The L.A. Report – Part 28
05-10-2020
Hey Everybody,
I haven’t written one of these in almost a year so
I have to do a lot of catching you up!
Obviously, the biggest story – not only in L.A.,
not only in California, not only in America, but for the whole world – is the
Coronavirus/COVID-19 Pandemic. Since
it’s THE major issue for everyone, I can’t add anything you don’t already
know. It will be so nice when/if it
finally passes so I can see my friends and coworkers, go to a dance, get a
haircut, eat in a restaurant, go to a concert, play or movie, go on a group
hike, play golf, and buy toilet paper without advanced degrees in Psychology
and supply-chain logistics!
Now my obligatory weather report. In 2019 we had the coldest February ever –
since they began keeping records 133 years ago in 1887. Never got above 69 degrees! Also coldest May in decades – the average
temperature was less than 70! But then
in July we had a record-breaking 116 degrees one day! So much for boringly beautiful Southern
California weather! So far 2020 has had
the same mindset. The first several
months it was pretty chilly – high 60’s at most. But lately it’s been either unseasonably hot
(high 90’s) or closer to normal.
I’m getting to be a spoiled wimp about
weather. Since it was so chilly the
first part of this year, I haven’t golfed since November. But back in August, I was playing at
Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena with a new Meetup group. On the first hole, I jokingly said that I
usually play alone and have often thought: wouldn’t it be a bummer to get a
hole-in-one with no witnesses. Cue the
Twilight Zone music. On the 150-yard 10th
hole, I had a hole-in-one! Ironically, I
was actually hitting the ball pretty poorly that day otherwise (including an 11
on the last hole). Well, after 50 years
of playing golf, I guess I was about due.
Just out of curiosity, I wondered how many holes-in-one Tiger Woods has
had. Twenty, with the first one at age 6!
Last July, I visited an organic farm in
Malibu. That was shortly after the
horrible fires the previous November. As
we drove up the driveway, there were lots of burned trees, fencing, etc. but
somehow the building we came to looked fine.
I got out of the car and cheerfully said to the owner, “how did you save
your building?” She said they stood on
the roof and kept it watered down with a garden hose. A few beats later she said, “Our house in the
back burned to the ground, however.” For
someone who had lost all her worldly belongings, she seemed relatively at
peace, but I’m sure it was devastating when it happened! Here’s an article about it:
https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-malibu-farmer-20181223-story.html
I’ve had just a handful of auditions the past few
years. Lately most of the auditions I’ve
done have been “self-taped”, where you get a reader and film yourself. Even before COVID, self-tapings were becoming
more-and-more prevalent. My phone actually
records video pretty well and doesn’t require great lighting so I can usually do
a respectable job. I have several
friends who will read the opposite parts and lately I’ve been able to have them
record their lines on their phone or computer, email the file to me and I can
splice them into my performance.
Sometimes the timing is a little tricky but usually it works out pretty
well. The last one I did was the most
important one I’ve done – it was for the TV show NCIS. Haven’t heard back on it, however.
So it’s a good thing I don’t rely on acting for my
income. I’m still working on my UCLA
programming contract. It’s supposed to
go through at least June, but the system they’re developing to replace the
mainframe has been put on hold, and I see my name all over documents mentioning
the rest of the year and beyond. My
workload was very light at the beginning but lately I’m so busy I hardly have
time to pee!
Because of COVID, most of us are working from home. It’s nice to have a 10-foot commute instead
of an hour-long one, not to mention the savings on gas and parking, as well as
extra sleep!
Last September I was parked at the grocery
store. When I came out I pulled out of
my parking spot but didn’t notice that the car next to me was parked cock-eyed,
way over the line and into my spot so I scraped it as I backed out. We exchanged information and I waited for my
insurance company to call me. To make a
very long story short, she claimed she was injured (from a parking lot
scrape???) and her medical bills and body shop repairs came to almost
$8,000! My insurance company was
skeptical, too, but they paid it. When
my policy renewed, my premium was almost double!
I’m still renting – 9 years in a studio that I
thought I’d be in for maybe two years. That’s
fine – I like it well enough. L.A. just
passed San Francisco and New York and now has the least affordable housing in
the country, so I doubt I’ll ever be able to buy another place.
I’ve been watching a local game show called Funny
You Should Ask. It’s similar to
Hollywood Squares. There are six comedians
like Louie Anderson, Jon Lovitz, etc. that give funny
answers to the host’s questions. After
their funny answer the say whether the story, article, etc. is true or false and
the contestants have to guess if they’re right or wrong. Anyway, what made me think of it is a question
they had the other night: Back in the
very early days of telephones, what three words were you supposed to end your
call with…
“That is all.”