The Red Hot Chili Peppers singing "Under the Bridge," a very personal song written by Anthony Keidis, about his home, the City of Angels, Los Angeles, California. Fire Aid benefit concert, January 30, 2025. The concert was a benefit for all the thousands of people affected by the terrible Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena fires of January 2025.
Thank you firefighters!
I watched them save the area I live in now, on the ground and in the air. Thank you for your hard work.
Here are some of the ROCK highlights from the Fire Aid L.A. concert (These song/set videos are getting taken down or seriously shadow banned, but I'll link the best ones I can find now)
Nirvana Reunion- 4 songs- Surviving Nirvana members plus singers St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Violet Grohl
A poet for most of my life, I wrote this poem while the fires were still burning. This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote while working with the Red Cross on the huge Rodeo Chedeski fires in Arizona in 2002. I lost that original poem.
After the fire
I thought it was a nightmare
When I awoke
It couldn’t be real
Some kind of tragic joke
But there I stood
Amid the char
The house, my life
Even my car
The grass crunched black
Beneath my shoes
I had my family
But no idea what to do
Lost… the house, furniture
Our pictures and things
We had each other, the kids
And our wedding rings
Everything got blurry
I could still smell the smoke
With a charred 9 iron
I began to poke
I hoped for something
Some item dear
To have survived the inferno
A small reason to cheer
Soot, ashes, charred pieces of wood
Shattered picture frames
I wanted not to cry, I wanted hope
I wanted someone to blame
Our home, now ruins
It just couldn’t be real
I found nothing to pick up
I didn’t know how to feel
The skeletons of trees
In our backyard
Black, crisp, and silent
Everything was charred
I rubbed my eyes
I screamed loud at God
Why did this happen?
It was all just too hard
That’s when I saw it
A single green blade of grass
A shoot of life among the black
The future surging from the past
I walked closer
By the sliver of green, I froze
Against the forces of hell
That blade of grass rose
It couldn’t shout or scream
That shoot simply grew
If that blade of grass could start over
I realized we could come back, too
It was tough, the weeks after
We began anew, step by step
The memory of that blade of grass
I clung to and kept
Each day a bit of progress
To replace the life we had lost
Little things meant much more now
We struggled, but it was worth the cost
Each new day we woke up
Then we figured out what to do
If that single, green blade of grass could grow back
We knew that we could, too
-The White Bear
(aka Steve Emig)
I'm doing most of my writing these days on Substack, you can check out more of my work there:
If you lived in Los Angeles in the 1980's and 1990's, you've heard of Angelyne. According to one account, she started putting up billboards of herself in 1984. I think the first one I saw was in Hollywood, probably 1988 or 1989. It was around that time that I started to drive up there, doing runs, picking up equipment for my job. It was also around that time I started going to punk gigs up there once in a while. Angelyne is the single name L.A. Billboard Queen of the Los Angeles in the 1980's, and is basically famous for being famous. Before the Kardashians, before Paris Hilton, before the internet, before influencers as a job title, there was Angelyne... and her hot pink Corvette.
A few days ago, I got a book from the library called Binge Times, by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chimielski. I've read several books about L.A. and the San Fernando Valley in the past few months, after my backpack, including my laptop, got stolen. As a homeless blogger/artist, my online time got cut, I'm using library computers for now, and I had more time to do something. So I've read a lot about L.A. and The Valley. Binge Times, published in 2022, dove deep into the "streaming wars," the battle in the entertainment industry for viewership... and money, since Netflix, YouTube, and video streaming began pulling millions of eyeballs away from TV and movies, and cable TV systems, in particular. The book was incredibly well researched, and interesting, another major industry in transition, in today's world, something I've been writing about for years.
Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I read chapter 15, which talked about the Peacock streaming service. The chapter was called, "If you want to grab their attention, you have to tease," a quote from L.A. billboard icon, Angelyne. There's a paragraph in the chapter about the feature Peacock did about Angelyne, which is what the video embedded above is plugging. Angelyne, herself, wasn't happy with the movie. Now, living in The San Fernando Valley, I've seen Angelyne's hot pink Corvette around a handful of times, at a distance. Reading the book where she's mentioned a couple of days ago, it brought her back into my consciousness.
The next day, Thanksgiving day, I wound up in a McDonald's in the afternoon, where my T-Day dinner was the $5 Meal Deal. Not epic, but it was a cool, mellow day, I didn't mind missing the whole traditional Thanksgiving feast. I was sitting there in the back, hanging out, and reading the final chapter of Binge Times, when a hot pink Corvette pulled up outside. Yep, Angelyne herself. She came in the restaurant, walked up to the counter, I think to ask of there was a restroom code, and then walked back to the ladies room. She walked right by me, three or four feet away. In all the years since I first saw an Angelyne billboard, over 35 years ago, it's the first time I've seen Angelyne up close. The first thing that grabbed me was how tiny she is. She's barely over 5 feet tall, maybe 5'2", I'd say. Yeah, she's top heavy, and had the intsense make-up, unique outfit, big blonde hair, and a pink veil over her face. But she's really small. Her image is so huge, I always thought she must be at least 5'9" if not a full six feet tall. But she's a actually quite petite woman, except for the boobs, of course.
As Angelyne was in the restroom, one woman ran out into the parking lot, and snapped a phone pic of the back of the pink Corvette, with the "Angelyn" license plate. Myself, I wondered if I should catch her attention, and tell her she was mentioned in the book I had in my hands. Hey, I'm a big, ugly, sketchy looking homeless guy, so I decided against it. I didn't want to freak her out. But I snapped a pic of her Corvette through the window. After taking care of things, and walked back past me, and out to her car.
What is it about Angelyne? I've worked on several TV shows, worked with the American Gladiators, hung out for a day shooting footage on a Tom Petty music video, and seen Dennis Rodman, Geena Davis, Charlton Heston, Gene Simmons,Diddy, Pamela Anderson,Ashlee Simpson, and the a capella singing group Pentatonix in the wild around SoCal. But seeing Angelyne up close, as a long time SoCal resident, is like a unicorn sighting. There's a weird mysteriousness to this real life, Barbie-like character. The odd little bit of synchronicity, actually reading a book she's mentioned, in when she rolled up, made it more memorable. That was my L.A. Thanksgiving, seeing Angelyne close-up in a McDonald's. Hey, it's weird out here. It's L.A., shit happens. That's why I'm here. It's a good place for us freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos.
Last Sunday, longtime L.A. Lakers star Kobe Bryant, and 8 other people, were killed in a helicopter crash, during a morning of thick marine layer fog, just northwest of L.A.. It' s Friday now, and I've watched several videos of Kobe playing, and interviews with him. I was never a huge mainstream sports fan, and I never saw a Lakers game live, but I watched a lot of them on TV. Kobe was my favorite basketball player, with the possible exception of Harlem Globetrotter, Meadowlark Lemon. Anyhow, here's a 20 minute video to remind us just how freakin' good Kobe was on the court. He was, by and large, a class act off the court, as well. R.I.P. Kobe, his daughter, and the others, mostly from here in Orange County, who died tragically in that chopper crash.
Here's an L.A. Times article looking at the reasons for the surge in homelessness in Los Angeles county. I have a lot to say on this subject, but not right now. Tomorrow, maybe.
In 2000, the United Way and others embarked on the "Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness." Guess what? It didn't work.
