[sic]

To the person who left the still-cold, three-quarters-full, 40-ounce bottle of Cobra Malt Liquor that I found in the plastic bag on the walkway below our porch, I’m pretty sure — or at least hoping — that you probably knew our deceased tenant Joe and perhaps stopped by this morning or sometime during the night to mourn his loss and remember the good times when he was alive.

Since most other empty beer containers found are regularly left by inconsiderate public drinkers down by the curb or in the ivy or behind our mailbox, that’s pretty much the only reason I can come up with that you’d blatantly trespass onto our property with a large bottle of alcohol like it’s not our house, but yours — or Joe’s.

Point in fact, it’s not yours, nor Joe’s.

Putting aside the general creepiness of some stranger so out of it as to not even think twice about coming to our house to pour one out for the dearly departed and then leave the bottle and the remaining disgusting beverage for me to dispose of, I’ve tried hard to craft the following request while remaining aware of your loss and considerate of your feelings in such a time of sorrow:

KEEP THE FUCK OUT, PLEASE

As the crow flies the dead body was found a half-mile from my front door. As the bike rides it’s about two-thirds of a mile away. Far enough away for some, but too close for comfort for me.

I pedaled upon the cordoned-off scene above on my ride home from work last night. It was about 8:30.  I’m on Vendome looking west up Dillon Street, which is immediately south of the 101 Freeway.  After answering my question of “what happened?” with the question “do you live around here?” that I dutifully answered, an officer told me a homicide investigation was taking place.

My first thought was that it was gang-related. But then I watched as officers stepped over  a low guard rail and disappeared into the foliage adjacent to the southbound lanes of the freeway, and that struck me as decidedly un-driveby. When I got home I posted about it on L.A. Metblogs and then emailed Ruben Vives who writes The Homicide Report blog for the L.A. Times.

This morning I learned from Vives that the victim was woman and that detectives aren’t sure how long she’d been dead as her body had been there for some time given its state of decomposition.

In an eerie coincidence, it was only yesterday that I found myself looking through the Los Angeles Public Library archives at photos from the Hillside Strangler serial murders case, wherein a number of the victims were dumped along roadsides and freeways.

Sitting in the parking lot next to Tacos Delta this afternoon, I spied the iconic Silver Lake Walking Dude across the street on Sunset. Whenever I see him he’s either reading a newspaper or talking on his cellphone.

Instead of the straight pixels I snapped I decided to put the digitally zoomed image through a random series of Photoshop filtrations and here’s the end result (click to triplify):

Sorry if this is gross-out material, but as to the freaking OMFG! humonstrocity of the cerumen impaction from which I had been unknowingly impaired, all I’ll say is that my doctor’s discovery of it a during a flu bout visit a few weeks ago prompted a return trip this morning so that his nurse could patiently flush the stubborn thing from its hideout in my left ear canal with some sort of medieval turkey baster suction/irrigation device.

It only took three tries over the course of several minutes, but having to suffer through the endlessly repeating and loud squish-splash-whoosh all up in my head made it seem like an eternity. The benefit of not having an indecently large globule of gunk plastered up against my tympanic membrane? Yay! I can hear like a 30-something’er again out of the left side of my command module!

To celebrate me stoically suffering the procedure and emerging from it a better hearing human being, I opted to reward myself (as if I needed an excuse) with a quick visit to Coco’s Variety Store that I previously raved about here on the Los Angeles Metblog. On that first visit with Susan I was satisfied with purchasing just one box of the notorious Hamster’s Lunch, but after discovering the wonderful hamster figurine included with the rather unpalatable snack, I’ve been wanting to collect all 12 of them!

Thankfully I limited myself to just two boxes this trip and I was pleased to find my lonely Roborovski hamster now has the company of the following two friends: a Dzungrian hamster on wheel (that spins!) and a somewhat worried and hand-wringing bipedal black-bellied hamster:

On the way out I also scored myself a couple gumball machine saints for the low-low of 5o cents each. It doesn’t get more dynamic a duo than the two the machine dispensed as if answering my prayers as to which ones I wanted: the Guardian Angel and the Virgin of Guadalupe!

Gotta admit I’m inclined to leave the guardian angel hanging because it’s tough to give five to someone who looks so unguardedly unenthusiastic. And on the subject of the lady in red, I almost hate to say this but can I also just point out that at first sinnerly wrong-way glance the virgin’s prayer hands could be misconstrued as an ample decolletage showing through a peekaboo gown.

Oh I’m so going to hell.

One of my favorite views in Los Angeles happens to be found from up at the top of our backyard. So much so that had it not been for my interest in pixeling it from there yesterday I would not have discovered the unfortunate scene that prompted yesterday’s post.

In reviewing the above image this morning something caught my eye that I’d never noticed before despite not only knowing it was there but also having spent cumulative hours over the last few years gazing at this scene. It’s the blocky structure there to the left of the frame’s center and about midway between the top and bottom. Here’s a blown-out close-up:

Hey, it’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House! Howdy neighbor. Looking good in all its renovational glory, too!

Yeah I’m a geek in that I think it’s awesome that I have a direct sightline to such a landmark work of my favorite architect. Of course it’s far enough away to prevent me from seeing any detail — at least not without busting out the binoculars — but it’s nice to know it’s there and looking better than it has in a long time!

(click to triplify) 

I’d seen others’ pics of the empty reservoir but this was my first chance to see it live from atop Baxter. It’sa trip to see it in such a state. But I thought it’d be deeper.

Sad and unfortunate news from down in Orange County. Scott Beuhler, a 27-year-old man attempting to rescue a treed cat, fell to his death Wednesday, and reading about it reminded me of the night in 2004 when Susan and I were first dating and  I came to her aid when she worriedly called to tell me that her Pumpkin had gotten stuck in a tree across the street.

I arrived and sure enough Pumpkin was out on a branch about 20 feet off the sidewalk, and though he didn’t seem very thrilled with the situation, he was also in no hurry to descend on his own. And while common sense told me that what goes up on its own must surely be able to come down on its own, I think my genuine empathy for the unhappy cat and my eagerness to help (as well as perhaps impress Susan a little bit with what a great guy I am) resulted in me propping up her extending ladder at something of an awkward and unsteady angle against the trunk of the tree and tentatively climbing up the wobbly thing about a step or two beyond what would have been considered safe by any impartial third party.

Pumpkin, who barely knew me at that point in our relationship, spared me from going any further out on the proverbial limb by moving further out along the branch away from me with a look that was either “Yeah right!” or “Who the hell are you!?” or a bit of both.

After a few more minutes of attempted coaxing I returned to earth knowing any further attempt on my part would be fruitless. The cat certainly wasn’t going to come to me and though part of me was thinking about getting further up in the tree, I knew it was risky and all it would do is drive the cat higher up or farther out among the smaller branches. Bottom line was I wasn’t going to be able to get close to the cat. And even if I could, what then? Did I seriously think Pumpkin would just snuggle in and be patient while I tried to get us both down safely? Hell no.

No, it was time to step away from my ego and call in the professionals. So I whipped out the cell and after a series of transfers from the information operator to the fire department to animal services I had the after-hours dispatcher on the line. I don’t remember the exact course of our conversation but it basically went something like:

“Hello, we have a cat stuck up in a tree.”

“Yes sir. And you want us to come help you get it down?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, may I ask you: do you know how many calls we get from people whose cats have climbed up into trees?”
(more…)

And now for a bit o’ the Silver Lake neighborhood news. Nothing major, just that as I was biking home from Wednesday Hollywood Burrito Project ride around 11:30 p.m. I noticed the nice neon martini glass that served as the sign for the departed Johnny’s Bar on Sunset across the street from Silver Lake Lounge was lit for the first time in awhile, like so:

And upon closer inspection after snapping the pic I found a “Notice of Application To Sell Alcohol” displayed in the window above the door stating that the new establishment is to be called “Lucky Tiki.” Interesting.

I wrote about the mystery demise of Johnny’s initially on Blogging.la last year, and then followed up with the fun reply to my emails sent to the huffy lawyer in charge of evicting Johnny’s here.

(click to quadruplify)

Ranger alerted us to one of our local opossums being out on the roof of the house to the north of us, so I busted out camera and the million-candlepower light — which Susan shined on it — to catch it hanging out. People hate ‘em. I hate people who hate ‘em because the opossum is one of the most remarkable and resilient creatures on the planet.

For far too many Saturdays mornings the gardeners for the people next door to us have been excessive (to say the least) in their illegal (LAMC Sections 112.04 & 112.05) use of gas-powered leafblowers. This particular morning it started shortly after 9 a.m. and with a couple brief breaks (I assume because the machines ran out of gas) it continues now as we approach the hour of 11.

Marshaling my diplomatic tendencies while simultaneously quelling my urge to go on a rampage with a baseball bat, I sat down and took the first expletive-free documentational step, as follows, toward resolving this. If this doen’t work I start complaining to the proper authorities.

February 9, 2009

Dear Neighbor,

As your next door neighbors we submit this request with the utmost respect, but the situation with your groundskeepers has gotten to an untenable point that requires your immediate attention and intervention.

At some not-too-distant point, your gardening crew began doing its work on Saturday mornings. I can only assume that this unfortunate switch is the result of scheduling conflicts that prevent them from doing their work during the week.

I call it unfortunate primarily because of their extensive use of gas-powered leafblowers in violation of the Los Angeles Municipal Code Sections 112.04 and 112.05 which state:

112.04: “No gas powered blower shall be used within 500 feet of a residence at anytime. Both the user of such a blower as well as the individual who contracted for the services of the user, if any, shall be subject to the requirements of and penalty provisions for this ordinance. Violation of the provisions of this subsection shall be punishable as an infraction in an amount not to exceed One Hundred Dollars ($100.00), notwithstanding the graduated fines set forth in L.A.M.C. Section 11.00(m). ”

112.05 “Between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., in any residential zone of the City or within 500 feet thereof, no person shall operate or cause to be operated any powered equipment or powered hand tool that produces a maximum noise level exceeding the following noise limits at a distance of 50 feet therefrom.”

This morning specifically one of your gardeners (pictured at right) began blowing leaves with a gas-powered “backpack” blower shortly after 9 a.m. and it continued unabated for more than an hour. It then stopped at 10:15 a.m. only to recommence at 10:30. It continues as I write this.

Not only is this illegal from a mechanical perspective but it is also a severe and prolonged disruption of the peace.

To be fair and honest, last Saturday when our gardeners showed up uninvited (a day after missing their regularly scheduled visit) we quickly discovered that they too use a gas-powered blower. We put a stop to it immediately and have contacted their supervisor to insist any further work be done without such offensive equipment – and never on Saturday.

Again we submit this with the utmost appreciation for the good neighbors you are and in the hope your quick action will put an end to this illegal activity. If you have any questions or wish to discuss this further please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Will & Susan Campbell