L.A. Woman

The other day I was talking to my dearest friend Doug... we talk every Sunday... We're Cancers; we like routine.

Anyway, we grew up together in San Diego and eventually both wound up in Northern California. I was in the cosmpolitan San Francisco/ East Bay bit; he in the surfer stoner enclave of Santa Cruz. For a couple of years we had what he refers to as our "dark period" when we didn't talk much, but otherwise we have always been waaaaaaaaay tight.

He was bummed out when I bailed on the Bay and went south to LA. This is an unforgiveable offense to most Northern Californians, and Doug has become a proud resident of Pacific Grove (in the Carmel/ Monterey area). However, he has forgiven me for coming to this land of sin, and now claims that I have acclaimated well to the area without losing my identity. Perhaps because I have no desire to be an actor... It's amazing how often I'll chat with people, only to have them say: "You're so nice. You're not from here, are you?"

Anyway, I've had many adventures since being here. And LA really allows one to indulge themselves... since I'm a music junkie, I've had plenty of Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll moments here in LA that just didn't happen in SF. (Oh, there were adventures there too, but not quite on the same scale.) So as I rambled on to Doug about some strange thing that happened in the back of a bar the other night, he said to me, "Your stories are reminding me of the Doors."

"Why is that?"

"They are just so... Sunset Strip. They sound very... you know... 'Come on come on come on come on come on now TOUCH me baby!" This made me laugh like crazy. It's true, maybe I'd been telling him about a particular musician offering to jack off in front of me (name withheld because I still know the guy) or being at someone's house and seeing Scarface style amounts of cocaine on almost every available surface or that one party I wound up at where there was an actual orgy going on in the poolhouse... but that's not exactly my life. I just always wind up in these situations. Thank God. Otherwise I'd be really bored.

And speaking of winding up somewhere, last night I got last minute free tix to see the Von Bondies at the Troubador in West Hollywood. They've been around for ages, but now everyone knows them as "the band that guy Jack White beat the crap out of is in." I went with a friend and I'd never seen the place so packed; they'd WAY oversold. The Von Bondies were actually good - I'd heard reports to the contrary, so I was pleasantly surprised. They were rockin' out and having fun with the crowd and they were nice to look at and people were gettin' down. They finished up, but of course had to come back for an encore. This included, during some sort of breakdown, Jason Stollmeister (the one who got smacked up) getting into a long semi-poetic rant: "Come on Los Angeles... do you have a heart? Does your heart feel pain, feel love; who understands what it's like to have a tired, battered heart?" Or something like that. He went on and on and drawled it all out in that "I'm-in-a-garage-band-from-Detroit" way and I started to get so annoyed that I leaned over to my friend and said, "This is probably why Jack White kicked his ass." And she goes, "It's very Jim Morrison of him. At least he's not talking about snakes and lizards."

Well, it wasn't the Sunset Strip, but the Lizard King has certainly been in the house.