socal livin' snippets

i felt my first real earthquake last week here in socal. it was a 4.6 shaker centered out of chatsworth. of all irony, my earthquake policy on our condo had just run out a couple days beforehand. while it messed with my head a little (i was doing some late evening work when it hit) and woke jane up out of bed, nothing seemed to be much affected. after a few days of mulling it over, i'm thinking of cancelling the policy on the new place :-) tectonic plates, is that all you got baby?!

this shot is from the window looking out the back of our new place. you'd think we were moving to backwoods alabama, eh? instead, this is lovely santa monica. 2 houses down is a beautiful new 2 unit condo with modern stylings and the like. right behind us? sanford and sons. on the left of the new casa? pit bull in the all-dirt backyard with an F150. choloville, amigo. all of this for the price of stifling mortgage that would make my midwestern family blush, if not faint. i'm not one to keep up with the joneses, but i don't necessarily want to raise kids in front of a methlab either. if anyone knows the patron saint of gentrification, let me know and i'll offer up an old testament style burnt sacrifice in hopes of neighbor displacement.

on a lighter note, jane and i went to see reggae night VI at the bowl this past sunday. wailing souls were playing along with sly and robbie as well as burning spear. wailing souls were boring and burning spear was unimpressive. sly and robbie didn't disappoint, especially their numbers with cherine anderson (taxi gang). where the hell was horace andy though?

ah well, the event of the evening were the colorful characters sitting in front of us. the lady in yellow highlighted an, uh, interesting new trend: bluetooth headset as fashion piece. while she didn't get a call during the show (how could you with the noise and bad reception?) the little red motorola headset was in her ear the whole time. i looked around the bowl and sure enough, saw a handful of other people doing the same. am i missing something here? bluetooth headset = fannypack. even if it matches your shirt and finger nail polish.