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I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, but I love his slow, depressing songs. (No surprise there, I’m sure.) He really manages to capture bleakness well.

One of his songs I love is one that Patty Griffin covered called “Stolen Car.” I’d often skip it when I’d listen to her album, because it’s so slow. You have to take a breather when you listen to it, and really give it time to grow. Because it’s the last line that’ll get you.

So what do you think of Bruce Springsteen? Yay or nay? Examples of other songs I like by him are “Hometown,” “I’m on Fire,” and probably my absolute fave, “Downbound Train:”

And I feel like I’m a rider on a downbound train.

If you’re not in the mood for bleakness, then what’s a song that always makes you feel good? Mine would have to be “Happy Sad” by Pizzicato Five.

This is a slightly different mix of the song than I have, it’s missing one line in English. Possibly my favorite lyric, ever:

Oh my heart can make brand new kind of sweet soul music.

Where I live there are a lot of big drainage ditches. They’re always fenced and often really, really grody.

I think I like to take pictures of them because they’re not really what you think of when someone says Huntington Beach or Orange County. Yet they’re all over the place here.

This is what downtown Huntington Beach looks like:

Downtown is right near the pier, and it’s all ritzy and nice. Well, most of it. There are some older buildings, historical landmarks, that are in pretty bad shape, but they’re being renovated. This is one of them, an old antique store:

I live on the edge of Huntington Beach and another town called Westminster. You’ve heard of the Westminster Dog Show? Same place. Westminster isn’t that nice, and neither is the part of HB we live in. It’s OK, not super grody, but I love to take pictures of the grodiest places.

An empty lot is rare around here.

This is an empty Montgomery Ward building, with an empty Levitz store behind it:

Both really old, and both out of business.

Somebody told me they just took down the Levitz sign, but I haven’t been by that way to see if it’s true.

One thing Orange County has a ton of is liquor stores. I was really rather surprised by this when we moved here.

Liquor stores and donut stores on every corner.

And here I was expecting health food stores everywhere.

Another thing I like taking pictures of is places behind places. This is the alley behind my doctor’s office in Long Beach:

It was actually clean the day I took this. Usually there’s garbage all over. My doctor’s office is in a ghetto part of Long Beach.

This is an alley in a nice part of Long Beach (downtown):

I’ve already posted about my love of murals, this one is also in Long Beach:

I really like this stencil type of graffiti:

That one is behind a retail shop in HB. This one is behind Amoeba Music in Hollywood:

It says, “Life is Beautiful.”

And just for fun, a little Darth Vader doing MJ:

It felt like we were in a David Lynch movie, or something. If Dennis Hopper had walked up, I would’ve been like, “Hey Dennis, nice to see you. Can I get a picture of you with Liberace?”

Daniel had to go pick some materials up way out east in an area I think is called Rialto. It’s near Rancho Cucamonga. And it’s an arm pit. When we were driving back, we drove past this huge church that looked sort of like a warehouse that’s been all blinged out. It was all painted gold, and had some sort of shiny gold awnings, and big sections of windows that were tinted a reflective gold. It was bizarre.

So of course I had to pull over and take a picture of Flat Liberace with the blingy gold church.

Let me back up here. When in Vegas, I visited the Liberace Museum, and while there, I picked up a little cardboard cutout of Liberace. At the time I thought Daniel could put it in his office at work, but it didn’t take me long to realize it was the perfect photo blog subject—and Flat Liberace was born. I’m almost ready to launch the site, and I’ll post here when I have.

Anyway, there were a handful of cars in the parking lot, and we parked kind of far away from the building to get a lot of it in the picture. Some guy came out of the church and waved to us like we were someone he was expecting. I half-waved back, with Liberace in one hand, and my camera in the other. Then I put Liberace down on the pavement, snapped a picture (with that guy standing at the door to the church expectantly), and we turned to leave.

Walking toward us were two young punk guys, probably teenagers. One had a mohawk and the other an afro (they were both black) that he had a sort of hair band holding back off his forehead. They had on tight jeans, metal belts, very emo/punk-looking. And not at all what you’d expect two teenage black guys to look like. Especially in a place like Rialto.

They really just came out of nowhere, in the middle of this huge empty parking lot, walking right towards us. They said something to Daniel about catching a bus or a train or something and having been to a party the night before and they were just trying to get home. They called him “sir.” He said nope and made a beeline for the car. Then I heard, “something something, ma’am?” (My hearing wasn’t working too well.) I said, “What do you need? Some change?” and I reached into the car for my little change holder and gave them about a dollar in quarters (all that I had).

So we start driving out of the parking lot, and a woman pulls into the parking lot on a bicycle. The street she’d been riding on was at least a four lane street, maybe even a six lane street. (She was on the sidewalk.) Behind her was a toddler, about three years old, on foot. I thought, “That’s weird.” And then behind the toddler came another one, who looked like she was about four years old, pushing a stroller with a one year old in it. They all were running after their mom, who by this time was clear across the parking lot on her bike.

I said to Daniel, “This place is weird. We need to get out of here.” And we did.

Anything.

Here’s mine:

Nathan Fillion.

I don’t know what it is about him. He’s just got his own thing going on.

Also, The Rock.

Yes. I’m serious. I’ll watch him in anything.

I actually used to watch him when he was a pro wrestler (because my husband was into it for awhile—it’s like a soap opera for men, totally). But he was so funny—I still crack up just thinking about “the people’s elbow” and “the people’s eyebrow.”

But—come on.

Sigh.

Female-wise? Claire Danes.

Salma Hayek.

I know there’s more but that’s good for now. I don’t like a lot of well-known actors in movies. It distracts me too much from the story. I keep thinking about how it’s Julia Roberts on the screen or whatever. But that doesn’t bother me with these people because I just love to see them on the screen.

You see a character on a TV show wrap their arm around someone from behind to choke them, and you say, “Look! A triangle!”

My husband loves to watch mixed martial arts. You know, those UFC fights with guys wrangling on the ground, punching each other in the face repeatedly (it’s called “ground and pound”), and then standing up to kick each other with their feet and knee each other in the face?

It’s horribly violent, and I abhor violence. Yet I watch it all the time.

I just turn my head away when there’s some really bad punching going on. I hate when someone gets a big gash on their face and they show close-ups of it. Ugh! And thankfully, if someone gets a limb broken (it’s rare, but it happens), I’ve managed to avoid seeing it.

It was really the reality show that got me into it. There’s a show where they have a bunch of guys who dream of being UFC fighters all live in a house together and train in two teams, with each team being coached by a big-name fighter.

There’s lots of drama, and WAY more crying, than you’d ever expect from a bunch of fighters. It’s awesome. I love to see the coaches, the guys who are already big pro fighters, and what their personalities are like. Some are complete jerks (*cough* Frank Mir *cough*). But some are astonishingly sweet (aw, Rampage Jackson).

There’s a famous MMA fighter from Huntington Beach, Tito Ortiz. I saw him yesterday at the bank. He was at the teller window next to me. It was funny to see the “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” being fawned over by bankers and tellers. I always figured I’d run into him some day. Like, at the pier, or downtown at a restaurant (because I frequent those downtown restaurants so much). But at the bank?

To be honest, I barely looked at him. I figure if I were famous I wouldn’t want people staring at me (especially if I was at a teller window!), so I just did my transaction and left him to the bankers who were after his money. As I got into my car, I wondered if I could figure out which car in the parking lot was his, and I realized it was parked right next to mine. A big bulky Range Rover.

So there’s my celebrity sighting for the month. Did I mention Daniel saw Coolio at a ski lodge the other week? In line for a lift ticket. Crazy braids and all. I’m just surprised Daniel didn’t start singing “Amish Paradise” to him.

Me: Why is Kanye West so popular, and Daft Punk isn’t?

Elijah: It must be a conspiracy.

–

Nathaniel: I had a bad English teacher, too.

Elijah: But did it make you feel like you were part of the HOLOCAUST?

–

Me: Did anyone comment on your Opeth t-shirt at school today?

Elijah: Yeah, lots of people. They said, “Does that say opera?” And, “Why are you wearing an Oprah t-shirt?”

Daniel: I guess it does kind of look like Oprah…If Oprah dressed up like a white guy from Sweden.

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These old photos of the kids crack me up. Here’s Catherine and Nathaniel at a beach, probably Seaside, OR, or maybe Westport, WA. Somewhere on or near the Oregon coast. Nathaniel’s holding some of Daniel’s surf wax.

Wasn’t his hair gorgeous?

And now here’s Catherine a few minutes later.

Chewing on the surf wax.

It feels weird to say this, but one of my all-time favorite books is Night by Elie Wiesel. It’s weird to say one of my favorite books is a holocaust story. But I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise—I’ve already blogged about how I love sad songs and sad books and sad movies. And cemeteries! I think a lot of people might think I’m morbid, but I don’t feel morbid. I’m not fixated on death, or even fascinated by it. IMO.

But I am fascinated by the capacity for evil that humans have. I always want to try to understand it. I think if I can understand the motives for it, what causes it to happen, then it won’t seem so awful somehow.

Part of that might come from growing up in a town with one of the worst and most notorious serial killers of all time, the Green River Killer. I went swimming and fishing in the Green River as a kid. My dad’s cousin was the principal at a high school for troubled teens, and one of his students was one of the Green River Killer’s victims. As an adult I worked at a bank across the street from a motel where he picked up one of his victims.

It was such a relief when they finally caught him. It’s strange, growing up and living in a place where an uncaught serial killer had been for years. When they caught him, he was living in the town next to where we lived.

Anyway, Night is a heavy book. It’s short, and it’s brutal. And brutally honest. Wiesel talks about his experience as a teenager in concentration camps, losing his family, and losing his faith in God. One of the most powerful lines in the book for me is short and simple:

I was 15 years old.

It comes after describing a horrifying scene. He was being transported in a train car with a bunch of other concentration camp prisoners. I think they were in a cattle car. He and the other passengers are all starving, and one of the guards thinks it’s funny to toss some crusts of bread into the car and watch the prisoners scramble and fight over it. Wiesel witnesses one starving man kill his own son over a crust a bread. And the chapter ends with that one simple sentence:

I was 15 years old.

I get teared up just thinking about it.

Wiesel survived the holocaust and became a writer and a university professor. He and his wife run a charitable foundation. And I recently learned they were swindled out of not only their personal fortune, but also the foundation’s funds, by Bernard Madoff.

It boggles the mind. Well, the holocaust boggles the mind—or beyond-boggles it. A money swindler is unfortunately not that mind-boggling. But that he could do it to someone like Elie Wiesel. And to Wiesel’s foundation. I’m guess I’m not that concerned about Wiesel losing his personal fortune—of course he earned every penny of it, and he’s very old, but he still has an income from teaching. And he has a new novel out, which I’m going to make a point of buying just as a little personal show of support, as lame as that sounds. But to steal from his foundation that does so much to help those in need—that’s mind-boggling.

I read an interview with Elie Wiesel about Madoff, which can be read here. He talks about the outpouring of support his foundation has had from the American people:

And it’s incredible the generosity of people who want to help. It was just something about the American people. Just as in 9/11. [It] was the greatest tragedy, but it also brought out the best in the American people. I was here then. And to see people on the street, strangers, would speak to one another, would share the pain, give bottles, they stood in line to give blood…. And so, here again, the generosity, it cannot compensate, but it shows again, a human being is capable of both very great, good things, and very horrible things.

At the end of the interview, he says this:

To my students, and sometimes my leaders, I say whatever you do in life—medicine, business, engineering, architecture, journalism, whatever you do—think higher, and feel deeper.

So, my question is: Are you someone who is contributing to society in a productive way, or are you someone who is a drain? I think most people can say they are productive members of the human race, rather than a drain. But I think it’s a worthwhile question to think higher, and feel deeper, about. What are you contributing to the world?

Although that certainly doesn’t hurt.

I love him because he writes such great music.

Who? Ben Harper.

He’s someone you can’t dismiss after only hearing one song, because he’s a chameleon, musically. He can sound so different from song to song. Yet he’s always true to himself.

He does soft, sweet, and often spiritual stuff:

I am blessed to be a witness

He has catchy, rather poppy songs:

I knew a girl, her name was Truth
She was a horrible liar

He also does the reggae/hippy thing:

I can change the world
With my own two hands

I’ve never seen him live, but I wish I have:

If you don’t like my fire, then don’t come around,
’cause I’m gonna burn one down.

Of course, my faves are the darker/heavier ones:

No apology is expected
Love carved sorry in his face

I don’t want to live
I don’t want to live here alone

His voice is fabulous.

Grave at the Sea Breeze Pet Cemetery, Huntington Beach, CA.