Present and future fires.

Tonight, after a week long heat wave in Los Angeles that has brought up the rear of a sublimely pleasant summer I thought I'd write about the current strangeness of this city...and by implication, the country. But alas, Kunstler already has. Being a visitor, not a resident, he captures the oddness of Los Angeles very well - which is odder than usual of late.

The fire, still burning out of control just north of the city, has produced a Hiroshima like plume of smoke and ash visible everywhere for days now. Having commandeered the southeast horizon it seems to be saying "Look over here. This is the entrance to Hell."

And so it may be. Mount Wilson, where most of the area's radio and television transmitters are perched, is threatened by the inferno. The symbolism is too much. Too easy. Too blunt. The great unifier in a mess of a place like Southern California is the relentlessness of television and radio. What Angelenos do during and after fires, and riots, and earthquakes is watch TV. Lots of it. Contrary to popular myth we do talk to neighbors in these moments...mostly about what we're seeing on TV regarding what is happening around us as it happens. The agitation provided by local news is part of the experience of living here. Watching fires, earthquakes, and car chases is our common arena.

The harsh reality of Southern California is that 80% of us shouldn't be here. There is not enough water. We borrow and barter for it. So much has been stolen and diverted from other places that a mega metropolis of 15 million - give or take - has erupted in 60 years. This is unnatural.

The tiny river that gave birth to El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula has long since been cemented in to control periodic, but severe, floods. The water that the city came by naturally had to be controlled. And L.A. in order to fulfill the dreams of millions of migrants from the east - and now the south - has to obtain the bulk of its water from elsewhere.

Until WW2 the most important city in California was San Francisco. Now it is not in the top 3 - a fact that still drives some residents of that city around the bend. (L.A., San Diego, and San Jose are all more important to the state and the country. )

Then a city that couldn't sustain itself without water from elsewhere became a city that chose the unsustainable car culture. I'm old enough to have a slice of memory from that brief period in which the freeway society made sense. One really could get anywhere in 20 minutes. There was truth in the P.R. tag line that one could ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. It was, very briefly, an American miracle.

Of course, fossil fuels have a way of

A. running out

and

B. polluting.

Griping about the air here now is the privilege of those who did not experience the dark brown soup we inhaled in the 70s. The worst days now do not compare to entire summers before pollution controls came into effect.

Even so the people still came and came and came. With cars. Lots and lots of cars. Until the 80s they mostly came from the east. In the last 2 decades they've come from the south. I also have a memory of when Los Angeles was a white city with a substantial and largely impoverished black minority. In some ways, the Rodney King verdict riots signaled the end of that era. By the second day what we saw on television was the Hispanic underclass openly seizing the moment. LA is now the second largest Spanish speaking city on earth.

Regardless of how people communicate, the fact is that aside from Phoenix and Las Vegas, Los Angeles is the least sustainable city in the United States. How these places manage the coming energy shocks is any one's guess. Most of us should not be here.

Not spoken but just under the surface during all fires is this: Those with homes threatened by the flames should not be there in the first place. In this way those residents represent most of us here. Water from elsewhere, land that must periodically burn, all to undergird a suburban car culture that I suspect will baffle future historians. Did they actually think that could continue? will pass the lips of history undergrads everywhere.

Meanwhile this weekend, the Daytime Emmys were held in the slowly revitalizing downtown and club kids and tourists roamed genuinely revitalized Hollywood -both pockets of the L.A. urban landscape in which people live, shop, and play because mass transit on rail actually exists there. I have no idea why subways and light rail make for a more civilized city whereas buses and cars only corrode it- but they do.

Of course, an awards show for daytime television is not exactly a hopeful thing. Chat show yappers and soap opera actors being awarded for distracting us with aplomb - while the country's metaphorical house is on fire just over the ridge - is also to blunt a metaphor to ignore.

The summer is over. While I look forward to my beloved USC Trojans smacking some teams around, and the shorter, cooler days, the Autumn has been commandeered by an ominous sense that the jig is all but up. Hell is on the horizon. There's a pungent whiff in the air of coming chaos. The bear market rally is dead, the President and his men have emptied their bag of tricks in the first 8 months, 20% of the population is under or unemployed, and Israel is done waiting for Iran to cease and desist.

It is not just L.A. that's on borrowed time. We all are.

Lunch Break

United States Of Murder: spasm of gun violence in the United States, which has been rocked by six fatal mass shootings in the past three weeks...

Check out No Sheeples: "Benito" Obama, uh, Dear Leader, came close to Mussolini's notion of fascism in his most recent press conference...


Obama, he so mad: Obama says North Korea "broke rules". North Korea responds with "neener, neener, neener."


Circle Jerk: Prez bows to Saudi King, NYTimes bows to Obama.

Hot Elephant: He's Young. He's Hot. He's Republican.

Norton dismisses the Constitution: "I don't think members are in the least bit affected in their votes on the question of its constitutionality," she said just last week.

Obama now: 56% approve 43% do not.

Music: Debbie Harry makes it all okay.

Mexico falling.

Living as I do in the second largest Spanish speaking city on earth, Los Angeles, I interact and live with many Mexican-Americans and Mexicans. Rather happily, I'll add. Mexican cultural contributions to my city are incalculable, and probably the largest influence - more so than "North American" influence. Not to mention the backbone. Until the recent crash one could, quite truthfully, state that many of the jobs held by the Hispanic underclass would not be done by others. This is not new in the American experience. Immigrants, legal or not, grab the low rung.

I no longer think others are not be available for the low rung labor jobs. Everyone is spooked. The shift in my neighborhood, Koreatown, in the last 6 months is palpable. Not long ago I never heard English in the neighborhood markets, only Korean and Spanish. Now English is as normal as Spanish. No, all the second language graduates did not suddenly invade. English speakers have been priced out of richer parts of town. (Mostly white, but not all. Black Americans are rolling downhill, too.)

I don't participate in the immigration wars much. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals have it wrong. Conservatives demonize Mexicans and Mexican culture in a way I find reprehensible. Fear of the "other" oozes whenever I hear a talking head pop off about "illegals". From my observation, few cultures have a work ethic as embedded as Mexican culture. Certainly American culture is much more beholden to the "something for nothing" ethic now, bromides about the Puritans not withstanding.

Liberals are, as usual, in their own sort of denial. A victim is found (immigrants)- and all rational thought leaves the discussion. Of course, sovereign nations have the duty to protect their borders. Duh.

Further, Mexican migrants in the Southwest are not at all the same as Irish migrants during the potato famine. Yelping "We are a nation of immigrants" is...well...dumb and beside the point. Mexico is different from Ireland for the most obvious reason - Mexico is right there. There is no ocean between us and them. An immigrant is not cut off from the homeland in the same sense. Certainly a migrant is a foreigner here. But vast swatches of Los Angeles are, for all intents and purposes, Mexican. People and commerce move back and forth in a kind of nether land. Mexifornia. Irish, German, Indian, Italian immigrants had no such experience. When they left their homelands, THEY LEFT.

That's a weather report, not a judgement. It is what is. Which is why I find the implosion of Mexico the most under reported story of the new year. The collapse of Mexico is a real possibility and not one American leader (including my favorite, SOS Clinton) seems remotely concerned with it. Northern Mexico is a few steps this side of civil war. A breakdown of Mexico would unleash a "humanitarian disaster" to use the hackneyed phrase. And not on our doorstep - in our living rooms. Why is next to no one discussing this?