighborhood. I was sooooper excited because it’s legendary to me from the research I’ve been doing for my fourth book, and from a single cup of Black Cat espresso I drank once at Fresh in Toronto. Getting to actually go to actual Intelligentsia was as close to a meaningful spiritual experience as I’m willing to get this year, and yes, I brought back souvenirs.

Apparently this sign, once necessary, hasn’t applied to anything practical since gentrification overtook cruising as a key neighborhood phenomenon.

This is definitely going to find its way onto my bathroom wall. Actually, come to think of it, maybe both signs should. Along with this one from NYC, that’s already there.

Stuff was in bloom. Birds were tweety.

These anything-but-Christmas lights were the cleanest, least rusty I’ve ever seen.

As long as we’re in car country…

When I was 14, this would have been my dream car.

For scale:

The neighborhood teems with Cecil-sized cacti.

In parting, here is a view of the Hollywood sign, from Silverlake.

And see that domed building to the right of it? That’s the Mount Wilson Observatory in Griffith Park. We’ll go there tomorrow. Oh, I’m so excited…

Part of my research for my upcoming novel, Rhythm & Blues (Doubleday, 2010) involved subscribing to RSS feeds from celebrity “news and gossip” sites (or gossip and gossip if you prefer). So I’m almost too familiar with the narrow view of LA you can glimpse past the preening and puking stars that populate celebrity news photos. You can see that LA in about three 10-minute stints (each separated by an hour’s drive, of course.)

The LA that’s more interesting to me is the one portrayed by the likes of Francesca Lia Block, inhabited by Gary Busey, or even Dr. Horrible– twisted LA: dark around the edges, silly in the middle, banal in vast tracts, existing almost as if to ask “really? are we doing this?”

So that’s the LA I got to hang out in on the second and third days of my visit. First stop was the Museum of Jurrassic Technology. I am loathe to admit that Wikipedia explains it best:

“The museum claims to have a “specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities.” This explains the museum’s name and also suggests its puzzling nature, since the Lower Jurassic ended more than 150 million years before the appearance of hominoids and in particular before anything that could be called technology (see geologic time scale).

Its catalog includes a mixture of artistic and scientific exhibits that evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 18th century predecessors of modern natural history museums.”

What that means in practical terms is that they have exhibits like a portrait gallery of the dogs of the Russian space programme,

and a room full of telegrams and letters to the Mt. Wilson Observatory,

Lots of displays that use stereoscopes,

and maybe my personal favourite (though too dark to photograph), Selected Collections from Los Angeles Area Mobile Home and Trailer Parks.

The glass-encased weirdness of Day 2 gave way to the living weirdness of Day 3, when Cecil and I got ourselves invited to a cocktail party at the residence of the Consul General of Canada, in celebration of an all-solar-powered car that had been built and driven from the North Pole to Los Angeles by a former flight attendant with a dream.

We were a little early, so we killed some time visiting this nearby home that has something like 18 statues of David on the front lawn.

There was an official red carpet moment:


Ed Begley Jr. was there.

So was Peter Fonda.

And Cecil’s friend, Tanya Allen, who was frankly more interesting than most anything else at the party, save maybe the wine.

(I think she’s maybe hoping not to have to film in Vancouver any more than necessary? I dunno… some kind of message here…)

Here they are together, acting normal and lovely and everything:

There were quite a few people at the party (and all over LA, really) who called themselves environmentalists, while describing behaviours and activities that were not at all environmentally friendly. I started to accept them as part of the quirky landscape after a while.

We left the party and went to Flore for dinner, leaving us only another 8,998 vegan restaurants to try in LA. Everything was extra tasty at Flore. I ate there twice and would go back for sure. The place was crowded, so they seated our party of four at a table for six that already had two guys sitting at one end. We got to telling them about the party, and they said to us “oh, so you’re environmentalists,” and shocked, we said “no!” And they looked at us funny and said “you just left a solar car event and came straight to a vegan restaurant,” to which we laughed and said “oh! no, we’re just Canadian,” like that explained everything.

After Flore, we connected with Cecil & Tanya’s friend, Dave, who took us to a completely amazing bar, The Edison. I’m not in the habit of describing bars as “amazing,” but this one is built 3 stories underground, in what used to be a power generation plant for the skyscraper above, and it still has relics of the original generation machinery worked into the space, like decor. (Follow that link for a virtual tour) There’s a cabaret stage in the middle, they play jazz standards and project old films above the bars, including Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon, which was also featured in Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

I think it was that night that I got over my jet lag, but then ironically stopped sleeping normally at all. A few days later, we shrugged of daylight savings time, and with it, my ability to slow my brain after shutting my eyes. I’ve been home for a month, and I’m still off-kilter.

When we continue: last days in Wonderland…