The Circus is in Town!

Hooray for Hollywood!
That screwy ballyhooey Hollywood
Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic
With just a good looking pan
And any barmaid can be a star maid
If she dances with or without a fan

So the song goes... And after 10 years living in the HollyHood, I've come to accept it as true. It is truly the screwy ballyhooey Hollywood. When people ask me how a man who grew up in a town of 800 people (and twice as many livestock) can stand to live in the middle of Los Angeles, the answer that comes to mind is pretty simple. The Circus is always in town.



Sure, the air is foul and traffic is fouler. Yes, the Plastic People rule the world here, and the velvet rope is in effect everywhere you go. Yet, yet, yet - I'm never, ever bored. Every single day there is something interesting going on. Every band in the world tours through L.A. Every movie plays here. All the traveling art exhibits make a stop here. Every type of food known to man is served here. If I feel like Ethiopian tonight, there's five restaurants within 2 miles I could visit. Same for Peruvian, or Hungarian, or Laotian. Want to frolic in nature? The Mountains are that way, the Ocean is that way, the Desert up there. All close at hand. Seriously, did you know that Los Angeles County is roughly the size of Delaware, and that 1/3 of it is state and national parks?

But above it all, the thing that keeps me here continually fascinated is the circus. The kaleidoscope of crazies that wander the landscape in an effort to provide me free entertainment. Last night I was on Hollywood Boulevard a few minutes after midnight. Over the course of 10 minutes I saw a man dressed as Jesus (I don't think he was the Real Christ, he seemed a bit white for that), two lovely women who took a moment to seriously consider a man's offer of $50 to "smell both your drawers", three cop cars and five cops joining forces to bust two teenage jaywalkers, and the various club kids, homeless and vampires who haunt the streets of Hollywood after dark. All in all, unparalleled entertainment value for a slow Wednesday in May....

Peace,

Patrick

Classic American Country Music

I grew up in rural Michigan, where there was frequently music around the house - my father listened to country music, my mother listened to jazz and showtunes, my brother to rocknroll. Even though I treasured the times that my dad and I would watch Hee Haw together (Buck Owens IS God), as a kid with an older brother-hero complex, I gravitated to rocknroll and never looked back.

As a teenager, Heavy Metal was my music of choice, and to this day I still own every Judas Priest album through 1991 (on Vinyl baby!). But somewhere in the back of my head, country music always lurked, waiting for the moment when I would return. That time for me happened in the early 90s, when Warrant finally killed hair metal and Kurt Cobain staggered onstage. Heroin music took over rock, and it had little appeal to me. Around about the same time, Dwight Yoakam was cranking out album after album of kickass Buck Owens-inspired honkytonk, and my radar turned back toward NashVegas.

I spent the better portion of the 90s digging back through the history of country music, discovering all the classic tunes I'd missed out on the first time around. At some point, I stumbled across "Six Days on the Road", a Dave Dudley tune from the early 60s and I was entranced. I'm not a huge "trucker music" fan, but this song is as about as good structurally as a song gets, and Dudley's deep baritone is perfect for the tired trucked just wanting to get home to his baby. "Six Days" has settled in to my top-5 all time songs list, and I gotta share it with you.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Dave Dudley performs the Country Classic "Six Days on the Road". Put on yer boots, hotgirl, let's two-step...

Imagine This!

Something really cool I've been working on lately is a REAL reality television production called Imagine This! It's a television show with a conscience, international in scope, and the projects effect entire communities. The pilot episode took place in the Andes mountains of Peru, where the team visited a village in which the children walked each day 24 miles round trip to school and back. They retrofitted an ancient school bus into a modern eco-friendly transport that runs on vegetable oil, constructed a playground at the school, and carved a sculpture at the base of the pass that leads from the village down to the valley where the school is located.




This project is one of those dream scenarios where you have fun while working on something meaningful and life changing. If you have the urge to give something back to this community of humans of which we all are a part, drop by the website and check it out:

Imagine This!

Peace, Love and Doughnuts,

Patrick

This is NOT a Test.

...although it probably should be. This is NOT the revolution. Yet. This IS a place for me to post the random craziness that wanders through my life from time to time. Come along, won't you..?

If you want to know the derivation of the title "First Firefly", it comes from an 18th century Japanese poet, Issa. One of my cherished childhood memories is soft summer evenings when scores of fireflies would glisten across the backyard of my family home. There are no fireflies (or lightning bugs or Pyractomena angulata if you're a science snob) in Los Angeles, which is a definite drawback to the city of angels...

Patrick

The first firefly,
But he got away and I-
Air in my fingers...