Shots from the Lip

Five Sundays a year I am off to DTLA for a day at the opera.  Los Angeles Opera was incepted in 1986.  I flew down from San Francisco for Tristan Und Isolde, conducted by Placido Domingo.  Now, 39 years later - and for the second straight season - I am a season ticket holder for presentations by an opera company that is broke. So broke that they started the year with great musical theatre - West Side Story.  Only everything started late because they had to do a sound check - microphones and speakers.....amplification of the human voice.  That ain't opera for a show that composer Leonard Bernstein categorically stated was not an opera. The place was full - unlike 'normal' times........I understand, they do have to raise money - but not from me if they eliminate the wonders of pure voice without any assistance....... 

 I was going to start this one a few days ago......never got to it..... Then I was super busy - only here it is a couple of days later and I have absolutely no idea what I was super busy about. And then I woke up yesterday as the world was circling around.  Praise be the pills I have from a year ago when I wound up in St Johns Hospital with a whole lot more wrong than the world going in circles. Anyway, we already know from experience that my immune system is suspect and that goes along with my screwed up gastro system, not to mention the low pulse rate that seems to be dropping - a bit - again........ But wait - getting older means much more bad news as longevity presents a problem the body never anticipated - living past the time that things wear out.  And that means my 'recognizing' that my eyesight ain't what it once was plus not being satisfied with a 6 January appointment with UCLA for my eyes meant following Katherine to a St John's eye practice where, on Rosh Ha...

 I am not sure when.......but I think it must have been in 1968 or 1969 that I got my Asahi Pentax 35mm single-lens reflex camera.  I used that camera for 40 years, replacing it with a Leica X, my first Leica.   I 'dabbled' at photography as a hobby that I could career-change dream about.  I actually was paid for some stuff I did but I realized that I could never earn enough through photography to support a family.  The second bathroom of the first house I ever owned was converted to a darkroom - the second darkroom I ever had.  I developed black and white film and enlarged prints from negatives.  I loved it.  And then child # 2 came along......bye bye darkroom. And yet.....that camera was in my Guangzhou office on the last day I was in Guangzhou.  It was loaded with film - the only film camera I had left.  Is it still in Guangzhou?  Along with assorted photographic equipment?  Along with an antique Rollei-flex?  ...

Come Saturday morning I'm biking the beach by myself Then doing coffee at Sam's In time for breakfast at home Starting the day with a poem at least a poem of sorts .....an excuse to delay the walk to Ralph's Ah well, procrastination ends......!? .....and that's enough for  to write on Saturday morning at 10:08a, - time to go to Ralphs for sashimi grade tuna

I've got a Thursday evening routine!  Sweet Dreams! I started on the Med/Surg floor.  Last week I 'incepted' Sweet Dreams on the ortho floor but had to improvise as they were running really low.  Last night I was asked to do Sweet Dreams on Med/Surg as they still had the handouts asked for (chap stick the most prominent!)......nothing to report other than I enjoy talking with those who want to talk.....and I do get to practice some of my one liners....... 

 A long time ago I was a fixture of Hollywood - hey, my first office on my own as a CPA was in the Taft Building at Hollywood and Vine!  Later I moved over to 6430 Sunset Blvd - Sunset and Cahuenga.  A couple of times each week, I'd be over to Musso & Frank on Hollywood Blvd for their flannel cakes - the M&F version of a pancake.  These were different - they were thicker.  The only 'rival' to their uniqueness was at Dupars when they had a restaurant at Laurel Canyon and Ventura Blvd in Studio City. I got 13 birthday greetings yesterday.  one of them - only one of them - was local - Irv Reifman.  Two more were friends living in the US.  The other 10?  All outside of the US.   I was looking forward to retirement in Thailand.  Alas, Katherine hated the place, hated the culture, hated the people......such is life..........I had contemporaries in my age range.....I had a support network. I am back in the US and although I ha...

 We are supposed to be at the bank at 12:30pm today for wire transfer based upon paperwork that should have been received from Cyprus Escrow early last week.  In 2 hours, if we have not received that info, I will cancel today's meeting............I wrote that in an early email this morning.....let's see what happens....... 

 Will the Pantry be open on Sunday morning?  I think it will be but there's only one way to find out.....so I'll forego my Sunday morning bike ride, eight light before taking the 720 Metro from Wilshire and 26th Street to its 7th and Main terminus in DTLA and then doing a photoshoot along 7th Street, walking towards the Pantry....that's the only way to find out! I'm opting for my Leica CL over my M-10.   True, nothing in the world compares to what I get out of the M camera but it ain't worth the bad back and sadly, this camera is now too bleeping heavy for me.  Similarly, I loved the zoom lens for my CL but it too is too bleeping heavy.  The 23mm wide-angle lens on the CL works for me when I am ready, willing and able to devote a bit of time to taking pictures....... Postscript:  There was a free breakfast from 9-10am at the Pantry this past Thursday morning.  The Pantry will formally re-open on New Year's Eve and stay open for the next 24 hours....

 I got a camera for my 8th birthday, 17 September 1950. It was a plastic 127 film camera.  It was a Fedflash.  I fell in love with it.  Along with collecting stamps, photography became a hobby of mine.  I gave up stamp collecting generations ago.  I'm still a photography nut.   I liked the fact that my Fedflash looked far more like an 'adult' camera than the box they called the Kodak Brownie.  I started looking at Photography magazine.  For two years I used that camera all the time.  I loved it.  And two years later, in conjunction with my father's promotion at Food Dealers Industrial Bank in Brooklyn my parents told me to start looking carefully for a 'starter' 35mm.  I went to both Willoghby's and Peerless, THE two Manhattan camera stores and, from Peerless, I purchased a Konica 3, a camera advertised as "The lens alone is worth the price!".   I got it before my birthday, before the end of summer vacation, when...

I'm going to do a long essay - this is likely to be the last section - easier to write first.....  For years and years and years - ever since I could remember - I carried  keys and handkerchief in my right rear pants pocket while my right front pocket 'housed' my cell phone.  Change for an octogenarian who thrives as a creature of habit is a really major thing. A major thing is happening!  While the keys are going to the right bottom cargo pants pocket - and some day I will write a separate essay about cargo pants! - , the handkerchief will now reside with in the right front pocket, leaving the newly empty rear right free to hold the phone - seemingly, everyone else carries their phone in one of their rear pockets....but me.  Now I am joining the rear pocket phone world!!! Why? Because of a $99.95 'retro' mini digital camera with a 13 MPS 1/3 inch sensor that will hang on a combination of my Bulldog (Amsterdam coffee shop) 'necklace' with clip on the end att...

 Paperwork - a whole bleeping large amount of it - was required reading that obviously took precedent (or I'd definitely have written). I have found 'essay topic comfort'!  I want to write something purposeful and in a bit more detail that can be sectionally separated.....me and my photography history.   And what better to start with than Kodak!   Yes indeed, I am having a Kodak moment!!   Details will most definitely follow in subsequent blogs....... It is funny how one can sit to write and all of a sudden, the writing mood vanishes - so I won't write about my Kodak moment now.....later........and if I get in the mood later on today, then most assuredly, I will write more.......

At 8am the temperature was still 17 C, cooler than the prior days but the sun was out, strong.  It looked like the sun was strong at the beach as well as here on 23d Street.....but I'd never know today because there is a marathon going on and as I approached 2d Street, going west on Broadway, I could not make a left turn as 2d, turning into Main Street, was blocked as was Broadway because Ocean Avenue was also closed to vehicular traffic. So I right turned at 2d and went to Montana, riding in and out of an overabundance of people rather than cars in downtown Santa Monica this morning as this, apparently, was a viewing event as well. Oh well.......so I did a quicker than usual Sunday morning ride.......enjoyable, nonetheless as an ageing fart. It is 10:11am and I've already read the news, answered emails and am now ready to go out and take some pictures - what's better than going out on a brief photoshoot this morning??? Oh - once upon a time, Sunday mornings meant my writin...

  Monday was Labor Day.  Jade Rabbit opened on Tuesday.  It is now the morning of the 5th.  I tried it for lunch, yesterday, the 4th........and today, sadly, I pan the restaurant:  too expensive with portions too small.  Yes, it is an upscale Panda Express but I'll go to Panda Express when the Dodgers win and I get a $6 bowl.   Yesterday's $22+ bowl was a different story.......such is life..... I did Sweet Dreams last night.  Norm and I teamed up again for the hospital medical/surgical floor.  But for a harsh dose of reality (no pulse - patient died) in a room nearby as we did our nighttime task of giving out eye masks, chap stick, et al  along with a dose of comedy......Next week I meet with orthopedics to start Sweet Dreams in that hospital section.  Thursday nights are now a routine for me at St John's where, last night.....finally.......I got my free cup of coffee - which we shared over breakfast this morning.

Monday is catch-up day, doing the things I put off from Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It is also the time I do the reading I didn't do for my classes this week.......and, hopefully, getting late lunch and dinner from our local taco truck. Tuesdays are two classes:  John Achorn's American Novel and Freddie Manseau's watercolor painting.  The American Novel is 'hybrid' and it is simply too convenient to take the Big Blue Bus to downtown Santa Monica and then walk to the Emeritus Building on Second Street, just south of Wilshire Blvd where 10-15 of us are there, live, for John's dramatization of what we've read and 'partially' understood.  There are approximately 70 more watching Zoom.  Given the option, I'll go to a live class whenever I can! More of John on Wednesdays as he teaches a somewhat smaller hybrid History of Comedy class.  This semester he's concentrating upon the 60s and 70s.  We started out the first class watching the 1964 slapsti...

 Once upon a time I wrote and sent out long emails daily.  I did this for years and now, looking back at it all, I wonder how the hell I ever wrote so much and accomplished as much as I did way back when..... Much success had to do with my starting routines for what I'd write each day of the week.  The one day I remember, though, was Sundays.  I'd be up early and in my office in our Guangzhou home.  I'd make a cup of coffee from the LaVazza espresso machine.  We had that machine for years and I sadly miss it because it made, by far, consistently, the best cup of coffee I've ever had.  That morning double espresso was both sublime and supreme!!!!! And then I'd listen on the computer to the live stream of Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion.  While listening, I'd read the weekend newspapers that I had access to in China.  If I were in Hong Kong, there'd be a wider choice of papers for me to look at but hey, what I got in China was more ...