Sack dresses seem to be enjoying a revival among teenagers here on the West Coast.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Raw shrimp at Sake House by Hikari

On my way to Culver City’s Boulevard Music Summer Festival last night (an evening of Motown, Ray Charles and James Brown covers by the indefatigable Brenda Lee Eager supported by a wildly talented band), I stopped by chance at Sake House by Hikari (9729 Culver Blvd, across from City Hall). Not only were most of the items sampled pleasing (don’t miss the Crispy Tuna) and the regular prices reasonable, but happy hour ('til 7) brought the cost down further. Sake House’s eclectic menu includes sushi, sashimi, maki, udon, teriyaki and tempura, it has indoor and outdoor seating, and it’s open daily for lunch and dinner. There’re also Hikari locations in Korea Town at Chapman Market and in Montebello.

Sake House by Hikari, 9729 Culver Blvd, downtown Culver City, and K-Town at Chapman Market, 3465 W 6th St #150, L.A.; and Hikari Sushi, 1864 Montebello Town Center.

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”
– John Muir on travel, in a letter to his wife Louie in July 1888

(photo: John Gabree)

Fiction on Twitter: From short short story to endless stream

It is said that Ernest Hemingway once bet that he could write a complete short story in six words. He was Twitter-ready a half century before anyone conceived of tweeting.

Last week Twitter announced that at the end of November the company will host a five-day Twitter Fiction Festival (#twitterfiction), “a virtual storytelling celebration held entirely on Twitter,” inviting creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world.

According to Twitter, it has hosted great experiments in fiction already, from Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” to Teju Cole’s “Small Fates” to Dan Sinker’s @mayoremanuel. And Twitter notes it has even inspired some literary criticism.

To get into the spirit of things, and without getting into the whole business of streaming and interaction as components of twitter-fiction (working within the limitations of the classic tweet, you could say), I came up with this tweet-length short short story:

On the desiccated, recalescent planet, barren at last, the desolated creature, a cockroach, grief-maddened, devoured the corpse of its mate.

Hemingway won the bet, by the way. As the story goes (and the anecdote itself may be fiction), he scribbled “For sale: baby shoes, never used” to take home the pot.

Unusually affecting portrait at 617 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles attributed to Jr and Vhils. The head was created by scraping the stucco down to the building’s brick wall and shaping the features of the face with paste.
Resources:
The Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles
Los Angeles Murals: Red Line Tour (DiscoverLosAngeles.com)