« Archives in July, 2003

Cured!

July 11, 2003 / posted in Various Frailties / No Comments

I’m officially cured; praise be, my legs are whole again!
Well, not that whole. I’m supposed to start out by running a quarter mile, then increase that slowly. A quarter mile — that’s barely long enough to bother running! The doc’s mostly worried that I still have some soreness in the bones right above my ankles.
My foot pain has almost totally disappeared, thanks to my orthotics:
two orthotics next to each other, white plastic
Look just like a pair o’lungs, don’t they?
From the bottom you can see how they’re molded to my feet:
the bottom undulations of my orthotics
That shaping lets them support my foot where it needs it most, at the arch. They’re also a bit bucket-shaped:
the concave inner surface of the orthotics
They cup my heel and the area above my arch, preventing my heel from pronating along with my arch. Let me tell you, these things are like a continuous foot massage! I go to bed each night wishing I could wear my shoes longer. I’m a fan and a convert.
What I’m not a fan of is how long I had to wait to see the doctor to get them. My podiatrist, Dr. Kwong, was almost an hour late for our appointment; fortunately I was coming there from physical therapy, so we were able to devise another 45 minutes of exercise and I was spared the waiting room. I was not so fortunate for my follow-up appointment for my shin splints with Dr. Glousman. He was running more than two hours behind, and, as much as I do have fun games installed on my cell phone, I was reduced to reading Jet magazine in his waiting room (not that there’s anything wrong with Jet, just, even were I black, the demographic would still be about 30 years older than me).
I guess the lesson I learned from this is to always call ahead before you leave for a doctor’s appointment to make sure your doc is running on schedule (although I wonder if they would’ve admitted how far behind he was).
But how do you get two whole hours behind and not take 15 minutes to consider what you should do about the rest of your appointments that day? I would assume that the scheduling person would say something once you got kinda out of control, say at 45 minutes behind. Then it would be time to start trying to reschedule some appointments so that you could make others. I know I saw other people walking out because Glousman was so late, and I know that I would certainly think twice before seeing him in the future — I think I got good care, I just don’t know what standard of care would be worth two hours of my life, given that it was a followup appointment for a non-serious problem that, heck, I could feel had been cured.
So, in sum:

  • I love the physical therapists at Kerlan-Jobe
  • I love Dr. Fleckner, their orthotics guy, because he makes my feets feel gooood
  • I’m not so much a fan of their regular docs, because you can sure have to wait to see them. But when you do see them, they know what they’re doing and take good care of you















Picking Up My Girlfriend

July 10, 2003 / posted in Dreams / 1 Comment

It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon and I’m walking through a public park. On one side of me is a golf course; on both sides, the grass is green in that way it only gets on the east coast when it’s summer and the light is diffracted by the humidity. But it’s not hot and humid, it’s pleasant. I’m walking along a two-lane paved road passing through the park, I’m wearing my comfy hiking boots and I’m happily tooling down one hill and up the next, for it is a rather hilly park. I’m waiting for my parents to come along and pick me up.
Soon they drive by, in the maroon ’92 Ford Taurus that was once theirs and is now mine. I get in the back seat, on the passenger’s side; the back seat on the driver’s side is filled with boxes. I ask them if they’ve picked up my girlfriend (my current one); they say they did, they took her for a while, but now it’s my turn to ride. I say, no way, let’s get my girlfriend, we can fit her in the center seat in the back. She shouldn’t have to walk!
So we turn around and drive back to get my girlfriend. On the way there, my father comments, “It’s lovely out here, you’d have a lovely place if you just cleaned up out front!” I flash on the place I live, seeing a tangle of gray brush through a sunny window looking out from the entrance foyer. The house I rent is a simple place from the ’70s, somewhere in West Virginia.
About a one minute drive behind me, there’s my girlfriend, walking up a big, grassy hill. We meet her at the top, she’s wearing a black turtleneck and a plaid skirt, with brown boots. She looks lovely! I ask her, do you want to squeeze yourself in the middle, or should we walk to my parents’ place together, it’ll only take a couple hours, but it’s only a five minute drive there.
As I begin to wake up from the dream, I realize it would’ve been most efficient if my parents took one of us at a time, since it only was a five minute drive.















Restaurants That Aren’t Worth It: Spago

July 9, 2003 / posted in Food / 3 Comments

In a review in today’s LA Times, local food maven-in-making Irene Virbila waxes ecstatic over the food at Spago.
Well, I’ve been there twice, both visits about a year apart, and I disagree. In fact, Spago’s on my list of restaurants that Just Aren’t Worth It.
I won’t disagree that the food at Spago is quite good. I will disagree that the restaurant is in any kind of rare air at all. I had two meals there that were well put-together, a little too rich, a little too busy flavor-wise, and reminiscent of what you get pretty much every other place that you might qualify as Great Food In LA. I no longer recall the exact menus (they weren’t worth recalling, frankly), but no dish struck me as something I wouldn’t get elsewhere, at half the price.
Perhaps that’s not owner Wolfgang Puck’s fault; it’s true that he was one of the inventors of what we consider contemporary Californian cuisine, with diverse influences from Asia, south of the border and traditional European cooking. Much of what’s come since is, at the very least, following in his footsteps, if not outright imitation. So, that I found food at the original to be similar to that I might get elsewhere should not come as a surprise.
Nor, necessarily, should I be bothered by eating the classic fare; instead I should respect the invention and the roots. Much like reading Dashiell Hammett, whose detective stories are full of cliched plots and lines, but who established those cliches, who invented them before they were common, I should appreciate Puck’s food for establishing the California cuisine cliche.
But I don’t. See, sixty years later, Hammett is still the master of what he wrote. Read The Maltese Falcon and it’s light-years beyond what a Sue Grafton or Carl Hiassen can do. But go to Spago, or Chinois, and eat the same quality of food — or even less — than you can get at my favorite places, like Joe’s or 2117 or something like that. In many ways the execution is even below the level of those cheaper places, because the fixation on a heavier feel and the use of too many flavors (which even Virbila admits to) actually detracts from the dish.
Perhaps this is a personal stylistic dig I have against Puck in general, because it’s fair to say I’ve never been impressed by any of his restaurants. I thought Chinois was okay — again, not original. The two times I’ve been to his Cafe on Sunset, I had meals that were absolutely unacceptable — too much emphasis on gaining the desired flavor, none on any other facets of the execution, including doneness and texture. The low point of my experiences was a “roast” chicken at the Cafe, the kind of roast chicken that you can get in every restaurant in LA. But this wasn’t roasted, it was boiled, coated with spices, and shoved under a hot broiler for about 5 minutes. Oh, it was moist, all right, but it was rubbery. I bet if I’d dropped it, it would’ve bounced. The skin, featuring the spices, was good, but anything that wasn’t directly touching the spices was bland enough to feed to a rest home. But the aroma and look were perfect!
I digress, but I think my bitterness reveals a fundamental dissatisfaction with every Puck-related dining experience I’ve had (well, with the exception of his frozen pizzas; those are pretty good).
I think it was about a year and a half ago that I last went to Spago. I suppose it’s possible that they polished their food in that time. But I’d be surprised, because everything seemed like exactly what it was supposed to be. Just I didn’t like what it was supposed to be. Oh, except for the desserts. I’ve got to give props to the pastry chef, those were the highlights.
So, Spago. I don’t know why it’s one of LA’s great restaurants. It seems like a power place to take power people to prove you Eat At Spago. It seems like a place that’s famous for having been there forever. Come to think of it, it seems like a place that’s perfect for Beverly Hills. And it is the people with money who make taste here in LA, and Beverly Hills is where the people with money are.
So maybe I give Wolfie too little credit. Maybe he does know just how to make a restaurant that can succeed over a period of years. Know your market, sell to your market — it’s great advice and often overlooked. Well done!















These Arches Ain’t Golden

July 8, 2003 / posted in Various Frailties / No Comments

Up until recently, I was getting physical therapy for shin splints and for plantar fasciitis. The treatments went well, the shin splints are almost gone and the pain from the plantar fasciitis is greatly reduced. I’m almost ready to start running 2-4 miles/day again!
I’ve got my physical therapy at Kerlan-Jobe in Westchester, near LAX. They have a competent and knowledgable (if somewhat overworked) staff, and great bedside manner.
The facility is pretty dee-luxe, what with all the fancy equipment:
various nautilus-type machines
And even a pool! Some days I wish i could be in that pool. But the only people who get to be there are so badly injured they need the support of water to be able to move.
I could use a day at a warm-looking pool like this
I don’t get to use much of that, though, mostly they set me down on a treatment table and commit various unspeakable acts upon my person:
torture table
Tools of my mistreatment include:
a fiendish length of knotted ropea sinister metal tubewedges to step on
Yes, with these fiendish implements, they make me carry out all sorts of sinister shiftings, stirrings and agitations, all with the stated goal of fixing my infirmities. Sometimes I suspect that some exercises are just designed to amuse the therapists — although, in all honesty, this round of physical therapy is much easier than what I had to go through for my badly sprained ankle last year. Most of these evolutions are designed to increase the flexibility of my lower legs. It’s a sad story, really, because running actually makes you less flexible, so I’m pretty tight from the thigh down. If ya know what I mean.
I use that rope to try to pull my leg towards me and stretch my hamstring. Frankly, with as small a stretch as I get, I can hardly believe that I can walk:
pull baby pull stretch that hamstring out
Much more fun is rolling the metal tube with my foot. It’s like a little foot massage! Breaks up the scarring and swelling in my arch.
roll the metal tube back and forth and back and forth and back and forth
Of course, my favorite part is the real massage:
a pretty girl rubs my foot
Then I get to run on this extra-deluxe treadmill. Apparently, it cost $100,000! And it feels like it too — as good as the springiest, softest track I’ve ever been on.
Big 'ol fancy treadmill
The treadmill
rubber feels good on my feet, not on my boy thingy
Look how comfy that track looks!
so many buttons!
And all these controls!
But after the run comes the ice!
Cold on my foot and shins
Some people love ice, some people hate it. I hate it for the first couple of minutes, then I tolerate it ’cause it makes me feel better — but I don’t get the soothing feeling that others get. It could be worse, though, last time I got physical therapy I had “The Bucket”
a trash can filled with ice
A trash can filled with ice — ouchie!
Well, supposedly I’m cured, and I’ll have the appointment to prove that to the doc tomorrow. Updates as events warrant.















Ghost World

July 8, 2003 / posted in Dreams / No Comments

So, as prologue, the house I grew up in was haunted (probably more on that later). One of the loci of supernormal behavior was a large room on the third floor, and probably the attic that connected to that room.
In this dream, I was living in this house with my current roommates. I had the whole third floor (a bedroom, the big haunted room, and a bathroom) to myself. We were planning to move out to a new, smaller, ranch-style house, with just one shower that we used to wash cans of vegetable soup down the drain. The smaller house had gray and white wooden walls and yellow tile in the bathroom; the ceilings were low and the house was dark, and the dirty beige carpet just made it more so. Both houses were owned by the same landlord, our old landlord, a nice guy named Bob Schock, and the small house was much cheaper. Hey, it’s a dream, don’t knock it.
I went back to take a shower and brought a friend with me. As we climbed the stairs to my floor, my friend saw a little girl at the top of the stairs. I told her not to, but she followed the girl. The girl grabbed her hand and pulled her through the large room and into the attic. A door had appeared in the back of the attic leading to a supernatural world. I followed her in, running after the two of them. As I ran into the attic, the world changed from the beige carpet, beige paint, sunny openness of my house to a wood-paneled complex of mostly-open rooms; mahogany railings and cheap pine walls lay next to each other, with doors and windows in the walls promising a variety of services offered to the undead. The effect was much like a Las Vegas casino, with a warren of walkways inside a building, and faux buildings along the walls.
Turning a corner, I found my friend seated, waiting in line at a processing center to be permanently trapped in this ghost world. I grabbed her hand and we ran for the door out. Down the stairs we went and out of the house to get away.
But when we got outside I realized we were still trapped in the ghost world. While it apparently wasn’t surprising that the house stood alone on the Scottish moors, the fact that there was a storm rolling in showed that we were not free. We linked up with some other Sunday hikers and decided to walk out of the moors in the rain.
And then I woke up. It was 9:30am. Aren’t you supposed to have these dreams at 3am so you can wake up and be scared and alone? Sunlight streaming through the windows don’t do it for the frightening part.















Synes-what-now?

July 7, 2003 / posted in Various Frailties / 1 Comment

When I was but a wee bairn, I loved to read books because of the colors on the pages. Not the pictures, but the words. Different words had different pastel colors, and the pages were filled with disorganized rainbows.
I remember mentioning this in fourth grade to some friends, and they looked at me like I was crazy. Which I guess I was, since I apparently suffered from synesthesia, a condition in which people have difficulty distinguishing between various sensory inputs. Poor little me saw words as colors. But I never got confused — although I was sometimes distracted; words and colors were distinct in my head.
Anyway, convinced that what I saw was wrong, and being a geeky boy who wanted to fit in, I started to ignore the colors. They went away — whether because of and now the pages of books are just one color.
A few years ago I found out a co-worker was familiar with the phenomenon, and had a good friend who still was synesthetic. That’s when I learned I wasn’t some kind of freak, and started to really miss the colors.
I think being synesthetic at a young age affected how I read. While colors are gone, I still see pages as filled with different densities of letters — something that’s similar, but not identical, to the weight of letters in areas of that page. I don’t start at the beginning of a sentence; instead, my eye falls to a comfortable, soft place in a paragraph, maybe next to a corner, and I move backwards from there, then forwards the rest of the way, sometimes skipping if there’s a line in the text that draws my eye. It sounds pretty awful, but I actually read very quickly and with excellent comprehension.
I see things that other people don’t. But I’m not crazy! Not crazy at all!















The Arsenal

July 2, 2003 / posted in Food / 2 Comments

In West LA, at the corner of Pico and Bundy, is this scary-looking place called the Arsenal. It’s been around for, well, forever, from what I hear. At the beginning of the year, somebody new bought it and tried to refresh it, keeping it a bit of a dive but making it maybe a little less frightening.
From the outside it looks the same   like someplace you might get your ass kicked in. Inside, though, it’s welcoming red leather booths, dim lighting, hip music and cute waitresses. The drinks are old skool, stuff like Pink Squirrels and Stingers. Their great lemon drop was made with real lemon (and plenty of simple syrup). The food is all red meat, all the time (okay, they had a fish special, but who would order that?). I had a great burger and my girlfriend had a yummy Cobb salad and meatballs (not in the salad, in another course).
All in all, it was a tasty meal at a place you’d love to call yourself a regular at. Definitely be heading back there soon!















Darrel Frickin Issa And The Granolas

July 1, 2003 / posted in Politics / No Comments

There’s this recall thing going on in California. Some Republicans — in particular, a right-wing state legislator named Darrell Issa — want to recall our Democratic governor, Gray Davis. They have to get enough signatures on a petition to get the recall on the ballot, and the state Republican machine is in full signature-gathering mode. Once the recall is on the ballot (and it will probably get there), Davis basically has to run for office again — against as many other candidates as can qualify. No party primaries or anything.
So it’s very favorable to the Republicans. First of all, it would normally be several years before they had another shot at the statehouse. Second, there are maybe one or two likely GOP candidates (Issa and Schwarzenegger), principally because the Republicans have been so bad at getting candidates elected at the statewide level. The Democrats, however, have maybe as many as six reasonable candidates. How does a Cruz Bustamante, Antonio Villaraigosa or Jane Harman justify not running, especially against a weak candidate like Davis (his approval ratings are well under 30%). Republicans have had a hard time getting elected against Davis specifically because their core voters are less numerous than Democratic core voters — and, in polarized elections with weak candidates (like Davis and Simon last year), it’s all about the core voters. But, if three Democratic candidates split the vote against one Republican, the GOP will take the statehouse.
Now, normally you wouldn’t think Whole Foods is the place to get signatures on a ballot that would put a Republican in Sacramento. But some guy got the idea that they would stand out front and try to get people’s names on the petition. And, somehow, there were people signing! And not that many berating the guy with the petition.
And that’s what’s wrong with Democrats. If this had been a Democratic petitioner in front of a Wal-Mart, he would’ve been constantly harassed, everybody who was thinking of signing would have been surrounded by three advocates for the second amendment, there would’ve been no signatures gathered that day, no boy.
So should Democrats be aggressive and rude and disrespectful like Republicans? I’d rather not, I admit. But, times like these — when we might have a Republican in Sacramento because your basic Democrat on the street isn’t smart enough to know a bad deal when he or she sees one.
I have no idea how this’ll turn out. What is it the Chinese say, live in interesting times?















Newer Posts »