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This past few week has been a bit of a behind-the-scenes whirlwind of anticipation. Thanks to a heads-up from LA Metblog Capt. Lucinda Michele, I found out about a great gig offered via Craigslist by an Aussie outfit looking for an author to write a guide book about bike rides in Los Angeles.

So I got busy submitting clips and stuff knowing how far I could knock such a topic near and dear to my heart out of the park. Then came the phone interview early in February, followed by an in-person interview last Thursday in Redondo Beach with the publishers who were on something of a hectic visit to the states, where they’re also finalizing writers for sister books in other cities.

On Friday out of something like 50 initial candidates I was told it was between me and one other person.

Tonight, as I was out behind my office building literally swinging my leg over the bike about to get on it for the ride home from work, my cell phone rang and it was the publisher and without much in the way of chitchat I was told the decision had been made to go with that other person.

I was gracious in defeat. I told the publisher that I understood they had to make the decision they thought was best for them and the project. I stopped short of saying anything silly like “Your loss” or “You’re making a mistake,” and instead expressed my appreciation for their consideration and wished them great success with their endeavor — and I meant it. The book can be a wonderful thing for cycling in LA… even if it isn’t my name on the cover and my dedicated efforts filling it up.

The ride home across town? Yeah it was a solemn and pensive journey but I worked out some of the kinks of disappointment along the way. Some. And I was thankful that I had my bike to ride through the rain-sprinkled streets of the city I know so well and love so much.

With a few minutes to kill I logged into my long-dormant account at Zazzle.com and did as I’d said I would a couple days ago: turned the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics badge image captured at a car show by my friend Frazgo into a tee (click it for the bigger picture):

Then I ordered one for me and one for him — no charge Frazmatazz, since I couldn’t have done it without you!

Want one? Didn’t think so, but you can check out its Zazzle page here.

I’ve been biking by this latest (click for nominal enlargification) in the curbside ad stand found on La Brea between 9th and Olympic now for a few days, and it induces a snicker in passing not only because of its perpetuation of such a lame and passé cult-of-celeb conceit, but also because I’m just enough of an Ed Hardy clothing hater to deduce an ulterior message from the image.

Certainly what the folks at EH so desperately want us  to do is rush out and buy their garments so that we can vicariously be like the alleged platinoid poptart pictured who is shown clad in the brand whilst fending off the paparazzi as she exits what looks to be the deathlessly trendy Ivy on Robertson, perhaps on her way to a breast augmentation consult, or maybe a reading for a juicy part on the next big pile of weekly stupid that’ll be coming out of the MTV series mill to a TV near you this summer.

My alternate snark on the staged scene is that her frustration isn’t with the encroaching parasitic tabloid photogs so much that they caught her wearing such ridiculous clothes. That, and she’s pissed because the Ivy carded her barely-legal ass and her assistant cousin is crosstown in Echo Park with her ID and her debit card. Shopping at American Apparel. You know, a classy place.

In these years of fading memory I can’t seem to recall the specfix of how I came to have this image below that I rediscovered this weekend whilst stumbling around my archives. My best recollection is that I found it via my fellow LA Metblogger Frazgo, either via a post he made on the find somewhere or from his Flickr photostream.

What is it? Well, I’m a little fuzzy on that as well. Obviously it’s a weathered treasure from the 1932 summer Olympic games here in L.A., but specifically I’m thinking that in the original image the badge was attached as an ornament  that adorned either the grille or the hood of a car from that time, and that the end result you see above is from my efforts in Photoshop to separate it out and stand it alone, maybe to put it on a shirt or a —.

[Sound of tires screeching]

Mystery solved! Instead of sitting here writing about scratching my head about it, I zipped over to Frazgo’s Flickr photostream and found the original image. Yep, it’s just as I’d thought.

Next stop: shirt creation!

Begrudgingly canceled due to cold and wet weather that dropped in uninvited during our visit last Thanksgiving, I am excited to announce that Susan and I will be returning to Death Valley in early April not only so I can finally fulfill the 9-years-old dream of biking the 28 miles of bad-ass road from Ubehebe Crater to Racetrack Playa (inspired originally back in 2001 by this brief article, clickably pictured at right, that I found in Outdoor magazine), but also to check out any hot wildflower action that might be blooming out and about in them there vast solitudinous expanses.

Special bonus: we’ll be accompanied by family in the form of my cousin Margaret’s 18-year-old son Nathan (I think that makes him my first cousin, once removed), who’ll be coming out to California to spend a short vacation with us.

On the off chance any of you camping/adventuring types reading this wanna caravan out and join us, holler at me and I’ll send you the dates and details.

You might have checked out my post earlier this week on LA Metblogs cumbersomely titled “89 Snaps Of People I Passed While Biking This Morning On The Strand Between Hermosa Beach And The Ballona Creek Bridge.”

If not, in a nutshell, I had my sunglasses digicam on while biking from Hermosa Beach back to work this last Wednesday morning, and when I later reviewed the video I decided to capture stills of the frames featuring people I encountered along the way and ended up with 89 of them, which I then ran through some basic Photoshop filtration to give them an illustrative look.  Liking the results and feeling  it made for an interesting slice of SoCal life I tossed ‘em all up on Flickr and linked to them from the aforementioned Metblogs post made that evening.

Then came this arrogantly assuming comment yesterday morning from someone who apparently thinks they know everything  and to prove it used the pseudonym “Privacy rights violated:”

Apparently you are unaware of the rights of individuals to control the use of their image in publicity. You legally are violating their rights to privacy. Just because people appear in public, does NOT mean you have the right to publish their images online for the world to see, and associate this with a blog. You have a right to take a photo for yourself, but not the right to make them public. An exception is when they are PUBLIC FIGURES and most all of these people are not. You need signed releases!

It was chuckle-worthy both in the person’s intense disregard for the true applicability of a person’s expectation of privacy in public places, and his or her blatant lack of awareness of my rights as a photographer and — for want of a better word — artist. Not to mention my 19 years’ experience in various journalistic endeavors.

I especially enjoyed the person’s apparent Freudian slip of “You legally are violating their rights…” Because that’s, in effect, absolutely correct. I am well within my rights not only to take photos of anyone and everyone on that bikeway, but also to publish them to Flickr and LA Metblogs.

And while it amazes me that there are people like “Privacy rights violated” who are so ignorant and adamantly demonstrative of it, at its core such a dimwitted display is an appreciated opportunity to explore and enforce the truth.

These five cactus pads were rescued as tiny sprouts a from a single dying pad (its remains visible on the right side of the pot) that had disconnected from the main plant. I’m particularly fond of the  exulting “arms” the pad in the middle has grown.

After Saturday’s rains, this tiny forest of mushrooms sprang up literally overnight.

One of my favorite signs of spring, this little flowering plant beneath the behemoth bougainvillea to the north of the front steps blooms annually, but usually only with one or two flowers. This year thanks to the increased rains it got an early jump and is really putting on a show.

Speaking of getting an early start, the backyard stand of callalilies has wasted no time making its presence known.

When it was announced that LAPD Chief Charles Beck was to be in attendance at this week’s City Council Transportation Committee meeting Wednesday, I would have bet good money that he wouldn’t show. Nothing against Beck, it’s just that in the recent past there have been blow-offs by the department to requests by the committee for reports and presentations, so it wouldn’t surprise me if its chief suddenly found something more productive to do than placate a passel of cycling types.

Then I heard that that Carmen Trutanich’s office had declined to file charges against the suspect who struck cyclist Ed Magos on January 6 and then, after getting out and observing a seriously injured Magos on the ground pleading for help, got back in her Porsche Cayenne and left the scene. This absolution against someone so criminally culpable and morally bankrupt compounded the frustration I was already feeling when I’d heard that the suspect later turned herself in to police telling them that “I may have hit something,” only to have the police for all intents and purposes condone such reprehensible behavior by sending her on her way instead of arresting her for felony hit and run.

Come the morning of the committee meeting I was pretty much the grumbliest cyclist in the city and made the snap decision to take a personal day, telling my boss something along the lines that “an important and pressing matter needs my immediate and direct attention.”

Then at noon I pedaled over to Heliotrope and Melrose in East Hollywood to meet up with a group of cyclists organized by the L.A. County Bike Coalition who were heading to City Hall and the committee meeting via the route that Magos took the day he got hit.

One of the items on my agenda as an Angeleno has been to visit City Council chambers, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever task myself with speaking there. But despite how much I hate doing so, I knew I had to do more than represent physically. For better or worse I had to verbalize it as well.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the lectern mic with all the bombast I’d been planning to drop. Beck took the wind totally out of my sails by addressing the Magos incident specifically in his opening statement at the beginning of the meeting. He said he recognized that the ball got dropped and that people were pissed and as such had spoken with Trutanich’s office, which had agreed to take another look at the issue (whatever that means).

So whereas I had been planning on using loaded words like “abomination,” “insulting,” “ignorant,” and “wouldn’t know justice if it hit them from behind and fled the scene” to characterize what I saw as uninvolved and uncommitted police and prosecution departments, I toned it down a bit, as follows:

It’s been awhile since I had a stray animal encounter as intense and involved as this one — the last being the relatively desperate one with Acorn the Jindo by the Galen Center at USC back in July of last year. That one had a far more satisfying ending than this morning’s, but this one takes the prize for uniqueness when you consider that a fellow concerned citizen who stopped to help the poor runaway dog and introduced herself as Melanie with the Animal Services turned out to be Melanie Ramsayer, the President of the L.A. Animal Services Commission.

So without further adieu, here’s the 12 minutes of me and eventually Melanie the most awesome city commissioner (and even a parking enforcement officer at one point) doing our damnedest to corral this uncatchable critter — who we think hope and pray actually made it back home.

Notes: Just after the one-minute mark when the dog charges into busy Olympic Boulevard about a block east of La Brea, you’re going to see me just look straight up into the sky. I did that not only because I couldn’t bear to look at what I fully expected to come, but also for another reason. Though I’m not one to trouble god with things that are probably pretty trivial as far as he’s concerned, I troubled him about that dog’s life right then and hard and as directly as I could. You can argue whether my prayer was answered, but that little dog made it across unscathed.

Other notes: You’ll hear me call the dog “Charlie” throughout the chase. I did this because he seemed to react to it when I randomly called him by the name.

The Saga Of The Stray Dog And The LA Animal Services Commissioner from Will Campbell on Vimeo.

Mainly this was an impromptu test of my nonvideo-capable iPhone 3G’s UStream video app that I’ve had for awhile and never used, and with it I managed to capture our Pumpkin’s distinctively odd and adorably unique purr. He even seems to ask a question near the end: