Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

Leasing Los Angeles

The piece in text form, here.

"Speak, Malady" in Harper's; "Speak, Memory" Still Rightfully Everywhere

My recent Harper's essay, "Speak Malady," in which I rock, roast, and melt at medical tourism meccas Boston, M.A., and Rochester, M.N. [PDF link]

 

Medical Marijuana in LA: "Hit and Miss" in the Financial Times Magazine (FT Weekend)

 

This weekend, The Financial Times Magazine runs a hopefully informative and humorous personal essay [PDF] about my mysterious health travails and experience with LA's medical marijuana world at an crucial point in the battle to legalize cannabis in California. It's also online in web-friendly html page-format here, @ FT.com.

Naturally, I thought long and hard about what kinds of supplementary material I could offer on my blog. But we sadly only present words and stuff we can roll and/or bake into Web code  Glass Shallot. In that spirit, then let me offer a small chunk of text my editors and I had to cut at the last minute for page-space. It concerns the first dispensary I visited in Hollywood, one of the shops LA will close, where the system -- and the product -- actually worked very well. (Text below)

 

 

"More concerned with convenience than finding a boutique shop that sold Valrohna chocolate cupcakes, I first visited Druggie Christmas Tree Girl’s dispensary: a dank space above a seedy Hollywood motel, manned by a hulking Middle Eastern guy with a shaved head, wearing an elegantly dizzying Ed Hardy T-shirt. He screamed my name the way some thug had screamed at Jason Statham in an action movie I once reviewed. Naturally, I trusted him.

     “What iz dis?” the guy asked, taking my letter through a little hole in the wall that separated the real store from the waiting room.

     “It’s my doctor’s recommendation," I said.

     “I never see something like dis, yo.”

     “Well,” I said, “It’s real.”

     “I see dat, dude. But I still gotta call.”

     Yes, this sketchy drug-dealer type was calling a nationally lauded physician because of me. 

He left the window, I heard some mumbling. He reappeared minutes later.

     “You in,” he said. “He OK it.”

     “You spoke with my actual doctor, not some nurse or assistant?” I asked. 

    “Totally,” he said. “Now whaddayou want?”

     I walked into a tiny, smoky space through a cage-protected door, and he showed me some 10 canisters of fragrant weed. I asked for something to alleviate pain – nerve pain, if that meant anything?

     “Bubba Skunk,” he said. “That’s you shit.”

    “That’s my shit,” I concurred, handing over $50 for a pill bottle filled with buds.

     “How much should I use?” I asked.

    “Howev much you want, homeslice.” 

Then I left, and as I waved my new drugs around the seedy eastern side of Hollywood Boulevard, as a man in a doo-rag drove by me on a miniature bicycle powered by a tiny motor, my wife grabbed the bag and told me to hide it.

“But it’s legal,” I said.

“But this isn’t Brentwood!"

My Priceline Staycation... to Dubai?

It was Labor Day. We needed a break. I hated the bullshit word "Staycation," but we had to remain in our city. I turned to Priceline. Madness ensued.

[via The Faster Times]

Vista and Refuge: Interview with a Big Sur Yurt-Hotel Owner/White Tanker Firefighter

In May’s Men’s Journal, I have a one-pager about Big Sur in the wake of last year’s wildfires. In the piece, I write about an awesome collection of yurts overlooking the Pacific ocean called Treebones. My wife and I hung out in Big Sur for this piece in November ‘08, on the weekend that Santa Barbara's Montecito area lit up like a roman candle, and on which there were crazy winds that shook us, and a fair amount of our camping friends in Ojai and beyond, all night long. Why Lina and I continually end up in oceanfront mountains during wildfires and windstorms is beyond me. That said, we’d been to Treebones before, and we’ll return. There’s nothing like it, and it’s only perhaps too rustic for the Woody Allen wannabe who can’t hold down his lunch west of the Mississippi. But if you want a little supplement to the MJ piece, I thought that I’d post some of a long and bewitchingly cool interview with Treebones’s unusually decent founder, John Handy, a recently indoctrinated volunteer fireman and green-building pioneer who used to work as a toy executive down in super-serious LA, eventually decided to leave the so-called grid, and now owns a Big White Tanker and lives in Henry Miller’s woods, where it’s nice and natural, and no one wants to stick you with dirty needles for your change from the Korean fried chicken place. Here, if you haven't opened the PDF yet is the Q&A. For more about traveling to Big Sur, here's the MJ piece, which is also available on their Web site. --AB

Shallot Casual: Suggestions for flying JetBlue

1. Make sure you haven't already obtained and begun to use the American Express JetBlue credit card, so you won't be annoyed at how much more points towards a free flight it's supposed to provide than it really does, should you decide to make it your primary means of overspending.

2. Book flights last minute to get back to your ever-venerable Long Island hometown and the scumbags it produced to help your family mourn a close loved one.  You don't need to ask for "so-called bereavement rates" as numerous JetBlue employees will tell you, because JetBlue flights are "already priced so low that" they "undercut the rumored 'death discounts.'"

3. Do not tell the customer service lady in Utah that she's wrong about the pricing she mentions in point #2. She will get nasty. And yell. And tell you that "even Mormons have a limit." And isn't it more important to avoid any form of human conflict than to actually get a company to operate ethically? You do not have the right to ask simple questions of customer service employees when it might result in your last-minute flight back for a funeral not costing, oh, $1,500. Let's be reasonable.

4. Enjoy your DirectTV even if the headphone jacks don't work. It will be a good distraction from the frequent leg cramps you experience because the last-minute, $1,500 seat you purchased doesn't actually sport the "even more legroom" you chose to buy on top of the generously low price. Bask in the classless society of JetBlue. Every once in a while, DirectTV should be silent when babies are crying in three aisles around you. That's what being a part of a faux-Marxist passenger community run by a money-hungry airline is all about. Fraternity.

5. Believe in your pilot, even when the plane nosedives for about 30 straight seconds more than three times in one flight and then nearly flicks itself off the runway upon landing. Clearly the perfect flying conditions as reported by your friend the Caltech aviation buff should be blamed for the landing. JetBlue pilots rock. You know this because you saw them holding a Supertramp CD in the cockpit upon arrival.

6. Remain unconcerned about the fact that the cabin remains 80 degrees in the dead of August. JetBlue is keeping the planes "balmy" for your "tropical comfort," what might be called a "vacation extension," not because it's important to save money at the expense of passengers as oil prices and airfares rise.

7. Don't ask your cousin to check the e-mail itinerary confirmation the last night of the trip. The fact that you purchased last minute flights on the phone for extra money so that everything would be taken care of by an actual human should be enough to persuade you that everything was done correctly. But if you like, do please make two subsequent phone calls to confirm the flights are right. It's much more dramatic and hence exciting this way; after all has been confirmed twice and your family member finally gets around to checking the confirmation e-mail a few days later only to see that you and your wife have been put on different flights--one returning one week later than the other, despite the same flight number and price--you can get really deeply into the role of "irate customer," an archetype you had always wanted to study in film school.

8. Do not ask the next "nice" customer service lady in Utah if you can avoid change fees for the flight to be "corrected" back to the original plans that had been made and then confirmed twice over the phone.  Instead just force Betty with a barrage of expletives to apologize on behalf of the airline and then make everything right even though you failed to record the conversations you had with her brethren the way you now record almost every important call you make to your insurance company, because you've been wronged by them so many times, it's almost acceptable to be paranoid about them trying to rape your bank account on a weekly basis. Forcing people to do stuff like this over the phone, when your week hangs in the balance is definitely the way to go. Especially with the oh-so-flexible and friendly Utah-based JetBlue support staff.

9. Drink lots of vodka on the new flight, and ask for ice. That Oprah show your mom keeps talking about where the airline ice makers were found to contain all kinds of viruses and bacteria, including fecal matter, has to be complete bullshit. The flight assistants are really friendly. Friendly means no bacteria.

10. Remember that while Virgin America sounds like a thinking person's alternative to JetBlue, it would be a pain in the ass to have to fly from LAX versus nearby Burbank, with all its B-level celebrities, Universal Studios-bound families, and pornstars vogueing for paparazzi shots as you weep not that you have lost a family member but that even the most forward-thinking airline in America has gone to complete shit.

Shallot Casual: A Day at the Vineyard, or Comments One Could Have Offered to One's Fictional In-Laws on the Annual California Vacation

1. I'm all for visiting the Santa Barbara county wineries, but given the fact that you want to "do it right, all day long, like they do in the movie," don't you think we should plan to do it and leave LA later than 2 pm on an August Saturday so as to avoid traffic and other wine-country tourists and actually get a chance to visit more than one winery before they all close?

2. I'm all for visiting the Santa Barbara county wineries, but given the fact that you want to "do it right, all day long, like they do in the movie," don't you think we should plan to do it and leave LA later than 2 pm on an August Saturday so as to avoid traffic and other wine-country tourists and actually get a chance to visit more than one winery before they all close? And while we're at it, maybe we should plan to take a car that's big enough for the whole lot of us, so my wife (your daughter) doesn't have to twist herself like a contortionist in the middle of the backseat of your beautiful (and believe me, it's a knockout) but just ever-so-slightly too-small Dick Tracy-ish rental car?

3. I'm all for visiting the Santa Barbara county wineries, but given the fact that you want to "do it right, all day long, like they do in the movie," don't you think we should plan to do it and leave LA later than 2 pm on an August Saturday so as to avoid traffic and other wine-country tourists and actually get a chance to visit more than one winery before they all close? And while we're at it, maybe we should plan to take a car that's big enough for the whole lot of us, so my wife (your daughter) doesn't have to twist herself like a contortionist in the middle of the backseat of your beautiful (and believe me, it's a knockout) but just ever-so-slightly too-small Dick Tracy-ish rental car? Call me one of those "insane" California drivers, but maybe we should also go a hair faster than 55--you know, so we can just get to the winery before they stop doing their "Sideways" shtick that we all really think it will be fun to see even if we've seen it before (20 times, with other California visitors who have as original and fun ideas as you)?

4.  I'm all for visiting the Santa Barbara county wineries, but given the fact that you want to "do it right, all day long, like they do in the movie," don't you think we should plan to do it and leave LA later than 2 pm on an August Saturday so as to avoid traffic and other wine-country tourists and actually get a chance to visit more than one winery before they all close? And while we're at it, maybe we should plan to take a car that's big enough for the whole lot of us, so my wife (your daughter) doesn't have to twist herself like a contortionist in the middle of the backseat of your beautiful (and believe me, it's a knockout) but just ever-so-slightly too-small Dick Tracy-ish rental car? Call me one of those "insane" California drivers, but maybe we should also go a hair faster than 55--you know, so we can just get to the winery before they stop doing their "Sideways" shtick that we all really think it will be fun to see even if we've seen it before (20 times, with other California visitors who have as original and fun ideas as you)? And maybe once we get there (to the first winery), we should actually, just maybe, taste the actual wine and not complain that you could buy a bottle in a store for the price of the tasting? I'm not saying all the wine is good, but I don't know, I'm just throwing this out...perhaps it's a little too early to start hating the entire enterprise before actually doing one full tasting--that is, if you do plan on enjoying this day--at THE WINERIES--in the lovely Buelton countryside?

5.  I'm all for visiting the Santa Barbara county wineries, but given the fact that you want to "do it right, all day long, like they do in the movie," don't you think we should plan to do it and leave LA later than 2 pm on an August Saturday so as to avoid traffic and other wine-country tourists and actually get a chance to visit more than one winery before they all close? And while we're at it, maybe we should plan to take a car that's big enough for the whole lot of us, so my wife (your daughter) doesn't have to twist herself like a contortionist in the middle of the backseat of your beautiful (and believe me, it's a knockout) but just ever-so-slightly too-small Dick Tracy-ish rental car? Call me one of those "insane" California drivers, but maybe we should also go a hair faster than 55--you know, so we can just get to the winery before they stop doing their "Sideways" shtick that we all really think it will be fun to see even if we've seen it before (20 times, with other California visitors who have as original and fun ideas as you)? And maybe once we get there (to the first winery), we should actually, just maybe, taste the actual wine and not complain that you could buy a bottle in a store for the price of the tasting? I'm not saying all the wine is good, but I don't know, I'm just throwing this out... perhaps it's a little too early to start hating the entire enterprise before actually doing one full tasting--that is, if you do plan on enjoying this day--at THE  WINERIES--in the lovely Buelton countryside? On that count, and I'm just making a minor suggestion here, but maybe you might want to also mock the descriptive wine writing on the menus beyond earshot of the winery owner who already looks like he wants to hit you in the face with his full bottle of dolcetto? Just a suggestion--you know, so we can enjoy the jokes better without having to fight before we're even drunk enough to get into some serious bottle smashing.

summer in the hometown: jones beach nostalgia

comparing bathroom graffiti

In Rome, one tag on a bathroom stall read: "Bush = un pezzo di merda."

In Las Vegas's McCarran airport, one stall wall included the following line: "Jews runs the media." Directly underneath that line was another pearl: "That's because people have bad sense of grammar."

post-italy thoughts

Upon my return from Italy, the one thing I am sure of is that I currently dislike watching American dance reality shows (not that I ever did), reading tabs, seeing really bad movies (bad-good movies are still fine), even more than before. The leniency for crap that I acquired in LA after years of curmudgeon life in NY is gone, even after just returning from a foreign country where the music and television, at least the popular forms of it, are funnier (stupider, potentially, more sexist, etc.) than anything in America. Truth is: I cannot stand to see the way certain people live in this country that I can luckily call home in the current tense international climate. But the more I see Americans and our need and love to consume, lack of organic pleasure, the urgency and intensity with which we communicate via e-mail, phone, and even in person...it's overwhelming, and it's sad. I wasn't away very long. 30 days is hardly a long tour away from one's culture, but it was just long enough for me to slip into, as I had said, a more natural mode of existence, and these weren't on days gazing out over the Mediterranean. I experienced as much or more of this new internal pace and attitude at Autostrade-side Autogrills and in smoky Rome buses, bad gelaterias and even dangerous neighborhoods and boring Sardinia cellphone stores, as I did in restful medieval villages in the Abruzzi mountains. For it isn't rest that Italy provides. Italy doesn't provide anything, in fact, and that's why it's great; it doesn't try too hard, doesn't want to. Plus, there's a frenetic pace in the Italian world, too--especially in a city like Rome, which is hardly a groundbreaking observation, as kids reheat more frozen meals than ever while moms and dads still jump over each other and ditch their jobs to watch their children take swimming lessons. But what's different about it all is that to my mind Italians don't want to work more: they don't like it, they don't get a high from it. They don't have openings, in large part, in the little portal in our minds that the allows the urgency, devote-your-life-to-nonsense and anticipatory stress addiction that reaches and controls many American psyches. And if some Italians do not feel this urgency, if they do devote their lives to nonsense, well, they don't really feel as if they're living while mourning the loss of their lives simultaneously in that distinctly American way. A Naples advertising executive who doesn't really believe in the mission of his account, therefore, just waits for work to end to really enjoy his life--what most people in America *say* they do but rarely accomplish. He doesn't force an attempt at or quest for enjoyment into his every moment and then wince when he can't find any "quality time" for it; maybe he'll have some moments of joy throughout the day but they will come whether or not he creates an "action plan" to "achieve" them. For instance, Italy is currently looking into increasing the work week hours; as dangerous as it is to us, the Euro is killing too many people in Italy, too. But there remains a lovingly selfish-cum-socialist-y, "let the government take care of it" type of attitude--we don't like our president, but what the hell?--that even lets the overworked feel free, regardless of what's required of them. And maybe that's what I saw most obviously on my mini-trip. Not any sort of "la dolce vita" fiction. But the fact that most Italians feel free from expectation and big-brother ownership--especially state and corporate ownership, even when it's written into law--except for when it comes to family. Which is more an ownership of love and something all of us should applaud. More in the coming weeks. This is part of the book project...