The White Paint Chronicles (#0004)

Full-Moon-Midnight

Midnight is the moment of both merger and separation, where two planes of existence come together, then depart, with all the passion and abandonment of two strangers in the bathroom of a 737 during a one-hour flight from L.A. to Vegas... when transparency and desperation reveal themselves to the few who stop to see it in the dark.

Midnight.  The time when only bad shit happens to good people, and the motives of a man’s heart are most clearly revealed.  The mystical time between times that most honest, hard-working, daytime folk never see... and most shady, lowlife, night-dwellers are too involved in their shufflings to notice.  The time when the distance between worlds is at its least, and the visible and invisible almost touch. 

And quiet voices from one side to the other are heard the clearest.

-------------

My last drop of the night.  A drop just like any other, with just one little variation... time.

The time of night, and the time I would have to spend waiting in scratchy plastic chairs, worn smooth through the years by the fat bodies of truckers, squirming, for uncountable hours on end, waiting for their names to be called, and their cargo tendered.  My job is ninety-nine percent High Priority parcels... fast in – faster out.  But tonight, a cargo drop bound for Rio de Janeiro would force me to sit with the Low Priority crowd, in chairs... possibly all night.  One drop, and the only thing separating me from a row of cold ones was the interest level of the lone clerk behind the counter.  Now, after three hours and eleven minutes and thirty-seven games of Brick-Breaker on my Blackberry, I was second in line behind a cowboy trucker who had given in to the lulling hum of the forklifts in the warehouse, and closed his eyes for good beneath a yellowed, straw hat about an hour ago.

So close to the end of shift.  The end of...

A sound... jagged nails across a half-acre of angry blackboard.  The bitchy squeal of worn rubber, dug in hard on a smooth, paved floor, as if in protest against, against...

The cowboy jumped and landed on two feet, like a live man from his own grave.  Slowly, I turned toward the sound. 

Crumpled at one edge, tilted at an awkward, upward angle against a frame of supporting pine, lay a body clothed in cardboard, like ten cold reams of Banker’s Boxes, all in a row.




To be continued...

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

The White Paint Chronicles (#0003)

The Body

You ever see a dead body?  No, I don’t mean a corpse… I mean something that, as soon as you see it, the words, “dead body” pop into your head like the words, “flat tire” when you see a car on the side of the road or, “fucking tourist” when you see someone jay-walking at LAX. 

Dead body.

Say it just right, and you feel like you swallowed an ice cube whole.  Say it again, and the words burn cold and razor sharp, cutting your insides at that special place between the dry lump in your throat, and your fear-shrunken ball sack… because you’ve seen your future’s end, and read the last page of the unwritten story of your misspent life.

Is there really such a thing as “Indian Summer”?  In L.A. the closest thing to it is something called the “Santa Ana’s”.  Every fall, for a few days… okay, sometimes weeks… the cool breezes of the gray Pacific are swallowed up by a pissed-off furnace, blowing hot from the far north.  It’s a time when Chamber of Commerce weather is kidnapped and forcibly replaced by highs in the upper-90’s and gusts above 50 miles an hour.  During the days, dirt and smog blows against the grain from the mountains to the sea.  Palm trees are bent backwards, and the sky for a hundred miles is turned to 1960’s postcard brown… like it was when Dodger Stadium was new, and Marilyn Monroe was still breathing.  And the nights, tinted blue-black under a ghost-white moon streaked by blowing debris, glows with no life above the screaming of the wind.

And at full-moon-midnight, near the end of another shift, a dead body spoke.






To be continued...

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

The White Paint Chronicles (#0001)

“I’m a stop singing this song because I’m high (raise the ceiling baby)...

I’m singing this whole thing wrong, because I’m high (bring it back)...

And if I don’t sell one copy, I’ll know why (Why man? Yeah)...

Cause I’m high, cause I’m high, cause I’m high.”


"Because I Got High"
Music and Lyrics by Joseph A. Foreman
(aka "Afroman")

“Because a writer writes.”

I wrote that in the liner of a leather-bound journal, that I gave as a gift once. A birthday gift, to a guy I worked with, who called himself a writer. He used to make me read his stuff. Written long-hand, in a two inch, three-ring notebook on wide-ruled, 8 ½ by 11 paper. It sucked. At the time, I didn’t know if what I wrote in that journal was for his encouragement, or just a thinly veiled attempt at harsh sarcasm. It’s been years now, and I still don’t know which it was, and that isn’t even the point. The point I’m making is that this fuzzy, gray-white cloud of a memory most likely only popped into my head right now because of what I, a writer, just did for a fucking paycheck.

Yeah, it’s funny what a few well-mixed, federally regulated, industrial chemicals can do to rip a dead memory from the hard ground of a guy’s head like a cosmic backhoe, under the paint-stained bandanna, just the other side of the blood-brain barrier.

I started working semi-permanent, part-time jobs so I could spend the bulk of my thoughts (at least that’s what I told myself at the time) on what I told anyone who would listen was my next career… “Writer”. Now, when I’m honest (or drunk), I tell the world (or those in it who would listen) that I’m “a guy who works two part-time jobs… and blogs”.

Sort of.

And like the song clue at the top tells you (if this was a movie, it would have been playing in the background on a car radio), last week’s Libertarian drug flashback went and turned itself into its own bullshit crisis of conscience, artistic epiphany… all in the hour it took to paint a mildew stained, six-by-thirty, cinder block and drywall storage unit, deep inside an unventilated apartment garage.

God, how toxic primer can make you think, while it kills the handful of brain cells you have left.

In the week since what I now refer to as the Afroman Epiphany forced me to re-evaluate the choices I’ve made for becoming a handsomely-paid writer, it wasn’t till Day 6 that it came to me. Nobody who wants to get paid for thinking up cool new ways to use the same old words already used (but better) by other (dead) writers, should ever have to work in a Huffer’s Paradise of well-mixed, federally regulated, industrial chemicals… no matter how pretty they make a cinder block and drywall storage unit… not even if your name is Charles Fucking Bukowski.

And no amount of white paint on a dirty old bandanna can cover up whatever other repressed memories of why I really write.


Also available for reading on Expats Post (where writers Write to Live)
http://expatspost.com/columns/the-white-paint-chronicles-0001-2/

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

GILLEAN SMITH: The BrooWaha Interview

Gillean Smith with Helen Thomas (2010)



Broowaha.com writer and owner of GS Consulting, Gillean Smith shares her thoughts on life lived in the shadows of fame, and what it means to live in and out of the light. 

A Bill Friday interview.

BILL FRIDAY: Just to let you know, I’ve spent quite a few days going over your decidedly intimidating family history.

GILLEAN SMITH: Funny. In school, no one knew of my family and who they were. I was just another student.

Gillean’s famous relatives include her late father, Albert Merriman Smith, known to most as “Smitty,” who was Dean of the White House Press Corp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for his written account of the death of President John F. Kennedy and the man who ended every press conference with, “Thank you, Mr. President.” Her step-brother also happens to be General Stanley A. McChrystal (ret.), the former Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, until he was relieved of his command by President Barack Obama in July of this year.

FRIDAY: Before we go any further, is there anything else you’d like us to know about you?

GILLEAN: First you should know that I am directionally, technologically and mathematically challenged. I don't like needles. I don't do well at the sight of blood...

FRIDAY: Growing up, did anybody know about your family background?

I'd Like To Report A Missing Person...

In honor of the memory of what was, a blast from BrooWaha past.  Firewalk with me down memory lane to a time when authors gave a crap, and their voice was heard.

It was Tuesday, September 4th. I drove north on Wilcox, my destination now in sight. I found a space in front of the building and parked. It was the only space left on the street. Was it fate, or just dumb luck?


For this job, I could use a little of both.

5:45 p.m. After a hard day at work the A/C inside was cool and inviting. Outside, the air was hot and wet, a lot like the pavement in a Whitesnake video featuring Tawney Kitaen. 100 degrees every day for... days, but that was another story.

1358 N. Wilcox. Hollywood Division. LAPD's Precinct of Broken Dreams. I stepped inside. A pale-legged tourist with black socks and an Iowa drivers' license sat next to a self-employed, freelance “actress" with six-inch heels and no permanent address. I noticed that, even in the late-summer heat, both of them were wearing wigs.

And just like the curls in their nylon hair, nothing about either of them seemed out of place.

LAX CONFIDENTIAL: "I Forget... I Remember... I Forget"

A study of benign hopelessness... in three little acts.

The third in a series.



Act 1: "I Forget..."

Quiet. It’s the sound that swallows every sound that surrounds it. It’s the noise that makes void the voice of every thought.

I don’t remember the last time I drove without the radio on in the car. Okay, that’s a lie... I do remember. It’s that I choose to forget. It was the day my Dad had his last heart attack. I was driving for a living (what else is new), and I remember that on that day when my radio fizzled and cut out for good, I actually prayed that it would work again, just so I wouldn’t have to be alone in an empty car with my own thoughts. Amazingly, mystically, the radio came back to life. An unexplainable resurrection from the dead.

About an hour later, I got the phone call that my Dad had “died” on his front porch, and was being breathed for on a ventilator at Gardena Memorial.

In the years since, driving with noise has become for me a second voice. The sane equivalent of the never ending dialogue of the schizophrenic.

In the aftermath of the miracle of the car radio, I heard a story — an airport story — of two cars, three men, and one question.

The story went like this...

After picking up man number one at the airport, man number two sees a third man in the car next to them — windows down, car radio blasting — the music louder than he could derive enjoyment from. Man number two, being the kind of man who bitches before he thinks, rolled up his window against the noise and complained to the second man,

“What is that guy’s problem? He’s gonna go deaf and take the rest of us
with him. Can’t he hear?!!!”

“He can hear,” the second man said. “What I want to know is, what is it
he hears that he’s trying so hard not to?”

Quiet. I tap the front of the radio, my fingers loud in the unaccustomed silence of my car.

Copyright © 2010 Bill Friday

LAX CONFIDENTIAL: "Living Room"

Unseen, but not unnoticed.

The second in a series.



July, 2005

(1:42 a.m.)...

Lot 7 is quiet. The cue of black Towne Cars that once lined the far wall has been replaced by a shiny strew of Smarte Carts, empty and tossed at odd angles, abandoned. Each one is a lingering reminder of the last cheap, black suit who used it — a three dollar rental dripping with the three dollar stench of salt air and palm sweat and Drakkar Noir.

I park, head in, against the same concrete foundation, a few short steps from the tower of stairs that looms over United Airlines. Inside the Terminal, one last lost parcel waits for me, invisible, even in the face of so many pairs of searching eyes.

I lock my car against the closeness of the moist night air. Against the dark reminder that these walls house more than cars, just as the ground on which they stand is more than just the lines painted upon it. The unmistakable smell — the sweet-hot smell of Type-1 diabetic urine — rising to my nose from the dark patch of soft asphalt underneath my tire, reminds me that I am merely a guest in another man’s home — a tourist, just passing through some unseen someone’s dirty mansion — on my way to somewhere else.

(1:48 a.m.)...

That was easy.

Tucked against the “over-sized” luggage belt was my missing parcel — alone, and obvious, in the empty halls of the Terminal. As I grab my phone to call it in I think,

“How many people didn’t see this here?”

How many...?

Back outside, distant in the quiet of another silent night, a sound — familiar as it echoes in the fog of another graveyard run. The wobbling, scrapping sound of a single shopping cart, fading as it pushes east toward Sepulveda, out of sight — but not out of mind.

I pass through his living room on the way to my car.

Copyright © 2010 Bill Friday

LAX CONFIDENTIAL: "Fog and Darkness"

Is the future just an echo of your past?

The first in a series.



Today...

(90277)

Fog and darkness arrive together, the setting sun hid by dripping, pale gray air. And with it, the one-way, bump-and-go of ten thousand cars, marks the end of another day. I float the other way, free. Free like a dead fish downstream toward gathering rapids, speeding without thought.

Artesia... Rosecrans... Imperial...

Planes descend before me like giants falling from the sky. My windows down, I turn to face them. Overhead they scream — every day the same.

The city, shut tight against the penetrating shroud of encroaching night. A million souls, and more, wrapped in a cold blanket of hope — all settled till the morning.

Except for me.

At times like these, I feel I’ve done this all my life.
Until the whole landscape of your existence shifts, then crumbles, then sinks out of sight; cherished memories become washed out ghosts, fading in and out, as you make your way along once-familiar paths.

I’m sure I lived another life before the one I’m living now. Far away; a recurring childhood dream that, with the passing of years, no longer controls the night—where time and place sparks a brief remembrance of what once was.

Only to forget.

Whatever I was, I am that no longer. And whatever I’ve become, I know will fade as quick in the minds of those whose eyes catch mine, like the faded markers of a life that’s passed are come and gone.

As they are for me, I will become for them — the shadow of their passage through this place, where memory fades and belief gives way to the certainty of doubt.

397 days earlier...

(90045)

8:23... The smell of burning diesel is fresh in the air. One car, at war with a yard full of fifty-three foot monsters. Horns blare — monster versus monster — angry voices challenge for their place in the hierarchy of the night. I fly under the radar of give-a-shit, wanting only to be left alone. Just do my job, then quickly fade away.

8:29... Cargo fully loaded. Clock ticking. Deadline now. I weave between the monsters, each one oddly staggered like a meth cook’s teeth, all in a crooked row. Through the rattling iron gate, onto the waiting street.

And green lights, as far as the eye can see.

8:34... One minute to go. Lock-out in 59... 58... 57. No cops. Hard right. Swerve. Roll the stop... down the ramp... pop the lid. Throw, throw, throw — three bags, four bags, five. Stack ’em. One skid, two.

33... 32... 31.

Up the ladder, running.

The office — no line.

12... 11... 10.

The counter.

05... 04... 03... Call it in — POD.

Reload.

Seventy-two minutes later...

(90045)

9:47... Terminal 7. I walk beneath the canopy of signs and speakers. Floating above me, the voice of Peter Coyote informs the collective unconscious of weary travelers,

“The white curb is for loading and unloading
of passengers only. No
parking; No waiting.
Unattended vehicles will be sighted and
towed.”

9:49... I check with United SPD about the status of flight 715 out of Denver.

Delayed.

9:52... I stand just outside the crush of Carousel #1, killing time, waiting for my parcel to drop. Off in the distance, at the bottom of the descending escalator, stands a grove of out-of-work actors in cheap, black suits — now existing as limo drivers with faces in need of more Botox, all still hoping for their one big break. They hold hand-scrawled signs with names drawn awkwardly in Magic Marker — none famous — just another bad tipper with heavy bags and noisy kids.

Waiting.

10:01... All at once, without warning — somewhere between Carousel #1 and the back door — a surprise encounter. It begins with a glance, a one-way flash of recognition, of the famous by the anonymous. And with it, a single, unvarnished truth that transcends all my two-dimensional memories of the 1990’s right in front of me.

Rail thin, with a face too pale to have just gotten off a plane from Maui. Power-walking, acne scarred TV royalty, ten strides ahead of husband, and nanny, and child.

And I am left with only one thought, screaming in my brain,

“Courteney Cox looks like hell!”

To be continued...

Copyright © 2010 Bill Friday

ROXANA SABERI: The Face Of Citizen Journalism

Author's Note: The following article originally appeared on the website BrooWaha.com. Several references herein refer to work by writers on that site, and the idea that the content and mission of BrooWaha and its contributors is, or is closely linked to, the concept of what has been referred to as "Citizen Journalism".

All editorial license taken in this article with regard to the mission and content of BrooWaha is mine.

Roxana Saberi is a Citizen Journalist.

THE FACE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM: What it is.

On April 18th it was announced that a court of law found Roxana Saberi guilty of spying on the Iranian government. Tried, convicted, and sentenced in a matter of minutes, Saberi has already begun serving an eight-year sentence in the famed Evin House of Detention, a squalid, overcrowded containment and execution facility on the northern outskirts of the capital city of Tehran. Originally detained January 31st on a preliminary charge involving the "illegal purchase" of a bottle of wine, Saberi was subsequently charged with, "spying for foreigners... for America."

Beginning in 2003, after several years of work in small-market, radio and television news, Saberi began reporting from Iran as a credentialed journalist, freelancing for news agencies as diverse as the BBC, National Public Radio, and Fox News. During this time Saberi, born in the U.S. and raised in North Dakota, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Iranian father, became a well known presence on the streets of her father's home country. Recognized as both a reporter and videographer, Saberi was often seen filming and interviewing, all while wearing a traditional head covering so as not to be in violations of local customs, or interpretations of Islamic law. Maintaining dual U.S and Iranian citizenship, Saberi wanted to show the world the real face of the Iranian people, not only through her journalistic efforts, but also through a book she intended to write from her experiences there.

Then in 2006, shortly after the election of the new President Mahmood Ahmadinejad, Roxana Saberi's Iranian press credential was revoked. Lacking a recognized credential (one of the hallmarks of Citizen Journalism), yet choosing to remain in Iran without the official permission of the government, for the next two years Saberi continued to file stories periodically, interviewing and filming, becoming the very expression of a Citizen Journalist: See the news... report the news. Then, in January of this year, the original "wine bottle" detainment, and later the official "charges". In the words of the Iranian deputy public prosecutor Hassan Haddad,

"Without press credentials and under the name of being
a reporter, [Saberi] was carrying out espionage activities,"

Haddad informed the Iranian Students News Agency. The same Hassan Haddad who, according to the organization Reporters Without Borders, was a known torturer in Evin Prison as far back as the 1980's.

In a country where Journalism is at best tolerated, and Citizen Journalism is prosecuted as "espionage", Roxana Saberi has become a pawn in a hostile game over the international rights of free speech. As appeals are made to the government of Iran through official and unofficial means, including those of her parents, and even President Barack Obama, who on Sunday said, "I am gravely concerned with her safety and well-being." Despite all that, the fact remains that an American journalist sits in a third-world prison, widely known as a place where many of its inmates do not live long enough to see freedom at the end of their sentence.

At the time of this writing, whether intended or not, Roxana Saberi has become the face of Citizen Journalism in America, as well as the world.

THE FACE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM: What it must not become.

I have a blog. That's no secret. I've had this blog for almost two years, and have published items on everything from news, sports and entertainment, to commentaries and humor pieces. Pretty much anything that crosses my mind.

My blog is not Citizen Journalism. Not even close.

Most of you reading this also have blogs, many of which I have read. And most of those, despite your protests to the contrary, are not Citizen Journalism. And, regardless of what you believe about the site on which you are first reading this article, much of what is seen here, including this article, is not Citizen Journalism.

Sorry.

And while the work of many who have written on this site should be proudly counted as Citizen Journalism and is often superior to what can be found on other similar sites (no author's names here - everyone already knows who you are), much of what wishes to be defined as such is neither journalism, or even blogging. It more closely resembles a written transcript of the talk radio caller, shouting a badly constructed, spontaneous opinion into a cell phone, only to be drowned out by the host, then forgotten just as quickly as the next badly constructed caller opinion.

A few tips.

1. Citizen Journalism is not "news" you gleaned (uploaded, downloaded, copied, cut, or pasted) from another news source. At best, that would make it commentary. At worst, plagiarism. Ranting another person's rant, with or without proper credit, is not journalism at all. In the old days, that form of distribution of information was reserved for telephone conversations between disaffected housewives after a few too many nips of the cooking sherry. It may have been news, but it wasn't journalism.

2. Citizen Journalism is not propaganda. Rephrasing what you heard shouted by O'Reilly, or sneered by Olbermann, or even lovingly smirked by Chelsea Handler last night sometime between dinner and dental floss, is not journalism either. It wasn't journalism when they said it and it isn't journalism when you repeat their opinions as your own. Parroting the talking of partisan heads, no matter how much "you couldn't agree more", is not Citizen Journalism. It's Citizen Sloppy Seconds. Or Thirds.

3. Finally, Citizen Journalism is not a popularity contest (remember Roxana Saberi). True journalism is not about having your "friends" vote for your stories to "make a name for yourself". In its purest form, Citizen Journalism is finding the story right in front of you, and telling it. Popularity and self-promotion are more closely related to Tila Tequila than to Roxana Saberi.

Roxana Saberi is a Citizen Journalist. Are you? Do you want to be?

Start now.
_________________________________________________________

Additional sources for this article include:

Roxana Saberi.com

VOA NEWS.com

Copyright © 2009 Bill Friday

Hey, Great Coffee...Now Could You Clean That Restroom?

Always on the trail of a good story (and a great cup of coffee), Bill Friday reveals the unthinkable about the South Bay's coffee Mecca.

Peet's Coffee. The day I found Peet's is the day I became a One Coffee Man. Since February, rain or shine, regular or decaf, you could find me one, two, three days a week sitting in the cafe of Peet's at the corner of P.C.H. and Avenue G in beautiful Redondo Beach. I believe the glow that comes from the brief case of Marsellus Wallace is really a one pound bag of Peet's Anniversary Blend.

Until last week.

It was a busy week in Friday World - long hours pounding the keyboard for the man (not Ariel - the day job), even longer hours building the self-serving blogspot at night. Without Peet's, life would have been as unwatchable as a Godfather 3, Jaws 3D double-feature hosted by Robert Osborne and Rose McGowan on Turner Classic. So on a rare day off last Friday (It's Always Friday, right?), after breakfast at the landmark Original Pancake House (another review for another time), I dropped by my Best Little Joe House for a fresh cup Major Dickason's Blend to wash down the "Dutch Baby and sausage".

And use the facilities. Big mistake.

To say the restroom looked like two guys named Vincent and Jules had made good on a contract by taking out some snitch with a colostomy bag was probably an over-statement. But I thought it. And to say that by the following Tuesday - that's right, TODAY - nobody at Peet's had put in a call Mr. Wolf to get a mess that monumental cleaned up, was a Bonnie Situation that would have made Jimmie Dimmick give up his U.C. Santa Cruz tee-shirt.

And yet, TODAY...

There it was. As it was. Untouched by human hands, gloves, toilet brushes or whatever else Mr. Wolf tells you it takes to clean up that mess before Bonnie gets home. Of course the guy with the colostomy bag had been mysteriously removed, but the rest of the evidence was still firmly in place.

Well I said, "Got DAMN"!

So if this rant gets published will I lose my L.A. privileges with Peet's in Redondo Beach? Maybe. Maybe it's time for me to just walk away, become a wanderer, going from new coffee house to new coffee house in search of more than just that next great cup of Joe.

Or if they let me live, maybe I'll just pick me up a Royale with cheese and take the next cup to go.

Copyright © 2008 Bill Friday