They Call It Black Friday, But Tuesday's Just As Bad

Coming back up Wilshire, as we slowly made our way out of Santa Monica and towards Brentwood,

both of our easy strolls gave way to pronounced limps. We had started our walk back at 3^rd street and were now approaching the 20's. The Virginian wasn't equipped with the right footwear. That was her excuse. Mine had more to do with the same 'old before my time' afflictions that come and go like the weather over the bay. Whatever it was, we both needed a break. A little pit-stop from the exercise.

Around where we were, Wilshire opens out into a wide, multi-lane carriageway, buffered on each side by stubby commercial spaces. It has the feel of those wide, winding highways that accountants ride through as they make their way home after work, past outer suburbia and on towards the outer, outer suburbia of their pre-fab McMansion houses. The white noise of never ending cruising steel, crunching changing gears and screeching brake-pads is often accompanied by a visual palate of blacks, greys, charcoals and browns. All over the world, such exact roads exist and on their sidewalks, as this all rushes past you, one tends to feel lonely and silent.

Red and Yellow

I'm listening to a lot of Tom Waits lately. And Tex Perkins. It has been almost exclusively the two of them on the iPod. They both have more than enough stuff out there to keep me occupied for endless afternoon walks through the rolling and sweeping - yet concise and compact – silent , side-street opulence of Hancock Park. Both of their recorded works cover an almost unbelievable variety of styles and genres.

Waits started off with a traditional wounded, boozy, New Orleans feel and then progressed towards the more loose and avant-garde - sounding something like a giant, red circus tent with straw flung across the ground, silver shining stars stuck to the roof and the smell of whiskey mixed with elephant dung hanging about your ears. Tex's sound started off more experimental, bawdy and bourbony and has slowly made it's way to traditional and nontraditional Country, with little pit-stops for disco, ladyboys, drum machines and heroin-addled-bluesy-funk.