Felled at the Kodak...
Hello Strangers,
I’m writing from Los Angeles, sick as a tubercular Shitszu, and the fog has yet to lift. Some foul, revenant chest cold or slowly enveloping flu has been creeping up on me since the Tallahassee duo gig of March 20, and on yesterday’s flight from Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, the stalker sent the rust-encrusted cutlery into my immune system. Ergghhh... My eyes are bloodshot, my hair hurts. Danielle (Collins, the writer-director of A Letter to My President) left earlier for her job as the coordinator for a movie transpo firm (a company that hires fleets of trucks and associated gear to film productions in the L.A. area), and I’m alone in her apartment with cinamon tea, women’s vitamins, packets of soy sauce, and little else. Her pad is very Manhattan single chick-like, with shoes, clothes, books, and in-progress art sketches strewn everywhere. Not much of a view from the living room, but only a block away is the Hollywood everyone on Earth familiar with the reconciliation scene in Borat recognizes. There are markets nearby, bursting with fresh produce, and pharmacies stuffed with over-the-counter remedies, but I’m too dazed to move. What a fucking drag! I need sun badly - my legs are of a listless chalky hue not found in nature, and I was looking forward to a lengthy poolside stretch. I am doomed, as ever.
Last night we stumbled over a kick-ass rooftop biker bar in a warren of warehouses near downtown. Genuinely friendly patrons and staff, an interesting mix of drinking music (mostly old 999 and Jesus and Mary Chain, with a healthy chunk of Lords of Altamont - one of the dudes from the latter ensemble was at the bar; they seem to be the fave group / mascots of the joint); the habituées weren’t so much Glory Stompers as Steve McQueen/vintage bikini pin-up/bike-ephemera fetishists, which most likely accounted for the air of hospitality, the liberal pouring of free Jim Beam shots, and the absence of crushed Pabst tins being shoved into eye sockets.
Dani met local agit-punk hopefuls First Kill at their rehearsal studio (a Triumph Trophy TR6 carburetor toss from the Thursday-only moto conclave), and I coughed conspiratoraily in a corner, re-charging my cell phone while the band worked out a version of SY’s "Youth Against Fascism." (They’re performing it on Sunday in Letter to My Prez.)
After, oblivion. I’m sick. My eyes hurt.
Ready to fucking, er, ROCK.
Best,
TS
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