RANDOM MOMENT OF LIFE, PART ONE

Bob Clay was the name of my grandfather on my biological dad’s side. I’d met him a few times in my infancy, but I never knew him, never assigned the role of “grandpa” to this man. All I knew about Bob Clay was that my mom hated him, that he drank a lot and chased her around his house whenever she visited. That was when she was still a teenager, and always in the presence of my father, still a teenager himself. Later, as I got older, the story became more sordid, as Mom described a scenario something closer to attempted rape. Not sure where Daddy-o was when all this was going down.

I learned only small bits about his life: He’d been married at least six or seven times and lived in the Pasadena area. No one really knew. No one stayed in touch with him. All anyone knew was that he was an editorial artist for the Los Angeles Times. Each Sunday, the dowdy old Home Magazine featured an illustration of a cat or dog, drawn Robert Clay, my grandfather by blood. When Home Magazine morphed into theTimes’ Sunday Magazine, the illustrations disappeared. What about Bob Clay? No one knew, least of all his son -- my father -- with whom I had only a sporadic relationship during my childhood and teen years.

All I knew were cracked black and white photos of dad, mom, Bob Clay and me, circa 1965. The strained poses told me that those were not happy family gatherings. Bob looked like my dad, but a bit older, pastier, and with red hair instead of blond. He had a look of bewildered sadness in his eyes.

When I started college, I landed a part-time job at the Times. It was a glamorous gig for a journalist wannabe: I got to spend Friday and Satuday nights till midnight gathering high school sports scores. I was one of four lucky college kids chosen to make sure the Hesperia Christian vs. Quartz Hill football score made the morning final.

At the time, I was resentful that my precious college weekends were spent inside the Velvet Coffin. Looking back with a distance of more than two decades, I can now appreciate the Times sports department at the cusp of the cable era (early ESPN blared on office’s TV screen, though it was hard to get fired up for Australian rules football matches), when the Coyote computers were new and the staff were grizzled, the news room full of characters that walked right out of The Front Page.

It was hardcore, man. The old-timers that worked nights were rugged-living sports junkies for whom the Redwood down the street was their home away from home. Guys like Harley “Ace” Tinkham, Dan Hafner, and agate king Avrum Dansky were legends who’d survived thousands of Friday night deadlines.

Avrum was the best. With his crew cut, horn rims and fu Manchu, he was a sports stat machine. He knew everything, and famously had no life other than his job and his love for high school hoops. The story about his one date -- he took her to a Dodger game, but left her their to run back to the office to get some sort of minutae into the paper before deadline -- had attained mythic status.

I wasn’t much of a sports geek, and the room could be pretty intimidating, so I was pretty much ignored except when Avrum yelled at me from across the office to berate me for some minor error in 2 point type I’d been responsible for on page 16.

During my second year on the job I got promoted to do occasional work on the “desk,” which included reception, compiling fish reports and making sure the horse racing results got published. This job sometimes involved visiting the editorial art department, which, I recall, was on a different floor. On one late night I was delivering some copy and I ran into an elderly man who shook like a frail tree fighting Santa Ana Winds. Those eyes. They were the eyes from those cracked black and whites. It was Bob Clay. Grandpa Bob Clay. Twenty years had passed since the photos were taken, and he looked like he’d aged at least twice that. I managed to ask his name. It was him. I knew it.

I walked away without revealing my identity. And I’ve never regretted it. I didn’t really miss what I didn’t know.My mom didn't like him and that was good enough for me. I was 19, and it was simpler, easier that way. I wasn’t getting along with my dad at the time, so why would it be any different with this guy.

Another two decades later, in 2004, my dad was talking to me about his old man. About how he wished he’d known him better. About how glad he was that he and I had reached a point where we could at lease communicate. On those rare occasions when he did see his father, the visits invariably ended in ugly, booze-fueled shouting.

During a down moment at my job, I decided to find out what had become of Bob Clay, pet illustrator, alcoholic, bad dad. I ran a Lexus/Nexis search. He’d died a few years earlier. I got to be the person to break the news to my father that his father had died.

KILLING MY SPACE

L.A. Observed linked to an Ad Age report that My Space is contemplating starting a print mag. Good on them. New print projects are few and far between these days. Sure it'll probably exist solely to push the online brand, but that's what everything's about now, so there's no point trying to grouse about it. But I'm going to offer some advice to the Fox honchos who are doling out the licensing agreement. Listen to me: You can do much, much better than to put your megabuck brand in the hands of Marvin Scott Jarrett, the owner/publisher of Nylon. Now, I'll confess that I don't know how competently Nylon is run (Any Nylon writers out there? Are you getting paid? Do you have to go to court to get it?), but I worked for him when he owned and operated (along with his wife) Raygun Publishing. I was hired to be the Editor of Bikini, a sort of edgy lad mag, back in 1998. The whole operation was one big clusterfuck. An example: One former employee told me a story about the day he was laid off because the magazine he edited for Jarrett was being folded. A few minutes later, Jarrett asked him if he wanted to check out his new Porsche. Writers weren't paid, we had to pander to his celebrity friends. It was just a horrible situation.

Of course, it got worse, when Jarrett dumped Raygun Publishing on a rube who knew nothing about the publishing business (but, of course, he thought he was a friggin genius), other than it seemed a good way to get hot chicks. This fellow drove it in the ground. But before that happened, I quit/was fired. Most of my writers had to sue to get paid. It was a great relief to be done with them, until I lost my COBRA health coverage because Raygun bounced a check to the carrier. But I digress. Let me just say that company was cursed.

The moral of all this being: Don't do it, Fox! Even a brand as sordid as My Space deserves better.

GREEN DAZE

I don't know why I still care but I had some strange emotional reaction when Shawn Green was traded by the Diamondbacks to the Mets. The one-time Dodgers' poster boy was dumped like moldy pastrami by the D-Backs in a salary-dumping waiver deal. Maybe it's because he was Jewish; maybe because he wasn't Gary Sheffield, but I loved to watch Shawnnie play with the Dodgers. He was like a gazelle. He made it all seem so effortless (perhaps because he didn't really care). I often wondered what was inside his head. Was he thinking about atonement? About the steroid cocktail he may or may not have been taking? About the hot babe sitting behind the first-base dugout.

By 2004, in spite of his eroding skills (body breaking down, perhaps phasing out the 'roids), the emotion he showed during the Dodgers' Western Division pennant clinching run showed me something about Green. That he cared about the Dodgers, that he cared about L.A. Much has been made about Paul LoDuca being the "heart and soul" of the team. I was always in the minority -- I always thought he was a punk-ass little biyatch (high-rolling gamblers and teenaged sluts in every National League team probably feel the same way right about now, as well as his soon-to-be ex-wife). Green, to me, symbolized all that was right about Dodger baseball in an era when Fox sucked the life out of the team. Particularly because they were able to dump Raul Mondesi to get him. In fact, I always wanted to market Shawn Green Dodger yarmulkes in Dodger blue, with the "LA" in front and Shawn's number just behind the skull. Not meant to be, I guess.

And now he's bounced to the Mets, less than two years after he was bouced by the Dodgers in another salary dump, a fading superstar playing out the string. Baseball is a cruel game. But there is a bright side. At least he didn't go the Yankees.

THE LAND OF THE SPINELESS

For better or worse (mostly worse, these days), I work as a freelancer -- journalism, TV, copywriting, whatever. I'm also trying to sell a book and stress about keeping the blog fresh. Here's how my hustle usually works: Story pitches go out, I wait interminable amounts of time, and finally get an answer. Or not. Here's a recent non-decision (this took six weeks to arrive, by the way) from a sizable publication (certain elements will remain concealed in order to keep my bridge from going up in flames):


Sorry for the delay in getting back to you about _____________ ."...It certainly sounds like you could extract a good ... piece ..., but it's hard to say whether it will work or not until you write it. If you do, I'd love to take a look. Format calls for about 700 words ... Hope that helps.

Basically, I'm welcome to write the piece for free and they'll "take a look." Is this bullshit, or am I just a whiny little diva who can't get with the program? I write on this blog for free, and that's about as far as I'm taking it at this point. I'm not just out of college. It's just so depressing; I'm sure countless writers would jump at the chance to write an on-spec piece for this particular publication. To me, though, it's pure exploitation. And what about the editors? Have they all been castrated and/or lobotomized? It seems as if no one will take responsibility for the possibility of failure anymore. Guess the bottom line and the constant dark cloud of layoffs seeps deeply into the editorial culture. Guess there's no point in going out on a limb trying to be great -- better just to play it just safe, hold onto the job and suck the blood of writers gullible or desperate enough to labor for free.

Pathetic.

THE LOS ANGELES READER OF YUCAIPA

August 1996 -- a time that will go down in infamy for those of us who worked at the Los Angeles Reader. That’s when we had the pleasure of getting our heads chopped off by the thoroughly unpleasant Phoenix carpetbaggers known as New Times. For those who don’t remember or weren’t yet in Los Angeles, the Reader was an alternative weekly that debuted in late 1978, at roughly the same time as the LA Weekly. Though always No. 2 in a two-paper market, the Reader was a beloved underdog (at least that’s what people always told me) and did nurture the talent of several well known folks, including Steve Erickson, Matt Groening and Richard Meltzer. When I worked at the Reader from 1993 to 1996, I had the pleasure of working with and getting to know amazing writers like Mick Farren, Jerry Stahl, Samantha Dunn, Danny Weizmann and Luis Alfaro.

Since, in America, we like to celebrate anniversaries, even those of the dubious variety, Reader owner and publisher James Vowell decided to throw a party to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Reader’s death. A fine idea, except for the fact that James and his wife Codette got the hell outta Dodge a few years after the paper’s demise, and moved way deep into the Inland Empire. That’s about a 100-mile trip for many of us, and the distance may have kept the attendance down. But Farren, Natalie Nichols (click on her name to read her account of this blessed event), Steve Appleford and I piled into my Volvo wagon and made an adventure of it. We figured the last Reader generation needed to represent. If you want to see more and better photos (shot by Eric Mankin), go to EditingCompany.com.

The drive out to Yucaipa was, of course, interminable, but thanks to a series of strategically placed signs with the old Reader logo to guide us to the Vowell abode, we found it without hassle. Once there, we enjoyed fine food, adult beverages and good company. Distinguished guests included Bruce Bebb, Kirk Silsbee, Eric Mankin, Teresa Owen, Judy Elliott and Greg Critser. Natalie and I were the youngest people there.

The Reader seems like a lifetime ago to me, but when I opened copies of the many issues James displayed inside his expansive pad, I could almost transform to a particular week’s deadline – whose copy was good, who sucked. But -- and I was reminded of this on the drive over -- I can’t say I’ve ever worked with a group of people I loved and respected more (and still do). Many have continued to fight the good fight, landing at Citybeat -– tear down the walls my righteous brothers and sisters. I’m rooting for y’all.

With a hypnotic Yucaipa sky to groove to into the evening, it was an occasion for a lot of great memories. And some not so great -- if you want to see Natalie’s head explode, mention Luis Alfaro and Los Lobos in the same sentence. Steve, meanwhile, pulled a cover with mid-90s Valley killer Glen Rogers, written by Kevin Uhrich. The cover line was “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.” Turns out his hangout of choice was a bar on Vanowen and Hazeltine, a stones’ throw from where I live now. Good times.

To those who didn’t make it – I miss you. Maybe I’ll still throw something together here in Valley Glen when I get my shit together.

Captions (from top): Steve Appleford and Natalie Nichols; Sydney Weisman and James Vowell; Mick Farren; Kirk Silsbee

LICK MY BASEBALL BAT

Did the L.A. Times successfully straddle the line between clever and stupid with this here headline about the Dodgers' winning streak amping up to 11? Granted, This Is Spinal Tap is a 23-year-old film but to the geezers in the Times' sports dept., I'm sure it's still the measuring stick of hip. So, thanks, Randy Harvey, for juicing up Page One a bit. Now if only you could be rid of Grandpa Bill Dwyre once and for all. (Guess those golden parachutes can be a bitch, eh Randy?). The Sports Editor Emeritus's columns are ham-fisted and banal, utilizing the same editorial inanity once perfected by Bob Oates. In other words, he reads like he's gone the Leonard Tose route.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

Like most of us, my son, Emmett, 4, is a creature of habit. His day usually winds down with a bath, some dinner, and 45 minutes of PBS Sprout, sort of a dumping ground network for PBS Kids programming, dominated by inoffensive shows like Thomas the Tank Engine, Sagwa, and the Berenstain Bears. These shows, chopped into 15-minute segments, are often educational and thankfully are bereft of superheroes or aggressive plots.

Sprout calls their nighttime programming The Good Night Show, and since we’d been tuning in, it had been hosted by Melanie (Melanie Martinez), who sat, wide-eyed, in a oversized chair next to a star-shaped pillow, occasionally getting off of her tush for arts and crafts demonstrations. Martinez wasn’t a particularly good actress – she read her lines like someone who was reading lines – but then again, I’m not really the demographic the network’s going for. Emmett, though, was clearly smitten, asking for Melanie by name when it was time to tune to The Good Night Show.

Then, one day, she simply disappeared, vanishing into the cable TV abyss. Emmett was bitterly disappointed. Actually, he freaked out for a few days when she wasn't on. I didn’t know what happened until I did some research – at that point I learned that she had been fired, for appearing -- seven years ago -- in videos spoofing teen abstinence PSAs. One originally appeared on a now-defunct site called Technical Virgin in which she espoused the virtues of anal sex as a means of chastity-retention. The clip was mildly amusing, marginally in bad taste. Martinez claims she told the network about the spoofs upon her hiring. When she learned that recently resurfaced on You Tube she notified her employer, who summarily fired her on July 20. Here's Sprout's official spin. They haven't totally wiped her out, though. She's still the voice of the sproutletsgrow site menu.

As a parent, I’m sad for Melanie and sad for Emmett. Sprout’s the big loser in all of this, their puritan paranoia putting the kibbosh of freedom of expression. Besides, it’s not as if she’s done porn. They were just silly spoofs. In fact, even PBS ombudsman Michael Getler thought the Martinez firing was a bad idea. He wrote: "It struck me as ironic that at the very time PBS is fighting against new Federal Communications Commission rulings about indecency that the network argues will inhibit documentary filmmakers and freedom of speech, it delivers a subjective punishment to a popular performer for something done seven years ago that was clearly a spoof." Parents online seem to be rallying 'round Melanie. Among the arguments is that Sprout’s operating a double standard – Melanie goes, but what about George "Seven words you can't say on television" Carlin, a narrator on many episodes of Thomas, or Alec Baldwin, who does voice over for the network (anyone see Miami Blues lately? A great flick, but total degenerate filmmaking – RIP Ted Demme).

And what will become of sweet Melanie? I’m guessing Larry Flynt’s gonna offer to throw some dough her way. Just say no, darling. There's got to something better out there.

BUMMER IN THE SUMMER

When I was maybe five years old, I began to take a serious interest in music. Dad #2 gave me a four-track player with two tapes: the “Easy Rider” soundtrack and the “Best of Cream.” From that point I became hyper-aware of the music around me, from the sounds of KRLA and KHJ that blasted through the dash of our gold 1966 Chevy Impala to the records that spun on our giant RCA console record player. I saved allowance money and bought my first single, “Come and Get It” by Badfinger, and spent hours sifting through mom and dad #2’s collection – jazz from Chico Hamilton and Gabor Szabo, lots from the Crosby Stills Nash and Young family, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison. There was also a record by a group called Love. A peculiar name, I thought. Trippy typography. And black people and white people together on the cover. I was very young, and it was barely the ‘70s, so this boggled my little mind a bit.

I often thought about that Love album (their debut, with “My Little Red Book” on it) and during my teenage years, when the “Paisley Underground” was in full bloom here in Los Angeles, I took the opportunity to look backward at some musical source material, which prompted a closer look at Love, starting with a Rhino Records compilation, eventually making my way to the epic “Forever Changes.”

It wasn’t until I was an adult and writing about music became something of a vocation was I really able to digest Arthur Lee’s talent and put his band’s work in its proper context.

More than any other band of its era, perhaps more than any other band ever, other than perhaps the Beach Boys and X, Love is the sound of Los Angeles. Listening to the band’s catalog is like a walk down Sunset, starting in the Palisades and crossing the town easterly, passing West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park, before disembarking at Figueroa. Love’s music is expansive and cinematic, melancholy and defiant, like the city itself. You hear different neighborhoods, moods, sunny and gray skies all at once.

I never met Arthur, though by many accounts he was a difficult, troubled guy who caught more than his share of bad breaks. He died Thursday at age 61, losing a battle with leukemia. Let us never forget, though, that with his music he left us with significant historical documents of Los Angeles in full bloom. RIP, brother.

FEELIN' JEW!

So Mel Gibson hates Jews. Surprise, surprise. As a member of the tribe, I believe his punishment should be severe. Mel deserves to be locked in a room with AM 570 Superjew Vic "the Brick" Jacobs until he repents.