Glendale CA: City of Car Alarms.

Imagine living across the street from the International Car Alarm Factory Outlet. And every day the entire staff of salesmen would showcase their wares, demonstrating them to everyone they could wrangle in to the store. Imagine the din of a dozen car alarms going at once, all day every day 24 hours at a time. Imagine the beeps and wails. Honks and headlights and crying babies and you have an excellent idea of what it is like to live in Glendale. I'd kill myself but the gunshot would set off a dozen car alarms.

We've got one neighbor who's car must announce its every lock and unlock with no fewer than 5 honks of the horn and a beep of some kind to signal that the process is over and it's safe to open the door/leave the car alone. Not only that but the cars alarm will sound randomly and often, like Gabriels trumpet, at all hours of the day and night for no reason AT ALL. It just likes to burst into song I suppose, like that skinny kid you went to high school with who was so into Gershwin. It only ceases when when whoever owns it rolls out of bed and digs through his jeans pockets to find the keys and shut it down. It's a process to say the least. Of course we never see the guy and we're not even 100% sure which car it is because by the time we roll out of bed and get to a window it's usually done. And I think the owner just points his fob out the window, indiscreet as that sounds. Here's the weird part: the car never moves. Not only is there no rhyme or reason to its wailing for attention, but there is no reason to lock/unlock it in the first place. Does he/she store the pots and pans in there? Is it used as a second bedroom? There is NO reason to access a car that often unless you are a pizza delivery person. NONE! It's getting flat spots on the tires and people are scrawling "wash me" in the coat of dust currently blanketing it. There's a smiley face on the windshield! The car does, however, have a flash spoiler on the back, to indicate its potential for speed. Stay classy Glendale!!

France!

I went to the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. Lots of fun. After we left the festival Roz and I drove up to Paris and saw the sights along the way. Here are some shots from the drive.

U ax'd frit!

It's the only picture I've been able to take so far. She's shy.

Excitement at the Park

I was talking on the phone with my sister who lives in Gainesville FL the other day and she was complaining about how the place was on fire. "oh it's so crazy" she says. I says "welcome to our world, every summer LA goes up in flames". Not two minutes after those words come out of my mouth I look up and see the plumes of smoke that signal another conflagration somewhere in the hills. Turns out it's a huge fire in Griffith Park. Our new place is on the eastern border of the park so we had a decent view of it. Pretty wild, I don't think we've had a real fire there in forever. Anyway, you can see the pix I took here. I started a Flickr account to show my pix. It's a bit easier I think so hopefully it will work out. A note about the pix: I should have used a tripod. I'm lazy and that's what seperates me from the pros probably. They give you an idea of what it was like though.