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A year ago today Susan, me and our friend Rachel had a weekender in Death Valley and they accompanied me on a day-hike in the Panamint Range to the 10,000-foot mark and then sent me on my way up the rest of the trail to the 11,049-foot summit of Telescope Peak. Breaking campe the next day I rang in my 42nd — or as my friend Mark would call it “the 13th anniversary of my 29th” — by going the other way in the form of an exhilirating 17-mile downhill ride from our campsite at 8,300 feet to the floor of the Panamint Valley.

Photoset of that weekend here on Flickr. 

Seeing as we’re but a week or so returned from our awesome European vacation, on this eve of the 14th anniversary of my 29th no activities so monumental or unique are on tap. Instead I’m going to put an end today to my three-plus weeks out of the saddle and bike over to the Los Angeles National Cemetery and back before mom comes over this afternoon and we fire up the grill and share the rough DVD/slideshow Susan and I created featuring some 1,600 images from the trip. It has the potential to be a home movie from hell but mom’s expressed a desire to see what we saw so we’ll see how durable that desire is.

To really get the gears turning back in the right direction again tomorrow will be a good day for the This Is My Life Ride that I charted out last October.

My fellow Blogging.la contributor David Markland is psyched for the Star Wars Celebration beginning this Friday at the L.A. Convention Center, and wrote that he can track his desire to be a filmmaker back to when he saw the film and then the landmark “Making of Star Wars” special that aired on CBS back in 1977.

Which reminded me of the 2005 posts I wrote during the frenzy building for the release of the series’ much-anticipated final chapter about me actually being in that TV special. So climb aboard my flashback machine and let’s relive that glory:

April 7, 2005

With all the overblown obsession of all the people in line at the Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood planning to wait the 43 days until the next “Star Wars” film opens (but at the Arclight, not the Chinese), it got me kinda nostalgic for those good old days back in the summer of 1977 when my friend Luis DeJesus and I cut summer school at Le Conte Junior High to go see C3P0, R2D2, and Darth Vader get their feetprints enshrined in concrete in the famed theater’s forecourt.

And wouldn’t you know, the website of those geeks who are currently lined up there has an image posted of that very same event:

I kid you not, Luis and I were standing in the area indicated by the arrow, perhaps 12 feet or so from where the coolest droids and the bestest villian ever showed up to smoosh their tootsies in the Ready-Mix. We were in 13-year-old heaven!

The cool thing was Luis’ mom was working at 20th Century Fox at the time and had scored us each an authentic film crew tee with the distinctive logo on the front — which of course we both wore.

Later, after the ceremony was over and the crowd had dispersed Luis and I were trying to figure out a way to sneak in to see the film when a guy near the box office with a video camera called to us as we stood beneath one of the posters on the right side of the courtyard. We both looked over at him and he held the camera on us for a few seconds before saying thanks and moving on.

We thought it was just a local cameraman grabbing footage, but we later found out it was much bigger than the six o’clock news. Shortly thereafter, to capitalize on the fever the film induced, we heard of a “The Making of ‘Star Wars,’” a documentary that aired about a month later on TV — just after 8th grade had begun.

Of course I watched it, having no idea that near the end when the doc was wrapping up with an exploration of the merchandizing phenomenon the movie had become, all of a sudden there I was with Luis onscreen standing under the poster in our matching “Star Wars” t-shirts. In a blink we were gone, but it was enough for me to come to school (in the shirt, of course) and wallow in some short-lived celebrity from a steady stream of schoolmates who throughout the day would yell at me, “Hey! I saw you on TV last night!”

Man it would be so cool if I could get my hands on a copy of that old doc… but maybe I already have it. I should dive into the special features discs of the “Star Wars Trilogy” that Susan got me for Christmas… perhaps it’s in there. How cool would that be!?

Turns out four days later, bad back not withstanding,
it would be very cool, after the jump.

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Has it been 13 years since the Northridge Earthquake rocked my world?

Thankfully now we have SB-1578, which went into effect on January 1 making it illegal to tie up a dog for more than three hours at a time, but we didn’t back in 1990. The dog’s long gone by now, I’d think. I’m pretty sure it’s only the rare abused and neglected pitbull that lives so deep into its teens.

I was working for Sparkletts and my route that day covered Atwater Village between Fletcher and Los Feliz Boulevard, encompassing the good, the bad and the ugly of this little community carved out between the city of Glendale and the east bank of the L.A. River.

I’d had lunch at Giamela’s earlier at the corner of Los Feliz and Glenfeliz, a pepper steak sub with cheese and peppers. I never let the squadron of flies buzzing around the tables bother me, their sandwiches were the best. Later that afternoon after the last bottle of water was delivered and all the service calls were done, I was planning to treat myself to a large vanilla dip at the Foster’s Freeze on Fletcher before rolling back in to the plant in Eagle Rock and log my sales for the day.

Somewhere in between, with the good and the bad parts of Atwater behind me I was in the ugly section, which was south of Glendale and close to the railroad tracks that mark its eastern border. If you want to argue and say it ain’t so ugly now, you go right ahead, but keep in mind that this was long before the Costco and long before there was a weekend farmers market in the Well Fargo parking lot and long before the Glendale Boulevard revitalization grew from the arrival of Osteria Nonni (which was still about a year away). And it was certainly way long before those pimped out 700-square-foot bungalows were selling for $770K-plus. This was back when there was a neighborhood grocery store where now there’s a Starfuck’s and the dear departed Woody’s Bike Shop was in full flower down the street from the Los Feliz pitch ‘n putt, run by a guy I presumed to be named Woody who always seemed more wasted than not. And the southeast section of the neighborhood was as far removed from any village aspects as possible. Seemed like they were almost proud of that disconnect.

Even the names of the streets are different. The ones north of Glendale like Seneca, Revere and Brunswick hit Glendale Boulevard and died while those south of Glendale like Perlita, Madera and Laclede stop as well.

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Not a lot going on and don’t really have a whole lot to say, so instead I send you for a ride in the not-so-wayback machine — August 8, 2004:

An excellent lazy Sunday morning included the decision to go see a matinee of “Collateral” at the Dome and gave way to a walk with Shadow up Sunset to Millie’s for breakfast. But not before getting a call from Minnesota and Stan who had called me on Friday about the 4Runner.

Actually it was Stan’s wife Sue who had called and left a message that they were good to get the truck for $4,000 but couldn’t pick it up until Labor Day and to please call her back so that they could arrange a deposit.

Still hesitant, I told Susan about it and asked her opinion. She agreed that a nonrefundable deposit of 25% was fair.

So I called Stan back and was upfront with him. I offered to take more pictures of the truck (under the hood and throughout the interior) and send them to him or post them on a website that he could see, but he said it wasn’t necessary and that the truck is exactly what he’s after and was good to go with sending me a thou with the plan to pay me the rest when his niece and nephew fly down to pick up the truck at the end of August/beginning of September and drive it back to Minnesota.

I guess I place a good automobile ad. And while I told him I had done nothing to misrepresent the truck and that it was a solid vehicle, to myself I hoped the truck would make that trip. After all, it is a 17-year-old thing that for the last five years has been driven by my mom to the market and post office and home depot. Suddenly throwing it on the highway for 1,000-plus miles over a few days might not be to productive.

Bottom line, I gave Stan several options to take breather on the deal, but he’s gung-ho — which of course, leaves me wary that I’m potentially being played. Some how.

I reiterated that in agreeing to take the truck off the market for the next three weeks, the deposit would be nonrefundable should he change his mind, and he was good to go with that as well.

So we’ll see if that check arrives. And clears.

Back home, I reclined in the window seat with “The Black Dahlia” while Susan gave her new guitar a try and it sounded great.

At 2 p.m. we headed over to the Arclight and greatly enjoyed “Collateral” so much so that in a sidetrip across the street to Borders to pick up “Watership Down” for Susan, I snagged the soundtrack (primarily for Groove Armada’s “Hands of Time” being included on it).

A stop at Vons on the way for kabob materials and we were home again, where I later suffered my first grilling accident: burns across my right thumb, index and middle fingers when I brainlessly and with my bare hand picked up a skewer to flip it that had been on the 450-degree grill for several minutes.

What a moron. With a capital idiot!

It’s one of those burns that doesn’t quite hit you right away so there’s that glorious split second when reality catches up with you and you’re staring at your hand mouthing “Oh fuck!” before the searing sensation registers.

Proudly, I was concerted in my effort not to just drop the skewer off the grill. I actually sacrificed my digits to save the kabob. Hold your applause.

Immediately I put death grips on several ice cubes to numb the pain, and after the second one melted away I got a good look at the rapidly puss-filling damage. That’s my thumb there, pretty obvious where the skewer seared right across some prime nerve endings. The middle finger’s even worse, but I’ll spare you.

But I’m not the one to let a little third-degree self-sizzling get in the way of my duties and I’m pleased to report that the kabobs were kafab.

Night was occupied with a viewing of “Miracle Mile,” an oddball film from 1988 that starts off as a love story and ends in nuclear annihilation.

One year ago today my wife and I said “I Do”:

Like most things Susan and I undertake, everything in relation to our marriage yesterday went like clockwork.

My mom arrived at 12:30 p.m., Susan and I were ready shortly thereafter, with enough time to spare to draft my mom as our official photographer for the event and snap a practice shot or two…

…before we headed off to pick up Susan’s mom at the hotel around the corner from us at 1 p.m. Forty minutes later we got street parking less than a block from the courthouse and had made our way through the metal detectors to check in with the clerk.

Smooth like butter it went.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that we didn’t have a lot to worry about. No ringbearer or flower girl or best man or bridesmaids or dozens of guests being served passable chicken dinners and cheap champagne at some sectioned-off hotel meeting room with a DJ in the corner spinning whatever.

Instead it was just the four of us, and darling Court Commissioner Toni M. Levyn in her tiny little chapel who after a very touching little ceremony and with the power vested in her by the state of California and the County of Los Angeles pronounced Susan and I husband and wife ohhhh… about 15 minutes or so after the 4.9 quake landed at 1:53 p.m.

Apparently we were the only people in L.A. not to feel it. Seriously. From what I’ve read it even woke up some dead people buried at Forest Lawn who wondered what the hell was going on. We didn’t so much as sense even the slightest shaking.

Afterword Commissioner Levyn even took a picture of our wedding party:

And then we were outta there and back in the Prius I’d rented headed back towards the eastside with a few hours to kill before our reservations (Thanks to Joz!) at Edendale Grill.

Feeling a need for margaritas and munchables, we opted to stop at El Conquistador and after Susan’s mom told our waiter he had to congratulate me and Susan, he did just that and then served us up not one but two complimentary shots of tequila.

Back at the house we kicked back while the remaining June gloom burned off revealing a beautiful afternoon, and then headed over to the restaurant for an excellent meal under the acacia trees on the patio. Susan’s mom made sure to point out that Susan and I were newlyweds to the hostess Jen (who it turns out had been married the previous weekend) and she sent us over a dessert with her congratulations.

With that we dropped Jeannie back off at the hotel, and got back to the house and hugged my mom goodnight before literally crashing.

— • —

And tonight, in celebration of the beginning of our second year together, we’re going to walk up for drinks and dinner at Edendale Grill. I love you more than ever, Susan!

Not much in the way of happenings today so I figured I’d jump in the time machine and go back a couple years in which a whole lotta not much was going on May 15, 2004:

Susan and I finally got up around 10 a.m. (love having nothing to do on a lazy Saturday morning), and we drove over to a do-it-yourself store called Stock on San Fernando Road to pick up the custom screen door she’d ordered.

Leaving Susan at her place I headed back home — totally forgetting to pick up cat litter (dammit!) — and just chilled playing the very cool Red Dead Revolver on my Playstation2 before getting cleaned-up to go pick Susan up so that we could head into North Hollywood to see a play that a coworker’s husband is in called Spike Heels, with both the the show and her husband James Castle Stevens getting a great review in Backstage West — and deservedly so.

Stevens and his role as a sleazy yet ultimately likeable lawyer were tailor-made for each other. He is brilliantly funny, elevating the already good play whenever he’s onstage.