December 19, 2006

Crazy Holiday Parties

Of John Humble’s photograph of the convergence of LA’s 105 and 110 freeways, clusterflock contributor Mark Jones observed that it evoked in him a kind of nostalgia for “something.”

Was it the crazy southern California parties, I wonder?

Just this morning I had an email message from an LA friend. He regaled me with accounts of Saturday’s “crazy Hanukkah party in Encino” and Sunday’s “crazy Cambodian party in Long Beach with song and dance show!, blood porridge, duck feet salad, and frog-on-a-stick,” awash in rivers of “Hennessy cognac and Captain Morgan spicy rum.”

posted by in adventure, alcohol, cities, environment, geography, pop culture | * | 11 comments 

comments

  1. John Pakaluk on December 19th, 2006 at 10:00 am

    And I once went to a crazy conservationists party in San Diego: banging drums shirtless, walking planks over bonfires, kegs, etc.

    I suppose they are typically southern californian, but to be fair, an annual Christmas party I attend off of Rt. 2 in Massachusetts features an indoor beach, except without water.

  2. Andrew Simone on December 19th, 2006 at 10:45 am

    There are times I miss that state.

  3. Sheila Ryan on December 19th, 2006 at 12:33 pm

    An indoor beach without water?

    Sounds like a desert. I like it.

  4. Deron Bauman on December 19th, 2006 at 2:22 pm

    re shirtless, see: m.m.

  5. Mark Jones on December 19th, 2006 at 3:01 pm

    I suppose I was having a pseudo-Frederick Jackson Turner moment of the ‘end of the frontier’, along with ‘what could have been’, and a general realization that I now navigate in a post-dream factory environment.

  6. Sheila Ryan on December 19th, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    Whew, Mark!

    I just toppled off my chair and pounded my fists on the floor!

    (And that’s good.)

    If I had a prize for “Clusterflock Observation of the Year” to award you, I’d thrust it into your hands right now.

    Yeah, I know. It don’t equal that stroll down the red carpet.

    But still . . . damn!

  7. Sheila Ryan on December 19th, 2006 at 3:31 pm

    Mark’s comment is smart, powerful, personal AND universal . . . and I guess it reminds me of my own ‘Calfornia dream’, abandoned in the Sonoran desert wastes.

    “I was building a house . . . ”

    as Gene Hackman said to Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven”.

  8. John Pakaluk on December 19th, 2006 at 6:13 pm

    I suppose it does sound like a desert, but then there’s something incongruous about beach chairs and an umbrella and coronas.

  9. Sheila Ryan on December 19th, 2006 at 6:24 pm

    Oh, well, now I suppose I forgot to mention, John, that I consider just about any desert to be paradise on earth!

  10. Sheila Ryan on December 19th, 2006 at 6:27 pm

    P. S.

    . . . so long as they ain’t none o’ them Abrams tanks rumblin’ about!

  11. I Love LA : clusterflock on November 19th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    [...] from my LA friend [...]


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