A Week In L.A.

A Week in L.A.  (c) 2013 Laramie Crocker 

Sunset on Berkeley

A Week in this town

is better than sayin 

I'm leaving in May

I'd stayed a year

and another year

I left my other girl

when my brother left his

and her sister said

as she stood in our kitchen

does this idiocy run in the family

in pairs

or is it contagion?

and I took a two-week vacation

once

a week on a cruise to paradise

and back

and a week in LA

a week in LA

that's what was left

seemed better than sayin

I'm stayin til May

and I'm calm under fire

capable of murder

I've taken my own life

but still, here I am

but still, here I am

and I've sold chocolate bars

delivered papers

I've been a carpenter

and I've been a trainer

and now I'm a singer

and I wanna live

and sing every day 

and live my whole life

like a week in LA

Sir Mick explains all to Oprah

Oprah: So tell me, Sir Mick, are you willing to be totally honest on my show.
Sir Mick: Sure, luv.

O: So did you do it?
SM: Yes, I did.

O: And did your "team" also go along.
SM: Sure, we all did.  I mean, it was the only thing keeping Keith alive.

O: He's alive?
SM: In a way.

O: And how did you avoid the testing?
SM: Well we didn't very well avoid it in Alabama, did we?  I mean, it was part of our image.  People expected it.

O: And did you make your team do it?
SM: Well, I felt just as I told them we should tune up, and practice, aye, that it was my duty to share what I could score with the team.

O: And what about the other bands?
SM: Look, luv, it was Rock'n'Roll.  EVERYONE doped.  I'm not gonna name names, but Floyd, The Doors, The Who, the Grateful Dead, The Mouseketeers, EVERYONE.  Well, not the Monkeys...

O: Not Jerry Garcia--no way!
SM: 'e was a bleeding smokestack on stage.  I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.  I mean, we coulda not doped, but then we'd still be wankers, and the Beatles would still be choir boys, wouldn't they.

O: So there we have the whole truth.  Sir Mick, admitting that the Rolling Stones doped, the Who doped, and most shockingly, and perhaps part of a continuing pattern of coercion, Sir Mick outs the leader of the "Hardest Working Band" as doping as well.  A whole industry, riddled with doping, perhaps even unable to function without it.

Django Unchained

Hideous Fun. Blaxploitation never felt this good.
Django Unchained is Blaxploitation for good, instead of evil, and it allows the director, Quentin Tarantino, to get away with showing
attrocities on screen that even Roots could not muster.  This movie is serious in the same way that James Clavell writes, in Shogun, that the feudal Japanese attendees laughed after witnessing sepuku, laughing to relieve the social and emotional strain and acknowlege the horror, in a socially acceptable way.  The film is brilliant, funny, outrageous, over the top, post-modern, a blaxploitation spaghetti western complete with soundtrack, an excoriating expose of slavery in this country,  a deep philosophical dive into feeling and living in those awful moments, and an unbelievable riot of a pulp movie.  Tarantino has perfected his game.

--Laramie Crocker
  showdate: 2013-01-14,
  Westwood Village Theater, L.A.