"Margin Call" or I Just Keep Going to Those Up Tempo Flicks

Last evening I planned on seeing "Being Elmo" at the Sunset Five Theatre with my friend Len of Len Speaks. This is a documentary about the man who is the puppeteer for the little red ragamuffin character Elmo from "Sesame Street". We had been looking for something sweet, cheerful and uplifting to see and this seemed tailor made. It was of some interest to us to find out that the actual puppeteer might be present for the showing.


As we approached the window the tinny voiced cashier advised there was only one ticket left. So scanning the availablility on a split second and upon my hearsaid word that it was supposed to be a good movie, we decided on "Margin Call", although the subject matter, the beginning of the meltdown of the stock market in 2008 was less than cheery, and likely not much uplifting. In fact, I said to Len, "We are going from the feel good to the feel bad movie of the year!"


And this one, although it had more than one seat left, still had enough people gathered to put us in the virtual front where every facial expression of the actors, from Kevin Spacey, to Simon Baker, to Stanley Tucci and one of the producers, the theatrically and televisioncally zooming Zachary Quinto, playing the young rocket scientist turned Wall Street Junior Risk Analyst, could be viewed virtually microscopically. And given the subject matter, there was a lot of actor portrayal grimacing.


The movie began with a scene recently familiar to me, the termination and escorting out of a long time, mid level boss who was quite literally in the middle of a big something, noticing that the way the fictional firm was doing business had begun a statistical and market downtrend that would jettison the market gains of years before and leave lots of people bereft, financially speaking. As he is escorted out he gives the information, in a jump drive, to one of his young associates, the earnest Mr. Sullivan, played by the equally earnest Mr. Quinto. Now Len and I agree that this exchange of information would not have happened in a real life canning. There is no interaction with other employees or institutional property  allowed upon one's severing. But ok, that was a necessary Maguffin. Our young anti-hero gets the drive and finishes the projections and realizes that something bad has already happened stock market wise. I shall refrain from trying to explain it; neither I nor Len of Len Speaks understood it. My effort tonight to get an simple definition of a margin call, led to this piece, which really explained little to me, except that the method of buying, if done by too many people under a statistical circumstance that happened in this movie, and in real life, means doom and gloom.


The company big wigs  (Baker and the always compelling Jeremey Irons as the biggest wig), naturally want to salvage what they can for themselves before all hell breaks loose (as at that moment no one in the financial world has seen the grim trend in progress), and decide to sell everything and buy nothing and swap nothing in one market day. As every broker who does this, at the behest of Kevin Spacey, a 34 year veteran of market vagaries and his company's maneuvering, will become anathema to colleagues far and wide who were burned by the company, and as every person who buys will be damaged irrevocably by the move, a lot of people, young and old will be put out of business. And then there is the paying off of some of the fired players, which they must accept or find their severance packages challenged and compromised.  What would  you do? Blow the whistle or take your stock options and your $175,00 plus and go home? You can say I would do the right thing. I like to say that too. We know what the right thing is, but it's dangerous to do it, so often we do not.


The reactions of the players in this sad tale are mixed. The original mid level boss seems initially ready to fight and blow the whistle, but the grief he'd receive and the destruction of any chance of a future job anywhere ever in his life, chastens him. Even the jaded Spacey character (more interested in his dying dog than in the firings at the beginning of the movie of some 80 percent of the company's brokers and middle management), feels the taint and the immorality of his part in the action, but needing the money, he concedes to his part in the massacre. His solution to the ugliness is to bury his grief with his dog in the backyard of his old home, where his ex-wife now lives. The young Mr. Sullivan/Quinto is promoted, but he seems more to be caught on a wave. He did nothing more than his job and fell into the chasm. What he will be at age 40, we won't see. We probably shouldn't hope for the best.  We are fragile things.


You might think that I might go out to downtown Los Angeles and set up my pup tent with the Occupy Wall Street Set. No. Not likely. Because as Quinto's character says in response to some precious comment from his junior colleague associate, Seth, things are a lot more complicated. I have two examples. One from our historical life, which we as a society choose to ignore in assigning blame to banks, for example for the woes of us common men and women and one from my own life.
 

We blame the banks for the mortgage crisis, but in fact in the 80s and 90s, the banks were forced by the political powers that be, among them people now blaming the banks, to make loans to people that they knew could not pay them back. I have recently begun to read a little about and of Schopenhauer and his belief that compassion is the highest virtue. Well, compassion without common sense is problematic and making banks loan to people who could not make the payments was not a particularly good exercise of value.


Years ago, I was a young lawyer in a traffic court when a guy turned around and started complaining that his lawyer wasn't engaging in some dishonest conduct to get him off. I said that if he did that he would be committing a crime and an ethical violation. "That's what I hired him for" said the man.  Did he think that a dishonest lawyer (and alas I saw a number of them in my work travels) would spare that dishonesty for him? I saw a number of folks come to my former office complaining that their lawyer, whom they knew to be and hired for their short cuts, had short cut on them.


This movie wasn't to me  just about Wall Street and the current craze for supplanting capitalism and voluntary giving back for everybody having the same (equal) nothing, except for those enterprising folks at the top of the heap who never believed in their drivel in the first place.  It was about human rationalization, much like the Ides of March about which I wrote in these pages, for killing objectivity and Truth and justifying it with whatever nifty term is needed to sell it. But there is no objective truth as we have come to know, so these stories will continue until we destroy ourselves and have no one to blame and any place to occupy.  I wish I were exempt, but alas I am not.


Len, next week, we have got to see "Being Elmo".

Mysterious Respite

After my dad died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, I had the perhaps unrealistic idea that it would be a long time before it would be necessary for me to back there to visit anyone.

In the last year, though, at least three people I know have needed to be hospitalized there; happily all remain with us. Still it is a strain to be in a place where not only are people healed, but where many times, and ultimately, they pass away of the conditions which ail them.  You can feel the anxiety in the rooms and in the waiting spaces. I dread the day when I will be one of the patients in the beds captive to medical jargon and too often arrogant practioners.

Yesterday, as I was walking toward the anesthesia recovery room after a friend's surgery, I felt the hallway so familiar and it was only later that I realized this was where my father had "recovered" from his last procedure, an outpatient one, the idiocy of which was confirmed by the sepsis that overwhelmed his body and brought him back to the hospital for his final few days.   I guess I am still angry about how dad was, in my view, disregarded by his urologist and his internist.

This evening I had plans to survey a possible volunteer activity, reading for the blind and dyslexic--a way to practice the use of my voice, and give back to the community. I was in such a rush after the hospital to be out and stay out amid the sun and people engaged in their ordinary activities, that I got to the neighborhood in Hollywood, an interesting mix of seedy apartment buildings and classic old craftsman houses, way too early for my appointment.

I had a sandwich at an ubiquitous Subway watcing a customer argue over the fact that the special value meal of five dollars was no more.  I took a walk around the neighborhood as the sun was just beginning its descent.  Then I came upon this Church. I couldn't quite tell its denomination from the outside, but on closer inspection I saw that it was called St. John Garabed Armenian Apostolic Church. So it was either an Eastern Orthodox or a Catholic Eastern Rite Church. Such churches are always have amazing iconography, so different from the sometimes comparatively bland American Catholic Churches. I had never heard of a saint with this particular name. Rather than aimlessly killing time, quiet meditation seemed preferable.

In I went. There were quotes everywhere, virtually none in English. There were no bulletins, nothing to describe the history of the parish. But there were long lit tapers held in boxes of sand, an ancient feeling and so different from the little votives I light in Catholic parishes. There were only two people inside, a woman who looked to be internally bewailing something difficult, and a man in intense prayer. The light was entirely natural with sun streaming through the spectacular large stained glass images, bathing the surroundings in warm amber and red and where the glass was blue, that as well.

There was the tabernacle. Ah, but the altar was placed such that it was clear the celebration of the Eucharist was done by the priest with his back to the people. Orthodox indeed. Probably not a Catholic Church, but so familiar that I decided to stay and say the rosary, and absorb deep the silence around me. The man walked to the entrance of the altar blocked by velvet rope of the type you see at premieres, and made a repetive sign of the cross that looked more like the action of a censer by the thurifer, and then, rather than turn his back on the tabernacle he backed out of the Church. It occurred to me that this was the proper way to disengage from God before him. I loved the respect.

The Church empty, I interrupted my rosary to take a few pictures, using my cell phone, which later I saw was not permitted . My sense was that the prohibition was more about the ringing than the photography, and there was no forbidding of cameras.  A couple came into the Church, looked around quickly and went back down the aisle. They did not back out.

I finished my rosary and thought to say hello to the young man in the office I had seen on my way in and maybe ask about this Church and its history. When I got there, the couple was inside with him. I asked about the name "Garabed". The young man said something incongruous, "It's just the name"."But of a saint, right?"  No answer. I told him how lovely the Church was. I asked him if there was anything I could take away to read about it. No. He did not elaborate. Civil though he was, it was clear that I was regarded as a stranger, and for that matter, not one to be trusted or particularly welcomed. My sense of peace dissipated a bit and a sadness replaced it. Here we all are people of faith and there is such a separation among us that is truly not God's Will.  Still, I thought, what a lovely place to come and sit and consider the  somber mysteries of men that make the so afraid of one another, and the awesome Mystery of God.

So, in fact, they have a website and the St. John is the Baptist himself. There are many Armenian churchs, and it was of Eastern Orthodoxy, with that name. They appear to be fierce about their view that they are descended in a true line from the apostles themselves. I wasn't interested in the debates of theology about the fullness of our respective faiths. I just wanted to sit for a while, and rest in the Lord.

Considering "The Way"

The "way" of the movie title, with Martin Sheen, is the pilgrimage of Camino del Santiago between France and Spain, walked for at least a thousand years. But of course, that long road, about 800 kilometers, is a metaphor for our lives.

Thomas Avery, played by Sheen, is a successful optometrist, country club golfer, with one adult son from whom he is somewhat estranged. (played in snippets by the writer, director, producer, Emilio Estevez, one of Martin's several sons--he is not an only child. I found myself wondering if he wants to be).  His son has given up a doctoral program to see the world, not to choose a life, as one character says, but to live one.

His son, Daniel, dies in a a freak accident in a storm as he begins the pilgrimage, alone. Avery is no longer a particularly religious man, although the vestiges of his Catholicism (he crosses himself several times during the film) remain. Upon arrival in the town which begins the road of the Way, he identifies his son's body, and in a moment of true impulse, decides to complete what his son could not, with his boy's cremains in a plastic bag in a metal box. He leaves the ashes along the Way.

There is an underlying anger in this man, and he wishes to be alone in his grief. as he walks along. So much of it seems to be a solitary brooding. He is unable, however, to stay solo and he meets three people with whom, almost despite himself, he ultimately bonds. One is Jack, a garrulous Irishman, with writer's block, dissaffected from faith and Churches both, but figuring he might be able to break his block by writing about the pilgrims he meets along the path. Another is Yost, a sensitive Dutchman, who shares his pills (ambien) and hash with his fellow travellers. His reason for the extended and harsh walk is to "lose weight" he says, not entirely tongue in cheek.  Then there is Sarah, the seemingly hard Canadian who offers initially that her intent is to smoke to road's end and then give it up, although we learn that she aborted her child to avoid providing another victim for a husband's abuse. As all of us are, each of these souls are wounded particularly in relationship to themselves, and others, and although it is never acknowledged openly, to God Himself.  Although the Way has a faith based beginning, in the movie God is an undertone rather than a crux. But He can be seen, if one is looking for Him, even in this otherwise primarily humanistic film.

After releasing, in a drunken stupor, his rage at the world in the guise of his companions, a chastened Thomas begins to soften toward them, toward their shared pain, and suffering. He begins to leet them into his experience of loss.


When they finally arrive at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and stand in the entrance, it is the man with the desire to lose weight who follows the tradition of approaching the statue of St. James (the theory is that St. James ended up here) on his knees, a form of penance, of which the entire Way is intended to be for the believer. Even Jack goes inside. All are awed by the massive censer that incenses and purifies the altar during the Mass which is only briefly glimpsed. From there, they go to the site where each person leaves a stone and a message or a prayer.
Jack intends to go a little farther, to the sea itself, where he has been advised by a gypsy the group encounters along the way (his son steals Jack's backpack and it is returned to him) to release the rest of the ashes. 


The broken Jack can now heal.


One reviewer noted that the movie is slow in parts, but he acknowledges, that this would be appropriate to a "walk. This a journey in every way. I liked it. I felt I was with them rather than just watching them.
I began to warm up to each of the characters just as Jack did. I began to see their pain and watch it get released, in small bits, as befits real life.


At some point in our lives, we are all faced more urgently with finding our true selves. Maybe that is why I liked this movie, because that urgency (I do not mean panic, but in the sense of turning point) has come for me in the five or so years, but particularly in this latter year of 2011. 


The way Jack has travelled through his fictional life changes with his pilgrimage. The way this Djinn has travelled thus far that seems to be changing too, but I have not yet had the epiphany the movie proposes for Jack. Maybe I need to travel the Camino del Santiago. I have a friend who long ago suggested we do it when we retired. It looks like both of us will have time now. 

The Voice Over Artist--Update

Where the dulcet tones go.

Those of you who read this blog know that in late July, shortly after the separation from my long time job, I began taking a class in voice acting. And, as I may or may not have written, it is a form of acting. In some ways I am beginning to think it is harder than being on stage or television, because EVERYTHING has to be done with the voice and intonation.

The place I chose to take the classes after getting the low down that this was a place that actually trained was Kalmenson and Kalmenson. The first level one, truly a foundations course, was six weeks. Last night, I completed the four week second level. I am now at the point where the next step is the course on HOW to do a decent demo to be sent out to find an agent and to do on line auditions. That won't be until January. In the meantime, I have joined a site, Voice123, and have been practicing as well as making a couple of auditions, which probably aren't being considered because I don't also have a generic demo.

What have I discovered? Well, these foundation courses in part help you define your "signature". You don't necessarily have only one. I certainly don't. Last night, the instructor, the marvelous Samantha Robson (my previous instructor was the equally marvelous Kathy Grable) and there was a guest instructor Melique Berger, with whom I felt a particular click probably because she was raised in New York and had that New York thing going. Which brings us back to me and at least part of my signature, which is bold, energetic, kind of Laine Kazan, ish. Some people are saying "hey, of course" that's how she always is. But I also have a good voice of the confidante, the teacher, the psychologist, cosmetic (like those kind of ads), quirky, comedic, intellectual, fun. So much depends on the copy and the image of "Who am I talking to", which is part of the method. Yes, here I am Djinn from the Bronx, talking about an acting method. I am as it were "finding my truth". The idea is never to fake it, but to use tools to bring up something real in doing the copy. I love dialogue and there are a couple of the training pieces I did (which I get to keep on a jump drive) with one or two of my colleague students (some of whom are already in the business and were refreshing) were amazing! Last night, I was the bored woman trying to hire a burrito as a teacher. It was fund and me, and Robert (Schiede, he has a website) clicked. But Robert clicked with others as well, including one that he and the other student were doing these Schwartenegger type accents that were gut funny. 

What else? I have discovered I am good. But that is probably not going to be enough. The others are very good and the voice over circuit is filled with terrific talents. But I am going forward. You know why? I just like it. I like the people I am meeting. I like the work I am learning.

What else? I have remembered how freeing being creative is. I was going to say "for me", but I am guessing that others experience the same thing when they have the opportunity to explore the creative side. I suppose being a lawyer has its creative side. In fact, I know that it does. But my experience so far is that was always SO serious and the outcomes that were possible were so serious as well. And the unhappiness around me was so intense. With this added endeavor, I can almost physically let out a breath, the one I have been holding for years.  I have to be professional to be sure, and I am learning the parameters, but I can also be myself and use what I AM to make the necessary connection..

One thing I have come to, at least for now, is the confirmation that I found the perfect place for me to be in the law, in the Ethics world.  I had seen a lot of ugliness that is the reality of the business and I knew that sleeping at night was more important to me than making a lot of money. The Bar was the providential match for this young lawyer, who morphed into an upper middle age lawyer while moving up in the ranks. There  could I try to fulfill a mission to keep the profession as it was meant to be, but what I saw it was not. Removed from that part of the field that fit my conscience, and my sensibilities, I'm not sure what "Djinn, Esq." will look like. I think ultimately it will be good, notwithstanding the unsettling way in which I was launched.  And voice over background can only be an asset.

And finally, there is a freedom in having nothing to prove anymore except to myself. I been there, trying to prove my worth to  the world and to various individuals within it, and it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be anyway.  It did not even matter if I did prove myself.  I should have known that.  Life is a series of  hard lessons that knock sense and humility into us and hopefully make us better people besides.  That better person is a hard nut to crack. I have a feeling I will be doing that right up to the last breath..

So, now, on hiatus from the voice over classes, I need to practice, figure out the needs of marketing, and networking. I am not good at those last two. I always feel a little ashamed like I don't belong where I am, but I see now, also that it is the only way to get ahead in this (or any) chosen profession.

So, time to get on Audacity and lay down a practice track and transfer it to a jump drive, several times. Cool. I feel 20 again. I wish I looked it. Tempus fugit, right?

Fall, and Winter in Los Angeles. . . Really

When I first moved to Los Angeles, lo, more years ago than I'd like to admit, it was five years before I bought a coat. I remember an early experience of the Christmas season here, when it was 80 degrees as I drove along the Wilshire Corridor. And it seemed to me then, that the weather in tinsel town was without seasons, always sunny. The title of that song, "It Never Rains in Southern California" seemed entirely true.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pyC7WnvLT4

I guffawed at those native born folk who wore parkas in January or February and complained about the "cold". Cold? I had been thinking about moving to California for about four or five years before I actually did it. The last straw for me was walking between my law school's building on campus located I understood to be on the highest point of Queens, New York to have lunch in the college cafeteria one winter's day. It was not a long way. I had on a hat and a scarf and a coat and my nose felt like it would fall off. I have vivid memory of saying to myself, when I graduate and get licensed in New York, I am leaving town for the temperate climes of Los Angeles. I did not say it exactly like that, naturally, between shivers and verbal emphasis of complaint.  And so I did.


Having become inured to this temperate climate, I began to realize that those who said California had no seasons were wrong. I bought a coat. To be sure the shift is more subtle, except when we have the weeks of torrential rains as we did in 1983 that nearly took away the Santa Monica pier. Palm trees stay green all year long and only some people have annuals growing and shedding  and being reborn on their lawns to cue the changes. But these last two days remind me that there is a certain change. Spring is usually just cooler than summer and spring and summer are mostly all day to day sun. But around now, something new is added. Not a cold, but a chill, and an overcast that is mighty different from the June gloom. And because most buildings here aren't as insulated as in the east, any chill makes a space colder than the temperature might intimate. There'll be if not full on rain, more drizzle. If the sun comes out it is late in the afternoon and after an hour or two, the marine layer is coming in, thicker than at other times of the year.  All spring and summer to now, my windows have stayed open well into the night; but now about six or so, it is a little cool without a sweater and I'll shut them, before the now earlier dark is upon me.  Where I have made time to sit outside for at least a bit to watch the sun go down and the birds twitter wildly before settling down for the night, the idea is not as attractive now.


I have been cleaning out the cat hair in the old wall heater and located the space heater. Forty eight degrees here feels cold, where for an East Coast dweller, we look like wimps. It never fails that someone who moved here years ago loses the stalwart resistance to anything under 60 degrees.  If I were a bear, I would hibernate from now till spring. I do not like the short days. I feel very much like Persephone kidnapped to Hades. But IF I have to do winter, this is the best place to do it. There will be some sudden heat waves, even in the winter, like that Christmas of 80s back in the 80s.


Actually, the weather person has said that we are looking at an increase in temperature and a return of the sun for the weekend.  My beach chair is still in my car, just in case.

The Peculiar Case of the Halloween Obsession

I understand the origins of that end of October event that is Halloween. As a Catholic, on the last day of October, we celebrate "All Soul's Day". It is the day on which we pray for the dead, whom we consider part of the universal Church.  The next day, November 1, is "All Saint's Day". The tradition of the "Day of the Dead" is well known, and related, also, to this remembrance of the dead and a celebration of the lives who touched us.

Maybe it has happened in other parts of the country, but in Los Angeles in any case, it seems that the secular version of this "Holy Day", the holiday (the secular derivation of the religious word) has become a peculiar obsession. I say, maybe it has happened in other parts of the country, because at least when I was a kid, Halloween was strictly for the kids, and it was less about the scary stuff (although obviously the scary stuff was a thread) than about going from door to door (with your parents and to people you knew) and getting candy. In my day, princess costumes were particularly favored by children, the days of Cinderella being very prominent. Oh, yes, there were ghosts, and we all had seen Frankenstein (the original Boris Karloff one and the knock offs by people like Abbott and Costello), but everyone kind of knew this was play for anyone under age 10.
In my neighborhood, which is a mix of adults and religious Jewish families, I have never seen kids go from door to door for the candy. What I have noticed are the lawns of adult inhabitants filled up to the brim with every horrible dead formerly human thing. Vampires, and ghouls amid pounds of fake webs. Arms strewn about. Hands coming out of the ground. In one neighborhood, there were blowup ghouls riding on motorcycles.

I am not sure what this current fascination with the dead and the undead is, but it seems way out of proportion to being a grown-up. I know. My opinion. Just because you have never been keen to dress up as Dracula. . . .Well, yep, that's what I am expressing. An opinion.
Do we not see enough death that we need to enshrine it on our lawns in ghastly displays? Or is it a way of warding off the evil eye? If I indulge in all of this, do I somehow get to spare myself from becoming one of the dead?  In case someone thinks that, no, you don't.

I heard that this week-end, the latest of the Paranormal Activity movies outgrossed the opening for any horror film ever. It was like THE movie to go see. I don't know about you, but even with my belief in the ultimate Grace of Heaven, the idea of dying, well more, the how of the dying than the dying itself, is scary enough. When I was a kid, I still remember rising above my principles and dabbling with my friends with a ouija board. Gotta tell you, that was the first, and last time. I could feel the evil. And I wanted far away from it. And I did experience, in a friend's home, what I will believe to my own last breath, was a malevolent spirit. Why then do so many want to dress up as the dead, or sit in front of a screen watching parts of bodies being torn off. Don't we get enough of that in real life, like, for example, Libya in recent days?

  I am really not throwing stones. I just don't get it. It seems that we are no longer able to differentiate the fictional deaths from the non-fictional versions. And people don't believe someone died, like Mr. Ghadafi, even though his beating, dragging and execution (deserved or otherwise) by his former people was all over any form of broadcast source.

I don't know, there is something chilling to me, and not in the intended sense, about the obsession of Halloween other than the "trick or treat" variety of five year olds. Do we really think we can safely play with the "other side". I guess if you don't believe in the "other side" and I mean all the good and the bad of it, like if you don't believe in demons, you figure, hey what's the harm? But what if there are forces that can harm us and our little forays are a path to our literal and figurative soul destruction? Well, there are so many contingencies. If you don't believe in a soul, there is no harm. Of course, lately, it has been repeating in my brain that our belief is not the arbiter of reality. I know, there are those who dispute that. Dispute away. Time or eternity will tell as to the existence of objecctive and greater forces than ourselves. Me, that's my trend.

When you go out and buy that bloody plastic scar for your face for your zombie costume, consider what a real body looks like after it has been dispatched and torn. The thing we do for fun mimics something pretty horrible. Then why do we?

Just something to ponder. We have a longer time to ponder it now, as the Halloween costumes and goodies are advertised and sold months in advance of the actual day. 

For my part, I cannot wait till this holiday is over. But I certainly wish the best to  those of you who are celebrating it in its gloriously gooey gore . Well, I still like the candy, I have to admit.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation Revenue Raising Folly

I won't call it a scam, because somewhere in 2008 or so, they announced that they would be doing it. Doing what? Well, a fee for picking up our refuse. Not a fee for the landlord of a building. Not a tax, per se, but a fee for each apartment unit (tenants) for the picking up of our garbage weekly. The announcement probably was contained somewhere in a bill. I am not sure which bill, because the assessment of the fee is in our power bill, the LADWP (Department of Water and Power) here in Los Angeles. It started out lower than it is now. Now, for my little unit, my one bedroom, it is 47 dollars plus a month. There are four units in my building, so it is just under 200 for our building.  I am assuming, perhaps wrongly, perhaps correctly, that what I am charged is what my neighbors are being charged. I don't know how many buildings exactly there are in my block, and some are bigger in units (up to about 8), but let's just say, 10 on my side of the street and 10 on the other, so like 20. For this little block then in LA, the total fee for collection of our garbage is approximately 2400. Let's be generous, lets say it is less, 2000 dollars. How many blocks are there in Los Angeles where the LA Bureau of Sanitation is collecting? Wow, that's quite a revenue raise for them! 

http://www.lacitysan.org/solid_resources/refuse/services/equipment_charge.htm

What brings today's diatribe on? Two things, I guess.  The first is that as a relatively recent draftee into pension living, my monthly income will drop. I am not complaining as I will be doing mighty fine compared to others in similar forced retirement, but it did cause me to do something heretofore I did not, that is, look at my bills. When I looked at what used to be a fairly low electrical bill (I grew up with the use of low wattage and I am giving to amber lighting), I noted that the total bill was well over 100.00 for a two month period.. And there it was this fee, that added almost double what I would be paying, not directly to the Bureau of Sanitation, but indirectly through my electric bill. WHAT?   The second thing? I am morphing slowly into a gadfly. I am tired of being told that things make sense which do not, and whether my views are accepted or not, I am going to speak out.  To me, this is ANOTHER example of the cliche from the fairy tale, "The Emperor Has No Clothes"


I was a little ashamed to find out that we had been charged this fee since 2008, as I said, but clearly it has gone up a minimum of 10 dollars in that time, because my research indicates that the early maximum was 36 dollars.  When I called the Bureau of Sanitation, they were amused by my late in coming outrage as they clearly had been collecting from me and my neighborhood confreres for some time. The answer to my distress was simply, "Well, you have been paying it".  Oh, ok, since I have been then it must be good. But I do not recall being given a CHOICE! My neighbor told me that he had looked into our getting a private collector, like the one in West Hollywood, but for a variety of reasons that was not possible.  I haven't asked my landlord if being the owner of the building incurs an extra cost for them, or are we bearing entirely the cost as tenants?


I sent an e mail querie to the Bureau of Sanitation like two months ago asking for a more specific explanation and justification.. They obviously feel no need to respond as I am conscripted to payment whether I like it or not. For the record: I don't like it. I think it is open to incredible question from someone who has the resources to investigate. And, if possible, I'd like to see where this "fee" is going. This in particular, because I haven't noticed a concomitant improvement in service.


Here is how I see the service provided.  Someone, often one of the tenants or the landlord, has to bring out the containers for the Bureau of Sanitation to pick up. My uncle used to get a little stipend to do it weekly, but he has been ill, so right now, my aunt or I does it.  The lovely large trucks come down our streets, ever so slowly and with the authority of their size, blocking any traffic down that particular street. Multiply that one truck going down my block with those other trucks going down other blocks on collection day. As they TRUCK picks up the containers (there is a driver and a guy who kind of lines the cans up before the truck picks up), the containers are dropped wily nilly, often blocking the driveways. A tenant will often have to exit his or her car on the way out to move the can that was so neatly dropped in the driveway in order to escape it. At the end of the work by our Bureau of Sanitation, the street is littered with black and blue plastic bins.  The Bureau's work is done.
Did you know, bet you didn't, that there is a LAW, a LAW for goshsakes! that requires that the cans be back in the yards by a certain time, the next day? Does the Bureau do this?  It does not. The landlord or tenant must now return the bins that THEY took to the curbs and return them to their weekly homes.


Now, if someone will tell me what it is I am getting for my 47 dollars, our building's nearly 200 dollars, our block's 2000 dollars multiplied by all the payments being made by all the blocks in the Los Angeles area, I might reconsider my feeling of being, well, let's just say, taken advantage of by the city government. Bur for now, I am thinking that money is being taken from me, from us, in a most foul determined folly.


Perhaps someone from the DWP and/or Bureau of Sanitation that felt no obligation to answer my e mail querie, knows one of my FACEBOOK friends, and can post an recitation of all the good we are receiving from this charge that I'll bet most people don't even realize they are being assessed, even the ones that are pensioners.  Now if an audit demontrates the good use of this fee, I shall happily continue to pay it. But if, as I suspect is true from the history of government, it is another one of those, we don't know where the money is going things, I shall be more annoyed, as if that were possible.


Now, don't get me started on parking tickets, toll tickets and late in the month moving violation tickets!