OPENING SCENE: SAMO COURTS...

FADE IN:

EXT. SANTA MONICA PADDLE TENNIS COURTS. LATE AFTERNOON.

Two older white men and a black woman sit on one of the municipal benches at the Venice Beach paddle tennis courts; the men, JIM RUSH and SMITTY SMITH sit shoulder to shoulder facing the woman. The woman, LA RAE KELLOG, wields her Blackberry in one hand so that she may gesticulate with her free hand. Whatever they are talking about, the tone is jovial, playful--almost congenial.

The bench is situated at the far end of the courts. The courts are caged-in hemispheres of three courts wide by two courts deep (There are other benches, but none has a tree shade as generous as the one which concerns us now, or as formidable a parking access).

We see a tall Chicano man, ART ESTRADA, late fifties, and (what appears to be) an apprentice, JON MINI COOPER, come out of a 1984 Black Ford Bronco. Before reaching the bench they talk and the apprentice walks off. He does so exaggeratedly, rattles off a txt message, converses with the asphalt.

ART
So, I was thinking, if laughing gas were to condense into a liquid,
what liquid would it make? What should we call the liquid state
of laughing gas? Purely as a matter of speculation of course...

LA RAE
You seen Greg?

JIM
I seen him earlier, around the same time you saw him taking

SOCIAL NETWORKING LANDSCAPE

CMO's guide to the Social Media Landscape can be found here, click here

BOYLE

Chavez clava Los Angeles
en los que no have
and those on the west side
Pero sin verguenzas
no te metas con mis Cadillac
chancletas. Orale, pues
mas tarde se acalambrio el atardecer
and the Datsuns and Subarus and helicopters
on the 5 south or the 10 east
chaparro each other with green rope twine
and it sounds like sooty waves
street-legal muffler ombligo
paleteros and ice-cream vatos
the random Don Bigotes with
diver's cap of Just for Men
and Marks-It-All sideburns
the ancient vagos playing golfito
across the street from burger filling
at the foot of the hospital that should be called
Brown Memorial, or in the septic duck funk misted
indelible at Hollenbeck adonde uno puede
holler back at the EMF of a Union rep
and wear black sox with huaraches
because you don't want cold calves.

PANDA'S LETTER TO LONGCHAMP, PURSE MANUFACTURER

Your company has a reputation for producing quality purses. That is what led me to purchase a Longchamp tote as my everyday purse. I am writing because, unforunately, I am disappointed with my Longchamp tote. I purchase the purse in May of 2010 and anticipated having the purse for a long time--at minimum a year. I have friends that have purchased Longchamp purses and have been able to use them for many years without complaint. However, after less than four months of normal use I am dissatisfied by the fact that the bottom corners of my Longchamp tote have become worn and frayed. I am open to any suggestions as to where I can repair my Longchamp tote, or as to whether Longchamp has a guarantee or warranty of their products as does Louis Vuitton, Coach, and other purse producers.

OPEN LETTER TO BABY DON CHEADLE

Dear Baby Don Cheadle,

We are so seriously excited about your imminent arrival. Every one tells us not to worry and to disregard what every one else says. This can get rather confusing as it forces us to cancel everyone's advice by canceling everyone's advice. After tabulating with this algorith, we are inevitably left, once again, with your undisputed interger (1, of course) and very little viable intelligence.

If I get to speaking about you as if you were a meteor I apologize in advance. It's just not every day that two adult humans get to welcome a new member of their family. If you haven't figured it out, yet, you are a newborn male human infant. So, there are some things we would like to square away with you before you come in and completely wreck our lives by giving it some meaning.

We are not pedigreed people and we are not independently wealthy. We are hard-working and tempestous, and we like to bicker when it suits the situation. Your mother and I chose to teach people how to be better people, which is not necessarily a lucrative endeavor. You can live comfortably, but you will have to work and study and amass credentials if you are to acquire any of the luxury items your friends and acquaintances possess.

We are perfectly imperfect and realize this might not jive with your clean-slate consciousness. We understand that no matter what precautions we take we are going to screw you up good. And I have already come to terms with this. It is written. The good news is that we will undertake screwing you up with the best of intentions; the bad news is that everyone is screwed up in their own way. In many ways, how people are screwed up is like a inherited fingerprint, a DNA heirloom.

But hold on. You probably think that I am being disparaging or humble when I say that your mother and I are going to screw you up. You don't know me yet so I will let it slide, but just so you know I am a primate with moderate abilities when it comes to contradictions and verbal architecture. When I say screw you up, I mean in the good sense that our parents screwed us up, in the good sense that all children are the result of some deficiency passed down ad infinitum.

Please do not take this as facetious batter from which you will draw large pancakes of reasoning. I am being completely literal when I say that inevitably your mother and I will imprint you with some kind of tick that other might people might call a personality or temparament. We are just getting started.

FUTBOL & SUNDAYS

Sundays, I like to get up early and throw my hoodie on and walk to the 7-11 on Pico and Lincoln to get a.) Sunday LA Times b.) Krispy Kreme chocolate frosted doughnut c.) rampantly sweet coffee. There's no one on Pico except the crankheads that belong to CLARE and the joggers or bikers pushing past to get to the beach.

I like to read the paper and turn on my computer and see what kind of mischief the world has gotten itself into. Then, I like to take care of my water closet business preferably accompanied by the front page. This is followed by more computer and more reading. Then, around 10 I like to walk to Virginia Ave park and stretch out before the futbol starts.

Futbol on Sundays is the religion that I have adapted because of my secular, closed-minded beliefs about religion. For me, there is no better religion than the religion which makes you run after a ball for pure unadulterated fun. We chase the ball because it is round kind of thinking prevails for me most on Sundays. Maybe we chase the ball because we did that once for free, for no trophies or successful recipes, for pure deporte.

INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS AND FIGURES

[Via: Online Schools]

NEW NEIGHBORHOOD

About a month ago, my wife and I moved to Los Angeles to await our first child. We both believed that Los Angeles would have more to offer a family than New York--not in terms of culture, strictly in points for quality of life. We moved in to my wife's Aunt's house in Boyle Heights, two blocks from a cosmic overpass and one of the best Mexican bakeries in the city.

I have fallen in true lust with this swath of the city. I mean, this neighborhood is not fancy or glitzed up with stucco like Alhambra or one of the Covenas. It is the epitome of a working class neighborhood and having Mariachi Plaza three blocks away makes for interesting afternoons. Sometimes you can hear the dueling Mariachis. Most of the times, the speakers from the guitar store blare Lola Beltran or belchy banda.

We have stumbled on the Ben Franklin branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, and had our fill of taquitos at Al and Bea's. We have even had to kill some time waiting for the Ben Franklin to open and stared at the Hollenbeck police station trying to wring some answers from the post modern facade of the architecture. And, really, how large can you get a red antenna to be? The Hollenbeck police station has a gargantuan red comm sys on it premises.

REWRITE: ODE TO WESLEY SNEIJDER

ODE TO WESLEY SNEIJDER


At 17, Sneijder commences career in Ajax brigadoon
to continue his father’s futbol seraphim from the primeval,
medieval core of Utrecht to the plush, ergonomic belly

of Mundo Futbol’s cult-like Mechanical Academy
and achieves hincha-status with Internazionale so
hooligans in Milan now ploy a Dutch limp in star suits.

At 26, Sneijder helms battering gallop abacus
representing hazard-orange Netherlands against
stalwarts Brazil, Uruguay, and Cameroon.

In infinite three-day rapscallion shadow
fresh from Internazionale romp and circumstance
hustled his heart out in South African terrordome.

At 43, Sneijder has brood of Quicksilver Children
in fashionable Italian Alps that he compels
to crack cross-beams, engineer Ozone carburetors
and train with the martial concentration of Spartans.

One of these children will employ a hostile take-over
of Ajax and rain down on staff tutoring jacks, astrolabs,
murderous arts and crafts, and battlehymns of the aerobic
star chamber

ODE TO WESLEY SNEIJDER

At 26, Sneijder helms battering gallop abacus
representing hazard-orange Netherlands against
stalwarts Brazil, Uruguay, and Cameroon.

In infinite three-day rapscallion shadow
fresh from Internazionale romp and circumstance
hustled his heart out in South African terrordome.

At 17, Sneijder commences career in Ajax brigadoon
to continue his father’s futbol seraphim from the primeval,
medieval core of Utrecht to the plush, ergonomic belly

of Mundo Futbol’s cult-like Mechanical Academy
and achieves hincha-status with Internazionale so
hooligans in Milan now ploy a Dutch limp in star suits.