No/So Cal

Middle age Chinese man wearing a shirt that says "GAYMAN" has no idea what it means, wearing it with pride. There is really no difference between what kind of man you are, as long as you can wear it out loud.

Asian clinic with signs that translate into six languages, counters splits into six countries and a concerto of asian sounds like some weirdly incoherent and harmonious percussion. Black woman walks in feels pretty at home; she walks with her overweight thighs among boney Vietnamese girls. I saw my America.

Ordering Chinese food in cantonese is a privilege. ABC kids writing Chinese vocabulary on practice sheets. It is entirely differently from scribbling the same thing on the greasy table of Denny's. That kid was eating luncheon meat with instant noodle, drinking hong kong style milk tea.

Reading a novel about LA on my way back, a few thousand feet above the dusty yellow fog of Oakland. Suddenly really sick of Hollywood, suddenly really sick of the beaches, suddenly really sick of wealth...suddenly feel totally trapped. A.M. Homes' This book will save your life is depressing. It doesn't read like A.M. Homes' other novel until the point where the son wants to rape the father, until the perfect son turns gay. Rich man becomes superhero, bought a pink beetle for a desperate housewife on rehab, bought a black one for his gay son. Rich middle age white man samaritan, I am just about to say Jesus was a jew. Not a good read; it depressed me.

Oakland...SF...bay area. they have Chinese ads on the bus, next to the Spanish. They have Chinese who lives like they have never leave home. Kids speak better Chinese up there. It is vast, brown and dusty, i miss the sky of LA, dream-like, almost techni-color. One time I drove through Paramount studio's gate, i felt L.A. I felt its pulse beating under the cracked tar surface of the roads, and there was a fake sky right under the real sky. There was no difference, the fake one looks even prettier. You never know when you are going to run into a set; you never know when you are going to run into your life.

So there is a Transformer robot on Broxton and Le Conte. The trucks that took it here disappeared, I think they were the robots themselves. you never know.