RACHEL SWEET: FOOL AROUND (1978)

My first true love. She really was. It happened during that time in adolescence when you really start “liking” girls, and your objective is to “go with them.” Not that you go anywhere – you just make out all during recess and lunch. And, achieving that, it’s very important to take that next step, to “feel her up.” Baby steps, really, foreshadowing a lifetime of ecstasy and frustration.

That’s how I felt about Rachel Sweet. But only in that I-must-objectify-an-unattainable-female sort of way. I didn’t have Farrah Fawcett posters on my walls (and, at gunpoint, I’d tell you I was a Jaclyn Smith guy). And I’d graduated from my first object of lust -- Tatum O’Neal (primarily on the strength of her smokin’ Dynamite magazine cover to promote The Bad News Bears).

I was introduced to Rachel Sweet via Rodney’s old Sunday night show on KROQ) – he probably played “Who Does Lisa Like?” And that was that. I rushed to the old Moby Disc on Ventura via the RTD (was it the 88 down Van Nuys Boulevard?) and found the Stiff Records import on white vinyl (It would be rejiggered for U.S. release by Columbia a few months later). What’s funny is that her music didn’t seem universally quirky as my perception of the Stiff label (Lene Lovich and Jona Lewie better fit the bill), but maybe that was the whole point. Just toss in a 16-year-old girl with a Brenda Lee voice and watch the lecherous men go mad. But she was hardly a pop tart on a stick. Though Rachel’s upper register could be a bit cloying, she had serious pipes -- a rich, boozy croon that would have served her well had she chosen to stick it out as a singer/songwriter (she became an actress/TV writer-producer).

But I wasn’t one of those guys. I was a younger guy, only 14, to Rachel’s 16. And I was into Rachel's total package -- the voice, the look, the image. I had a real shot, right? Well, to be honest, it was one of those things that bounced through my head to distract from my inability to land a real girl (there was one little tryst that began sweetly on a bus ride back from a field trip – no doubt to the Getty in Malibu, seemed like I went there at least twice a school year – but it lasted only six days). But it was mainly about the music. “Who Does Lisa Like?” in particular, kind of hit home. It was a three-minute summary of my generation. (I hereby nominate Liam Sternberg for the genius songwriting pantheon).

My Rachel Sweet fixation came at a good time. She helped me kick my addiction to AM radio (RIP Ten Q) and helped rev up a lifetime of girlpop love. It didn’t make me any more popular, however. It was the rare classmate who’d even heard of her. This was Sepulveda Junior High, early 1979. It was all about Styx and Supertramp at that point. The girls still liked the Bee Gees.

I’d already waved my geek flag skyhigh as an O.G. Devo-tee (props to Dr. Demento). In fact, I even sent my 60something grandmother (Grandma Ethel was totally rockin’ it) on a wild goose chase to get me Devo tickets a few months earlier. They were playing the Starwood and Grandma lived nearby, on Harper near Fountain. Alas, she didn’t understand the urgency of snagging tickets to in-demand shows (Are We Not Men had just come out) the nanosecond they went on sale. Instead, she sashayed down Santa Monica Boulevard a few days later, and, alas, the gig had sold out.

I did make it a point to get to Rachel Sweet gigs, even if I had to drag relatives to drive me: to the Whiskey in ’79, opening for 999 (known for the now-quaint sounding “Homicide”); to the Roxy a year later as a headliner. I gobbled up import

singles and bootleg cassettes at the Capitol Records swap meet. My fanhood of the great Trouser Press began after I read a review of a Rachel single in Jim Green’s always-spot-on column, “Green Circles.”

Therefore, there was no question I was going to her record signing at Licorice Pizza on the Strip. Hell, I wasn’t “going” with anyone at the time. Maybe she’d pluck me from the crowd. I was almost 16 by that point. Maybe she liked younger guys.

Her appearance came during the spring of 1980, just as I was gaining some traction during my first year of high school. There was something peculiar about those first few months at Monroe High in lovely Sepulveda (now North Hills), CA, when the kids from rival junior highs – Holmes and Sepulveda - kept in separate camps. In retrospect it was just a speck in time when an invisible line was drawn, but it seemed like a big deal when you're in it. You know, who’d break that thick block of ice separating us? I raised my hand, briefly “going” with a girl from my rival junior high. But I wasn’t the suave fuck I’d imagined myself to be. I picked a girl whose parents were exceedingly strict, and by that time, I thought, just maybe, we could see each other outside of school hours and school property.

No such luck. That frustration, coupled with the fact that I was probably a dick (funny how I can’t remember specific details – feel free to draw your own conclusion). I do, however, recall being muscled by a pair of her thick-headed junior high friends. I’m sure they meant well, but their threats were straight out of a bad teen movie. They pinned me against a locker and told me in no certain terms to show a little more respect for their female friend. I guess I was quite the asshole in tenth grade.

Then again, this girl wasn’t Rachel Sweet, for whom I’d take long bus rides across town to meet. She was at the Licorice Pizza, ostensibly to promote her second album, the slicked-up for American audiences Protect the Innocent. The line wasn’t very long, and I was in full-geek mode upon meeting her. I wore what I thought was an acceptable new wave uniform – white Lee overalls with a thrift shop fifties-style shortsleeved button-down shirt, rolled-up, Nick Lowe-style, to better highlight my 15-year-old guns.

Needless to say, I came for the girl, but I came off as just another gangly, lust-filled, tongue-tied record geek. Of course, I brought my import copy of Fool Around and the small talk I made pegged me as someone who spent too much time alone in his room, listening to records: “Wow, my favorite song of yours is ‘I’ll Watch the News,’” was all I could muster. It was a super rare track on a Stiff compilation called Can’t Start Dancing, but Rachel wasn't impressed. I got an autograph, got home after dark, and, hopefully became a better person. And oddly enough, my first real true love was a girl who bore a bit of a resemblance to Rachel Sweet. Only problem was that she lived on the east coast. But when you’re 15, that was a mere formality. At least she wasn’t famous.

DONNA SUMMER: “I FEEL LOVE” (1977)

It was 1980, the summer before I got my driver’s license, and I was waking up at 5 on Saturday, 4 on Sunday. When you’re 15, sleep is one of life’s greatest pleasures, particularly if you’re trying to slumber off a rough night. In those days, I ingested a fair amount of bottled Michelob (which we considered a “classy” beer), often procured at one of the many Valley liquor stores that turned a blind eye to underagers plopping down a 20 for a case. If I was in a barfing mood, I’d mix in some Bacardi and coke, maybe some 151 if I wanted to projectile vomit.

I woke up that summer for a job at a place called T-Shirts Plus, ostensibly a retail shop on Osborne Street in Arleta. As was the fashion of the time, T-Shirts Plus sold shirts with iron-on designs – Fonzie, Farrah, Jaws and lots of rock bands (see my previous entry).

It would have been great working in the store – getting a shift there was the holy grail, cush-o-rama, It was close to home and opend at 9. But T-Shirts Plus had a fairly large staff of adolescent Valley stoner boys at their disposal, and only the Chosen Ones got to work at the store. Most of us were used primarily for their weekend enterprise, which was selling irregular t-shirts, socks and other such stuff at swap meets around the Southland. Thus waking up before the crack of dawn.

The business was owned and operated by the Gluckmans, a bulbous Jewish family for whom no joke was too dirty. Imagine a family of real-life Weebles with really filthy mouths and lots of heavy breathing. Bernie and Beverly were the patriarchs, but the heavy lifting was done by sons Phil and Eric.

Each weekend, I was picked up at my Granada Hills domicile and driven to a warehouse in Sun Valley, where we loaded the trucks with boxes of shirts and socks. There were three potential destinations – Saugus, Long Beach or La Mirada. Each was a drive-in theater (remember those?) that held swap meets on weekend days. After a supercharged carbo-scarfing breakfast at the Pantry as the sun rose, we headed down the freeway for a day of hauling and haggling.

Richard Espin helped get me hired at T-Shirts Plus. He was a buddy from Arleta whom I’d known since the beginning of junior high. Lots of us gravitated around Espin, although was an unlikely ringleader – a short, stocky half breed of Jew and Mexican, but he had a huge heart, was totally charming and was an amazing party host. He and I connected largely because we came from the same place – half Jewish, from a broken home, raised by partying pseudo hippies who liked to get their kids high. In Richard’s case, his mom was remarried to a biker dude who was significantly younger than she.

But it was all cool – they had a pool table, and Richard had a water bed, which impressed me. What I really admired about Richard was his ability to seem totally at ease with himself, totally in control, while everyone around him was battling puberty’s heaviest demons. I did lots of memorably bad things with him over the years, and it was never less than great fun. The only time I ever saw him out of his head was the day the Lakers won the title in 1980. As we celebrated, Rich was out cold on the carpet in Robbie Perry’s bedroom. A pity, since he was a huge Lakers fan.

I was usually assigned to La Mirada (which still stands, renamed the Santa Fe Springs swap meet), and on the drive down the 5, the pussy and dick jokes flew at lightning speed, especially if Eric Gluckman and Espin were traveling together. Of course, the Gluckman kids’ preoccupation with all things sexual was not surprising. I remember one occasion where we partied at their bachelor pad in Panorama City, and among the activities was the viewing of a porn flick, starring none other than John Holmes (I’m guessing he was in pretty much every porn flick during the just-pre-video era) I believe this was my first exposure to porn, with all of its super tight gynecological angles. Didn’t seem sexy at all. In fact, another of my school chums, Don Liebig, remarked, “real people don’t do that.” I’m not sure how many of us could have answered that with any sort of authority, even the Gluckman boys, who, to put it kindly, were not GQ models.

Anyway, La Mirada was a trip, a carnival of crap being bought, sold and bartered. Over a tinny loudspeaker, a cheesy PA guy hyped items like “Vic’s Quickies,” which was some sort of food product, and admonished folks to visit the KMET stand to pick up their “whoo-ya” bumper stickers.

When PA guy wasn’t doing his shtick, a wide variety of music blasted through at the quality of an old AM transistor radio with that ear thingy lodged into a left ear. The only thing I remember is Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” all 15 minutes of it – and it seemed even longer. In fact, I can’t be certain that was played in an endless loop all day. I wasn’t a disco fan (yes, I was white trash enough to wear a “Disco Sucks” shirt), but there was something about its synthetic sensuality that oozed through my brain. On the surface, the song was all about having gooey, smelly, sweaty, bodies-sticking together-and-making-suction-sounds sex while being wired to the nines on cocaine. But, with its tightly wound electronic thumping, it sounded to me ike a ticking time bomb that never went off – the frustration of an adolescent boy, really. Listening to it now, it’s a perfect dance track, inspired genius crafted in the studio by producer Giorgio Moroder. But sitting on a folding chair in dusty La Mirada, trying to pawn off a six-pack of tube socks on an immigrant family, it was the subliminal fuel that got me through the day, keeping me going until we wrapped at 3 p.m. with a stop at Tommy’s on Beverly before heading up for partying and the next day’s early wake up call.

Note: I'm playing with the concept of twisting one of my favorite blogs, Cardboard Gods, into sort of a periodic music memoir. Here's the first one.

WINGS: LONDON TOWN (1978)

Objectively, it was probably the worst time to develop a Paul McCartney fixation. I was in eighth grade, having rediscovered music via the osmosis of iron-on band t-shirts, the major fashion statement for adolescents who’d moved past Jaws, Fonzie and Welcome Back, Kotter. At Sepulveda Junior High, circa 1977-‘78-, the leader board of logos included Roger Dean’s Yes logo; Chicago; Boston; Kiss; maybe

some Aerosmith. And you really didn’t need to dig the band to dig what it represented.

But I was slightly contrary: I wore ELO “Face the Music” and Heart “Magazine” shirts. Not the Sex Pistols, of course, but just enough off the beaten path to keep things interesting. But the summer of 1977, when everything was changing in England, I decided to get obsessed with Paul McCartney. The Beatles thing went way back – Let It Be was the first full-length album I owned -- but my interest lay dormant for many years, pushed aside by baseball cards, comic books and coping with my parents’ divorce.

When London Town came out, in March of 1978, the only reason it wasn’t the uncoolest music on the planet was disco and wimpoids like Dan Hill, who made Paul McCartney seem like Lemmy by comparison.

But the tease leading up to London Town’s release was perhaps the worst tripe of McCartney’s career: “Mull of Kintyre.” Really? Yeah, I know, it’s all about sitting in the pub with the “blokes,” and hoisting that pint of bitter you’re going to vomit out of your system in a few hours. Drinking, singing, ranting like a banshee about Chelsea or Man U or some such nonsense. Which is exactly why it was the biggest hit ever in the UK for the longest time. In the U.S., where pub culture was nonexistent, “Mull of Kintyre” was a big fat stiff.

The flip, “Girls School,” was marketed to the Americans as the A-side, or, as the trades hyped it: “Double A.” No b-side = no bad shit. No filler. Uh-huh. The good news: it actually sort of rocked. The bad news: one of Macca’s worst melodies ever. Also stiffed. Still, on rep alone, Midnight Special and/or Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert bit the bullet, took the coke and hookers from the promo men, whatever, held their noses, and threw the “Mull of Kintyre” video on the air. As if we wanted to watch Paul, Linda and lovable sidekick Denny Laine in their overcoats walking through the manure in cold-as-fuck Scotland.

As I said, it was a real appetite whetter. But my life was changing. I’d just been bar mitzvahed, my mother had a new guy in her life – one who didn’t nod out from downers in the bathtub – and, for the first time I could remember, things seemed to be looking up.

KFI was my radio station at that moment. Ten Q had come and gone, and KHJ was weezing along like a lecherous uncle. KFI played London Town’s first single, “With a Little Luck,” a lot, which made me very happy. Soon, I was drawing the Wings logo (see photo) on everything, even when I ran for student body office, using the garish “W” as the starting point for my catchy pitch “Win With Erik Himmelsbach.” I lost, but no matter.

My mom’s new guy, Doobie, attempted to break the ice with me with the gift of a book, Linda’s Pictures, the first collection of photos from Paul’s old lady. Inscribed, he wrote, “To Erik, with a little luck.” Yes, it was that out of control.

When I listen to the album now, I really don’t know what I was thinking, even though Paul remains my favorite Beatle. There are a few songs I like for sheer poppiness: “London Town,” “Café on the Left Bank,” “With a Little Luck,” but, when I think about it in the context of its era, it strikes me as defiantly arrogant and out of touch. As much as I love the title track, it is gray and morose, it’s lethargy setting the tone for everything that follows. It’s the sound of a man pining for old age, or, at the very least, targeting a boomer demographic that wanted no part of punk rock. “I’ve Had Enough,” the self-conscious rock track that ends side one, strikes me as an uninformed brush off of puk rock.

Though he was just 36 when the album was released, Paul was already looking back – “Famous Groupies,” is a novelty ditty about shagging birds, “Name and Address” is a solidly average rockabilly offering. And you could always count on a few bones thrown in Denny Laine’s direction. London Town has two: “Children Children,” with its sub-Fairport Convention druid vibe, stands out for its sheer putritude. Sample lyric:

I know where there's a fairy/ Who will invite us all to tea/ But she won't let me in alone/ You'll have to come with me

“Morse Moose and the Grey Goose?” The title says it all.

The packaging? Cheese-o-rama, particularly the pull-out poster of Paul, Linda and Denny looking aristocratically G-A-Y. So not rock.

But I say fuck context. London Town marks a turning point in my life, when the spiral of my childhood leveled off and I managed to get my groove back. My family situation stabilized and I was getting the hang of adolescence, even getting some prime spin-the-bottle action at 8^th grade parties. Life was full of possibilities.

Music, once again, became the center of my world: I biked to Tower Records in Panorama City and scoured the singles’ bins for Beatles’ 45s on Apple. I began listening to KROQ, worshipped the first Cars album, and, by the end of 1978, I was at the Whiskey a Go-Go, drooling at the sight of the Runaways.

Of course, my musical enlightenment didn’t curtail my McCartney/Wings fixation – I became a full-on apologist for his shameless disco bandwagoneering “Goodnight Tonight.” But that’s a story for another day.

LITTLE BIG BROTHER

My son, Emmett, was asleep in the back and we'd just spent the better part of the morning looking at trains in the sleepy old town of Fillmore and I was zoned out, driving east down Highway 126 back toward the Valley. Then a strange thought popped into my head. This is the end of a chapter in both of our lives, I thought, his final days as an only child. In a few weeks, his sister will arrive and everything will be different.

I wish I could tell him to savor every moment, but he wouldn't understand: That his life will never be the same. That he will have to share his space at the center of the universe with a sibling. And that having a sister will be even a greater experience than his first three years on his own.

Even if Emmett is blissfully unaware of what's coming next, I've become hyperaware of this impending shift in our lives and I'm doing what I can to appreciate these moments when it's just the two of us – balancing on the train tracks at Traveltown; watching the planes land and take off at the Van Nuys Airport; eating quesadillas at Poquito Mas. I want to always remember what it's like to be like this because it never will be again. It's weird, because in the scheme of this family my wife and I are creating, this period will only be a small part of it. When our daughter's born, a whole new set of dynamics will begin to play out.

So far, he seems excited by the prospect of a sister, albeit theoretically. At least there haven't been signs of resentment when we do things like prepare his sister's bedroom, buy her clothes, or discuss her arrival. Just the opposite, in fact. He talks about her all the time, and hugs my wife's bursting stomach every morning and asks, “Is Olivia awake?”

Just in case, we hit him with the propaganda – books like I'm a Big Brother Now that explain the experience in kid terms. But still, you never know what will happen the first time Emmett demands attention and has to wait.

But here's what I'd tell him if he feels sad: Being an only child sucks. I am an expert at this, having been an only child in a broken home. Before I explain, I attach an asterisk to this. I was raised an only child, but I do have a brother. He was given up for adoption when I was 2. At the time, my mother was 20, in the process of divorcing my father, and had no real means of support.

I also inherited a stepbrother of sorts from my mom's second husband (and later another stepbrother after he remarried), and three stepsisters from my mom's third husband. For those keeping score at home, that's one full brother, three stepsisters, two stepbrothers. But the stepsiblings don't really count.

The bottom line is this: As a kid, I was alone. And I hated it, especially when my mom was between husbands. I often wondered if having a sibling to commiserate with would have made my childhood journey any easier. I always imagined it would have.

I didn't learn that I had a brother until I was a teenager, when my mother handed me a wrinkled, laminated photo of a newborn in a hospital bassinet. It was not something she liked to talk about, so I never learned the details of why she gave him up. But I do know that losing her child left a huge hole in her heart that could never be filled.

After my mom died in 1994, I searched for my brother. At the time, I thought I needed someone I could grieve with and fill the emotional void. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I found him within a few months. We'd never met but we grew up within a few miles of each other. He was raised in Van Nuys, while my childhood was spent in Sepulveda. When I found him, he was living a quiet suburban life in Moorpark with his wife.

I wanted desperately for us to connect, but we never have. We can't. DNA and blood is all that holds us together. We are different people who have always led different lives. We didn't grow up together. He never knew his mother – my mother – and chose not to seek her out. And that's fine. We've had nice moments together, such as when he came to my wedding in 2001 and met his other biological relatives for the first time – and I'm grateful for those. But my initial expectations were too high. I've known my brother for nine years now, and whatever communication we have is good enough for me.

But this experience with my brother has served to highlight the importance of growing up together and having those shared experiences.

So I'm excited for Emmett. But I'm also a little bit jealous. Still, I'm lucky. For the next few decades I get to live vicariously through him and Olivia.

Note: Valley Boy will periodically return to its print-based roots, highlighting the best of Citybeat's Valley Boy columns. This piece was originally published April 28, 2005.

IN THE TOOLSHED

Since 2004, I’ve been a periodic visitor to a Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim (Jesus, takes forever to type that) blog called Halos Heaven. I’ve even linked to it on my site (that will be fixed soon). In the past, I’ve occasionally posted on the site, using the nom de blog “Chris Knapp’s Sac.” The moderator has tended to be an apologist for the team’s management and consistently a team homer, which makes sense, since he’s a fan and it’s his site. And that blatant homerism has been a source of amusement until a few days ago, when I created a post that was censored.

Granted, I haven’t visited the site much this season. Instead, I’ve spent my surfing time on more objective sites like Baseball Think Factory, as I’ve tired of the myopic, chest-thumping POV on the Angels site. But I attempted to create a “fan post” because I’ve become fed up with the host of the Angels post-game show, a guy named Jeff Biggs who has bounced around L.A. sports radio for at least the past decade. In the past, he made little impression on me (perhaps that’s why he’s bounced around so much). But this season he’s turned up on the Artie Moreno-owned station AM 830 KLAA and, I swear to god, I can only listen to this guy for five minutes at a time. Because it seems like each time I tune in, he’s giving a great big impassioned speech about the greatness of the Angels organization and the greatness of owner Artie Moreno and, oh, yeah, Frank McCourt sucks for firing Ross Porter. Yes, dude, it did suck that McCourt fired Porter the way he did. For all I know McCourt is a terrible owner, and an awful guy. Is it possible that Biggs is bitter that he didn’t get a gig with the Dodgers?

All I’m saying is that I don’t want to listen to a show about the Angles and hear about how happy the host is to have a job. I get it. Now move on. He also spews the robotic banalities like “I’m sure the GM and the owner will make the right decision when it comes to [Lackey, Figgins, Abreu, Vlad].” I realize you’re paid to be a house man and a tool, but at least pretend to try to have an opinion.

But what set me off the other day was a diatribe against Vladimir Guerrero that was spewed without any context whatsoever. Biggs said that Vlad wasn’t producing like a no. 4 hitter this season. Well, duh. He’s missed two and a half months of the season with injuries. Never mind that he’s had his best stretch -- 9 home runs, 17 RBI, over .300 batting average over the last 28 games -- since he’s return from injury. But don’t you owe it to your listeners to at least mention that his numbers are down because he’s hasn’t played. Not if you’re Jeff Biggs.

So I posted a not-very-subtle dig at Biggs on Halos Heaven (admittedly, I used words like “tool”). It was taken down shortly thereafter by the site’s moderator, who then sent me an email:

Look, Biggs is a friend of mine and I can't have just a drive by shooting of him on my site.

You want to go into greater detail and discuss in a longer, more thoughtful piece, I might consider it.

Sorry, but I am biased and I am going to stick up for my friends, if you are going to talk down Biggs you are going to have to do it better than than your three sentences posted on the site tonight.

I mentioned this to a buddy of mine. He said that the site moderator is a frequent guest on Biggs’ radio show. That explains it, I figured. Biggs helps legitimize the fanboy. Therefore the fanboy doesn’t want to lose his special privileges by biting the hand that feeds him. Fine; I won’t play in your sandbox anymore. I'll try to get my Halos ya-ya's from more credible sources.

STARRY NIGHTS

I was having dinner with my wife and son at an Italian place on Melrose. We’d gone there a million times when we were carefree renters living in Hancock Park adjacent, and thus were cognizant that it was not especially hospitable to kids. And unfortunately, Emmett was having an off night. It was just past 8, and he was melting down bigtime. And if there’s anything I’ve learned as a parent, it’s that you can only ply a kid with bread and butter for so long before the sirens go off.

As has become our custom, Carrie and I alternated speed scarfing our grub and attempting to calm our son. Which meant traipsing out of the restaurant through the entrance by the bar to stare at all the pretty colored bongs through the window of a nearby head ship. But Emmett wasn’t buying it. Just before our fourth or fifth fourth exit onto Melrose, a soon-to-be-tanked 50something woman made it quite clear we were not to cross her path again so long as we had a screaming toddler in our hands.

My first instinct was to tell her to fuck off, that we lived in a free country and all that. But then I put myself in her shoes. If I were waiting for some old coot with a fat wad of cash in his pockets to take me away from all this, I’d be pissed too. It must be difficult to describe the cosmic significance of your favorite fad diet to a potential sugar daddy when a kid’s wailing nearby. Kills the mood, I guess.

The morals of this story? On a very basic level, we learned the hard way that it may no longer be copasetic to take our fifteen-month-old to dinner; every night out with him has become a game of Russian roulette: Will he or won’t he go off? Perhaps we’ve stubbornly clung to the idea that we have the same nocturnal mobility we had when we were childless.

But mostly, the bitchy barfly’s bad vibes made me feel unwelcome in a place I’ve spent the majority of my adult life. This type of brazenly rude behavior couldn’t possibly happen in our warm and fuzzy cocoon over the hill, I thought.

Then it hit me: I’ve developed Valley Pride.

When we moved four months ago, we were sucked into to he gravitational pull of Ventura Boulevard, the transitional hub of all those who sojourn into the 818. It offers a modicum of bright lights, big city and yet… it’s only a ten-minute drive! You could live your life on Ventura and never lack for anything: Sushi galore, decent Mexican, frozen yogurt, Trader Joe’s. It’s paradise.

Truth be told, Ventura Boulevard is a bit of a mirage, an electric artery at the Valley’s southern border that serves as a vibrant way station when you need to ease into the life of super-wide streets, extra dollops of smog, and Taco Llama. The Boulevard is a lot like a Sex in the City episode – it’s life all dolled-up and romanticized, but hardly representative of reality. It’s the Valley’s skin under a plastic surgeon’s knife, but not its beating heart.

With time, though, an oddly protective comfort zone hits you like a feather. The view outside the driver’s side window now looks “gritty” where it once was merely skanky, and you feel roots sinking into the soil a bit. Suddenly, the drive to Ventura’s a drag, and yeah, why don’t we check out that place in the ‘hood.

We went for a Sunday dinner just three days after our Melrose nightmare. We thought we’d give Emmett one more crack at an evening out, at a old-fashioned family-style Italian place called San Remo. The façade is faded, the neighborhood dank and the parking lot a little dubious. But inside, the food was hearty, and the room spacious. The place was teeming with toddler types of all temperaments. An Emmett-safe zone. The kind of place we could revisit whenever we get our Italian jones.

In spite of the comfort, our boy couldn’t resist giving the lungs and tear ducts a workout, just as the chicken and eggplant parm were arriving. But instead of smirks, the wait staff showed infinite patience. And during one of my periodic strolls to the parking lot to bounce Emmett around a bit and give him some air, I ran into a party on their way out.

Were they annoyed? Well, a slow moving white haired fellow did turn back at me, then glared at Emmett, his bug eyes fairly popping out of his skull. Suddenly, he served up a crazy-ass grin, revealing teeth with a gap so wide you could drive a small family through it. Goddamn. It was Ernest Borgnine. In the middle of nowhere. Trying to cheer my son up. It was beautiful

The gregarious old star even managed to elicit a reaction out of Emmett. He screamed.

Note: Valley Boy will periodically return to its print-based roots, highlighting the best of Citybeat's Valley Boy columns. This piece was originally published in September, 2003.

Note: Valley Boy will periodically return to its print-based roots, highlighting the best of Citybeat's Valley Boy columns. This piece was originally published July 10, 2003. Enjoy.

KITSCH-FREE LIVING

At this very moment, I am standing at the center of the earth – Aisle Three at Albertson's in Van Nuys. If I weren't slouching toward middle age, I would jump up and down. Maybe even yell. Instead, I squint up at the florescent lights on the ceiling and lay a small smile on the Jesus of nutritionally challenged breakfast cereal. The pilgrimage has ended; the planets are aligned. I now know for certain I made the right decision in moving back to the Valley.

I just needed a sign, and here it is, smiling back at me with a pointed beak and a solitary-fanged grin. That's my main man on that shelf, my bad boy, next to the Lucky Charms and the Cookie Crisp: Count Chocula. Right here on Van Nuys Boulevard. The universe is kind and just.

The chocolatey cereal with spooky-fun marshmallows has always been a very good friend to me, even well into adulthood. But I leaned on it particularly heavily to get me through those bleary Panorama City-adjacent mornings of pre-adolescence, when I peered vacantly through the sliding glass door of the balcony outside our second-story apartment. I had a killer view of the carport roof, but it was strangely unsatisfying. Mostly, though, I stared outside with a heavy heart. Our collie, Gypsy, was now living on the cramped balcony where once she once had a backyard in which to roam. She paced, she howled, she slowly turned into canine veal. It was torture. I hated waking up. But when I turned my gaze to the Count and dipped my spoon into the murky brown milk and fished out a bat-shaped glob, everything was okay.

Alas, as I got older, my old friend vanished from supermarket shelves in metropolitan Los Angeles. I know this because I had been searching. I was always on the prowl for that one secret store that still had sense enough to stock the greatest cereal of all time. Fruitlessly.

And the Valley has it – not five minutes from my house. We are obesity. Hear us roar!

I grew up in the '70s, when the breakfast-cereal industry was a bit more forthright in its efforts to tweak the minds of America's youth. Cereal was a narcotic, pure and simple, designed to give us that lift-off buzz before that second period spelling test. And my mother – like most moms, probably – liked to keep me doped up so she could do important things, like tan, pop speed, and suck down diet chocolate pudding. Between my yummy sugar-intensive breakfast cereal and an hour of Hobo Kelly on the tube, I flew high each and every day. Walk the dog? Fuck that shit. Fill that bowl to the brim!

We had Sugar Pops, Super Sugar Smack, Kix. What were they thinking? Most likely, exactly what all you snarky, irony-loving adults are thinking – that General Mills, Kellogs, et al, were selling sugar-coated opiates that swam in milk. Yeah … and … what's your point? At least they were honest. Smack and Pops and Kix provided a nice little drug-like rush to the discerning six-year-old who hadn't quite figured out where the old man kept his stash of Panama Red.

Problem is, the shoe's now on the other foot. Now that I'm a responsible parent, I have to do the right thing – which is to keep the Count away from my son. Maybe I'm just a selfish junkie, and I don't want to share. Then again, I don't want my son to follow in my footsteps. I want Emmett to have a better life. Besides, it's bad for his teeth (all six of them). So I dutifully fill the bowl to the brim and keep it out of his sight.

In terms of the bigger picture, Count Chocula's presence speaks volumes about Valley supremacy. It says we are not embarrassed to indulge in the things we want. We aren't looking over our shoulder or consulting some Eastside-centric magazine for our lifestyle cues. If we're hungry, we eat. Who needs smoothies when you have doughnut shops?

The Valley is, thankfully, a kitsch-free zone. North of Ventura Boulevard, the word “trendy” does not exist. And it's a liberating feeling. After all, I've seen enough pretention in L.A. to last several lifetimes. (Hey, I spent six years in Silver Lake.)

Admittedly, it's been a difficult adjustment for me, but I've learned to drop my guard. It's okay to embrace Count Chocula purely on its merits, not because it's cool or kooky. I'd even venture to guess that if, say, a shop in Los Feliz got a windfall of Count Chocula, it would, with a wink, sell it for 10 clams a box, and whoever bought it would be tempted never to open it because, well, it's art, dude.

The hell with art. Let's eat.