Dying at Nighttime

It was March and winter wasn’t finished with us. It wouldn’t be warm at night for a solid three months and we knew it, but everyone was tired and excited and the sense of completion made us giddy enough to turn up the music, turn down the windows, and wrap our arms around each other for warmth in the back of Ryan’s dying Volvo. Hours earlier, the car wouldn’t start in the driveway, until some force of will that charges all indie film shoots smiled on the ignition. We were riding back into Boston with our fingers crossed.

We wrapped early on the set, and I took all the credit for the tight, efficient schedule. I knew it wouldn’t take three days to shoot a script that short, and I solved the mathematics of actors, lighting set ups, and an itchy director so it equaled four meals and a late night. Assistant directing requires the skill of surprise party timing, political handshakes, and a hidden ruthlessness. You have to choose when you’ll raise your voice to make silence, and what to utter to make it last.

For all the spoils of a well-crafted shoot day, I was content to know I’d sleep in my own bed that night. Film sets always seem so much longer than real time, displacing you that much further from sleep. At the most, I hoped for a fightless night with my recent re-boyfriend. At the least, I hoped for the heat in the house to be turned on. Both were just as basic as they were unlikely. With the music and the cold surging through our rickety time-machine, I forgot even my slim hopes and drew my arm tighter around my co-producer.

From under the river, in the mouth of the tunnel, the accident was instants old. I saw this arm, a normal arm, spilled hair, small glass, too much blood. The car was still rocking on its side. The exit of the rabbit hole, every fast emerging car coming up for air would risk what this car lost. We were a mile past it before my mind saw anything and I realized we had left the scene. The music played the whole ride home, the wind slid over our patches of numb exposed skin, turning with the wheels, all things automatic now without their magic. I didn’t know what happened, and we’d never know, and they would never know. It was over and if we hadn’t seen it then, it may as well have never had happened, like any fluttering action pinned down to a strip of film.

The house was cold, and stairs creaked their goodnights as we climbed to find our patiently waiting dreams. My co-producer changed back to my roommate and into her pajamas. The blankets returned my body heat back to me twofold, but underneath them I still felt exposed. In the hallway between our rooms, the drafts of cold air carried the ghosts we believed to occupy the old house. The light gusts from under doors and windowsills lingered the whispers of shouting arguments between the lovers that came and went. It trembled with our small fears of yet another break-in, after the one our ramshackle fortress had already sustained. This the same wind that bursts from the subways and tunnels, from under the Charles, dispersed the last snowflakes of the season around the city like shattered glass around twisted metal.

And when the draft went still for a moment, I realized I must still be awake. Not a ghost, not a victim, alive in my bed. In a deep breath I fill my lungs, and let it rush out into the night.

Tsing-Loh.... Sweet..Chariot?

"Her delivery style is generally ironic and spoken very quickly."

Oh, Kai.. Corey.. Terry.. Larry, dear Larry Mantle... Ira, Garrison, Steve! Some close friends and business associates might label me as unhealthily obsessed with the hosts and personalities of National Public Radio, 89.3 KPCC. It's true I listen to KPCC more often than not in my car- in the spirit-crushing traffic of Los Angeles, these programs (with the occasional voyage to 89.9's Morning Becomes Eclectic) keep me focused on the issues as they spin and collect in the radio waves around me.

But I don't just listen... I invest myself personally with the voices, creating faces and lives behind the names that bring me the news. Recently, when assuming the myspace identity of Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal, I did some basic research on his background. I immediately ceased and desisted this myspace joke, as I became slightly bummed at knowing anything remotely true about this person's life. It's far more fun to imagine!

All of my beloved NPR hosts, like so many puppets at my disposal. And the very bottom of that puppet pile is Tsing-Loh.

Sandra Tsing-Loh. You might not know her by name, but if you tune in casually to any NPR station, you may recognize her blip-reports like "The Loh Life" or "The Loh Down on Science". If you are a more dedicated listener, perhaps her inexplicable pronunciation and intonation haunt you long after the segment is completed. Sandra gives a snipet of something slightly more interesting than the Middle East or the stock market (sorry, Kai), but you realize when it's over you've haven't retained a notion of her speech, for the sake of her ABSOLUTELY INCOMPREHENSIBLE mode of speaking.

What does it take to get a radio journalist to that point, and still have a career? I have nightmares about seeing her speak in person, watching that mouth contort in ways I thought impossible to the human anatomy. I only wish my nightmares, and daymares, and trafficmares, stopped with her bizarre emphasis...

Tsing-Loh is a humorist, based in Los Angeles, who writes about her experiences living in the Valley. Her completely SoCal-centric novels handle her musings, her motherhood, and her middle-aged adventures in possibly the most boring neighborhoods of LA.

And yet, hearing her speak on a panel, I agreed with a lot of her ideas and politics, however pronounced. She's had an interesting career, and fashioned a market for herself...

I truly enjoy "musing" literature, like the work of Chuck Klosterman, and various other magazine journalist/novelists that seek merely to tell you what they think and make you chuckle....

I actually write a blog... uhm, this one... about my relatively young and somewhat unemployed perspective of living in Los Angeles... gulp.

Christ. What if I'm just one full-mouth gnashing mis-emphasized self-obsessed step away from Tsing-Loh?

Tales from the Cinespia Crypt

During the first summer I lived in Los Angeles, I heard of the night-time outdoor films that screen every Saturday night in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Despite the ultimate perfection and absolute enticement of that description, I never went. Two summers slipped by, and finally, after I could successfully spell "cemetery" without spell-check, I decided it was time to join in the fun. (Hint: all e's! I know it looks weird, but basically every other letter is an "e", till the end!)

Three weeks ago, I saw Vertigo in the graveyard, amid roughly 300 of Hollywood's most attractive living specimens. Some are professionals, bringing low chairs, candles, and real glasses for their cocktails. For newbies, we did okay, with enough blankets and substances to keep warm and enough snacks to call it dinner. All these small comforts are simply that when the sun goes down, and then it's just you, the screen, and that lone palm tree under the stars.

It seems utterly obvious to praise such a long standing summer tradition in Los Angeles, but it's so unique, it's worth a brief post. Where else do people happily wait in line for 2 hours, only to be let in the gates and wait another 2 hours for the sun to go all the way down, and contentedly and respectfully watch classic cinema? Where else can you, for 10 easy smackers, enjoy a whole night with friends, eating and drinking and smoking in a huge crowd?

This week at Harold & Maude, it sure did get me teary-eyed in the peaceful dead air, to hear so many people singing quietly along to Cat Stevens and celebrating the type of film that, in theory, most of us are here to create. And we were wiser: increasing our rations, bringing a makeshift table, and getting there early enough to get a good parking spot around the block. Next week, I'm bringing a tarp to offset the odd dampness, a few more friends and a few more bottles of wine.

And I swear I'll find more reasons like this to bear this ghost town.