My Encounter with Gerald R. Ford.

In 1999, I worked on a History Channel documentary called, “Failed Assassinations”. The stories involved those US Presidents who did not die from the assassin’s bullet. Gerald R. Ford was one of those we profiled.

The producer, Sean P. Geary, asked me if we might request Mr. Ford for an interview. I wrote a letter to Ford’s office in Palm Springs and to my utter surprise, the President’s assistant responded and said he would indeed like to be part of our project. I also requested and got a “yes” from Dick Cheney for an interview concerning the failed attempt by John Hinckley to kill Ronald Reagan, but we did not have it in the budget to interview Mr. Cheney.

Me, Sean and a production assistant named Gabe Vandervoort drove out to the desert and met Ford at the Palm Springs Marriott. While we were waiting in the room, the Secret Service arrived and the ex-president entered the dark room.

It was strange to sit so close to him as he described his historic times with Brezhnev and Nixon. He was also on the Warren Commission, that body which investigated the murder of President Kennedy, and Ford again confirmed that he felt Oswald was the lone assassin. Ford had been twice marked for death by two crazed women in the Fall of 1975: Sara Jane Moore and Squeeky Lynette Fromme. He survived both attempts to kill him, and if I remember correctly, he was not wounded in either incident.

The President was 89 at the time of his interview. He still looked football player fit, and his twangy Michigan accent was both fatherly and warm. He asked me if I would get him a glass of water. At the end of the interview, we posed with him.

Ford was a good natured man, a hard worker, and dare I say the type of Republican who once roamed the halls of Congress without an ideological agenda. He was pragmatic, and put his country before himself. He did his duty with a joyous but untheatrical normality. The US was lucky to have him in that dark period after Vietnam and Watergate.

Christmas Party at the Warner’s.

Every year, our neighbors throw a Christmas party in their home here in Van Nuys.

On a street (and in a city) where people live for 30 years without knowing the names of their neighbors, the Warners have stubbornly brought people together under a heterogeneous umbrella of camaraderie and caring. One can meet a gay couple, a gorgeous young woman, unemployed actor , a staunchly conservative millionaire …and still enjoy turkey meatballs, unusual wines, laughter and dancing.

This past year was full of trials for the hosts, yet they look forward to 2007 to bring fresh opportunities for renewal and love.

Sympathy for the Persian Palace.

Photo by: Ehsan Khakbaz

Yesterday’s LA Times writes sympathetically about the Persian-Americans who emigrated to Southern California, chiefly around Beverly Hills, and have erected the enormous and garish homes that are so detested by the tasteful and precious guardians of our domestic architecture.

It turns out these are aren’t a bad bunch of folks, just regular richies who want to live well and like showing it off. Their homes are light and bright and all that white marble just glistens (!!!) in the rich Southland sunshine. The little lots of Beverly Hills with those tiny cottages from the 1920’s, are now hosting fiberglass pimp palaces surrounded by gates and illuminated with halogen.

I have to say I’m half in agreement with the Shahrchitects. They don’t care about proportion or correctness. They want to live, to eat, to laugh and celebrate. They don’t want to live in tormented modernism preached on high by Dwell Magazine. They know how much it costs to build a home in 2006, and they want their damn Corinthian columns and gold faucets and plasma screen TV over the toilet.

Early in 2006, my 50 something cousin moved his wife and two sons from their home near Chicago, to a large palace that he rents south of WIlshire for only $8,500 a month. It has a kitchen large enough to park a Hummer, and a front entrance hall with a winding double staircase. A ping pong table and a bean bag chair decorate the front parlor. But Mr. and Mrs. Minivan are thrilled to live here as they attempt to make a success out of a burgeoning online Flash animation site. The venture is on borrowed time on investor’s terms. But now these Middle Western emigrants live in Beverly Hills. They’ve made it. The big house on the small lot proves it to anyone who drives by.

The Local Post Office or Insane Asylum?

I went to retrieve a package at the Hollywood Post Office at 1615 Wilcox Avenue. It is a historic monument, built in the 1930’s, with elegant art deco carvings and a dignified facade.

As one steps through the trash surrounding the building, and the homeless sleeping along the curb, one enters a dark and dingy hall plastered with cheap posters. The once sparkling hall is crowded with vending machines and hand written signs hung up with yellowing tape.

Though there are “automated” machines, a woman is still needed to direct people where to go. Through the last 70 years, the room has been so altered that even the mailboxes are hidden. One thing about space and time saving automation: it doesn’t work, either in the do-it-yourself check-out at Home Depot or when purchasing stamps at the P.O.

I was directed to the “will call” window where I presented my card to a woman. She checked my I.D. and went in back to get the package. Another woman opened a second window, and the first woman handed my parcel to the second woman who asked again to see my I.D.

In the 1930’s, during the depths of the Great Depression, there were California insane asylums and Federal US Post Offices. The state asylums cared for and treated mentally ill people. The US Post Offices were clean, efficient and dignified: a great symbol of The United States of America. Now the two have merged into the Hollywood Post Office: dirty, confused, dangerous and barely functioning.

Cementerio del Sofá and other tales of Van Nuys.

HOSPITAL STABBING

One of my friends has a wife who works as a nurse at Valley Presbyterian Hospital on the graveyard shift. Last week, she was on duty when two men, visitors, asked what room a particular pregnant patient was in. When the nurse went to check, the men snuck around another hall and entered the room. While there, they stabbed a visiting boyfriend and ran out of the hospital. My friend’s wife entered the room to find blood everywhere. The victim survived.

SLUM MALL

Ori B. Fogel’s slum mall is at the NE corner of Victory and Kester. It is the one with the gutters full of trash and illegal aliens standing outside by the dozens everyday, where graffitti is sprayed on every weekend and the side of the building has no illumination and an illegally parked blue van. This same mall has no criminal activiity according to an email I got from Tamar Galatzian, Deputy City Attorney:

“Since I’m a City Attorney, I primarily get involved in crime problems. That’s why I was looking for a criminal component of this mini-mall – but I can’t really find one. Most of the trash is probably not even from the mini-mall. That being said, I don’t think I’m the right person to pursue this. Have you spoken with Cardenas’ office or the VNNC about this? I’m happy to get into contact with the correct person at both places and see if they’re interested. Sorry I can’t be of service, Andrew.”

DELANO STREET: WHERE OLD COUCHES DIE

There are perhaps two dozen discarded sofas on the sidewalks of Delano Street between Kester and Van Nuys Boulevard. The city has graciously instituted a new policy (via 311) where shopping carts are picked up to prevent neighborhood decay from overtaking an area. But here’s an even better idea:

LA could take over an empty lot, that could serve a couch cemetery. Donors would be paid $50 for every sofa brought there. If the cemetery took in 500 couches a month, that would be $25,000 well spent. Here is the name I suggest: Cementerio del Sofá.

Thinking of David Geffen.

Victoria and Lee: Hollywood Homeless.
Originally uploaded by hereinvannuys.

On my way to work in Hollywoood today, aboard the Red Line, I was reading in the Wall Street Journal about David Geffen.

The WSJ says that the 63-year-old Mr. Geffen “became a billionaire through the music industry, with record labels that backed acts from the Eagles to Guns n’ Roses.” He found and later sold Dreamworks and has “made a fortune in stocks, property and art”. His collection is estimated at $2 billion dollars. He recently sold $425 million dollars worth of paintings.

In regards to his eventual exit from the entertainment industry: “I don’t want to keep solving the same problems”. He plans to acquire the Los Angeles Times in hopes of turning it into a great paper.

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About three years ago, I worked for another Hollywood TV production company on an AMC documentary called “Women on Top” about powerful female filmmakers. Paula Wagner was one of those profiled, and I remember her coming into our offices on Hollywood and Cherokee, in a lovely vintage 1930 building, to review and clean-up her edited interview. She had glistening white teeth, and exceptionally smooth, well cut and shiny hair. When she looked at you it was a money shot.

She stared out the office window at the vast expanse of parking lots and old buildings that comprise the real Hollywood. “This is so special,” she said, as if she had just arrived in a place that she had never heard or seen before.

Handicapped Parking for the Healthy.

On a shopping expedition to Costco in Van Nuys yesterday, I passed a perfectly healthy looking 40-year old woman driving her Mercedes SUV into a handicapped parking space. Her car door opened and she: impeccably groomed, with straight black hair, botoxed lips and black nylon stretch pants…. ran into the store.

I noticed, as have many in LA, that many of these violators are of ______ethnic origin. Nothing wrong with that, “they” have suffered oppression in their native land, and have developed a tough, aggressive exterior to do battle in the Southland. I have also seen these same people, usually teenage drivers, run through red traffic lights all over the Valley.

What is wrong with confronting these lawbreakers either by ticketing them or in the case of the Costco parking lot, walking up to them and calling their bluff? Why does the administration of Antonio Villaraigosa allow this “minor” illegality to mushroom into something that helps undermine the social well being of our city?

Haven’t we had enough of this crap?