Los Angeles 90042

Today was our first full day in our new community, which is not, according to most maps, quite Highland Park, nor is it Garvanza, which is two blocks away, across the street from Luther Burbank Middle School. It is simply Los Angeles, 90042.

We are quite comfortable in this tight-knit, working-class community (our neighbor, Martha, has already strolled across the lawn to introduce herself); Lela spent most of the day unloading boxes from our U-Haul truck, which is due back tomorrow with a gas refill that I fear will put us in severe arrears where our moving budget is concerned.

In the days ahead, I have three new California-centric writing grants to apply for: one is the California Arts Council’s Arts and Accessibility Technical Assiatance Program grant, which provides funding for travel to exhibit, showcase, or perform an original work within the state of California (with funding also provided for purchase of supplies, equipment, etc.); for that grant I am thinking of a reprise of my Kerouac show, The Ragged Promised Land, for Vesuvio Cafe in October of this year.

Next, the California Council for the Humanities has re-opened grantmaking for their California Story Funbd project, this year “for projects that address the meaning of democracy.” I’m still working on my pitch for them. As for the third grant … to be honest, at this late hour and as tired as I am after the long day and drive yesterday, I’ve completely forgotten what it is.

The point is that for years I have encountered writers who subsist on grants in order to complete and/or create projects and have always wondered how one gets a foot in the door. Now, thanks to relief grants from the Authors League Fund and the ASJA, I have grants to “build off of” for other grants and programs for professional writers. It’s time consuming but it’s a wholly creative (and about 40 percent business) enterprise.

We had dinner on our first night back in L.A. at Mando’s Family Restaurant on Figueroa Boulevard, two blocks from our new home; it’s a hole-in-the-wall dive with a menu of Mexican and American dishes, situated in a small strip mall with a thrift store, an excellent donut shop owned by a Vietnamese family, a check cashing and Western Union store, and an establishment that sells bottled water, baseball caps, and phone cards. The food at Mando’s was cheap — it’s a working-class neighboorhood, again, so their customers are pinching pennies — and damn good food, too. Lela had carnitas that was smoked and roasted and fork-tender. I opted for a traditional steak and eggs, also excellent, both meals for $6.99 apiece.

The living situation we’re in for the time being is unique: we will only be subsidizing half of the cost of utilities and no rent, which allows us to save money for the first time in five years so we can find something of our own; because of this unique offering, I will be in the position to repay, in full, any donations that may come our way to help defray the extra costs in our last-minute move from Las Vegas to L.A.

So far we are a little more than $200 in the hole and my monthly disability check does not arrive until May 3; the fuel refill for the truck tomorrow will bottom us out, leaving us with less than fifty bucks for the next ten days. If you can donate anything — a sawbuck, a twenty — let me know if you require repayment; it may take about three weeks but you will be reimbursed. Pay Pal is rodger_jacobs@yahoo.com and the U.S. Bank donation account set up for us in the wake of The New Homeless story for the Las Vegas Sun is still open.

Thank you.

POSTSCRIPT: As I glanced at my cell phone a few moments ago to check the time (12:58 AM) I realized that I also have to purchase for more air time; apparently, I’m down to five bucks; that’s a $15.00 minimum for air time and minutes, though I may switch over to a flat-rate plan of $60.oo per month with unlimited calls and texting (AT&T). So there you go … another expense rearing its head.

1959

I am not precisely sure what triggered it — a bout of melancholy perhaps or a sense of general unease as my fifty-second birthday has just passed by in a whoosh — but I felt compelled to look up certain cultural milestones for the year of my birth, 1959, in San Francisco, California (I share the same birthday, March 12, with Jack Kerouac, which has always thrilled me to no end).

In the year of my birth, 1959, to an unwed San Francisco mother of blue collar stock originally from Indiana, one significant literary work was  published that would become important in later years to my own development as a reader and writer: “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs, which I first explored in 1993 while separated from my pregnant wife and living at the Los Feliz Motel in Atwater Village. 

Another writer I have greatly admired, Raymond Chandler, passed away a few days past my date of birth, on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California, a seaside community north of San Diego where I would spend a lot of time with my grandparents (both now deceased) in the 1970s.

On October 2, 1959, seven months into my diaper soiling years, Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” debuted on the CBS television network — I’m fairly certain that thanks to reruns in syndication, I have viewed every episode of that classic series at least thrice, to the point that I can no longer stomach seeing a single episode even for the sake of nostalgia.

One month after the debut of Serling’s television classic, on November 18, 1959, MGM’s widescreen, multi-million dollar Technicolor production of Lew Wallace’s novel “Ben-Hur” debuted and would go on to win 11 Academy Awards — and I still by far prefer the original 1925 silent version starring Ramon Novarro, which pops up on Turner Classic Movies from time to time.

Novarro, the son of a prosperous Mexican dentist, moved to Los Angeles with his family as refugees from the Mexican Revolution of 1916. As a young actor in the early years of cinema, he was groomed as “The New Valentino”, but his career faded fast after 1930.

On October 30th, 1968, Ramon Novarro, a forgotten star of yesteryear, was savagely beaten in his North Hollywood home by two young gay hustlers. They had heard, erroneously, that he had thousands of dollars locked away somewhere in his home. They never found any money, and Ramon was discovered dead the next day by his servant. Novarro’s murder served as the influence for Charles Bukowski’s short story The Murder of Ramon Vasquez, perhaps the most disturbingly brilliant work of short fiction that I have ever read.

And that’s 1959 … how ill this taper burns, as the Bard of Avon put it so succinctly.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac