California Living

You know you’re in Southern California when you see a motorcycle with a surfboard. Cole and I just got back from a weekend in Santa Barbara visiting old friends. We drove home today down the PCH. I have so many childhood and adult memories of this route; it was amazing to relive them knowing that SoCal is home again. We watched dolphins swim just off the coast and had lunch with the bikers at Neptune’s Net. That’s where I snapped this shot. (Boy it would be nice if I could get Word Press to save images as thumbnails. Damn buggy blog.)

We stopped at a beach-bum plant nursery in Malibu. There was an area where they kept chickens and rabbits. Cole pointed at our feet and there was a little mouse. We tried to pick it up and it ran in with the roosters, who promptly started pecking at it. So we grabbed it and brought it home. Tim (Cole’s idea) was clearly someone’s pet and is very happy to be in a cage running in a wheel. We needed another pet like a hole in the head, but you know, who could resist this guy:

More Runaways

Chris Salewicz wrote an interesting piece on the Runaways for The Word that also ran in the Independent yesterday. Maybe I just like it because I’m quoted. I also like the part where Viv Albertine talks about being attracted to Sandy. Salewicz’s ’76 piece on the band for NME is also a classic.

Sandy West Story

For the last few months I have been living with the memory of one of rock’s great drummers, Sandy West. I hope I have honored her — the good and the bad and the brave and the tragic adventure of the original Runaway — with this LA Weekly story. I have a lot more to say about Sandy, the band, the movie, etc. — and right now I’m trying to say it in my thesis. More to come.

In the meantime, if there is a heaven, I hope she and Alex Chilton are up there jamming.

Evelyn on TV

If you’re in LA, apparently a segment I taped for the show Connie Martinson Talks Books will be aired tomorrow, March 13, at 3 p.m. on channel 35. I haven’t seen it myself. Hopefully it doesn’t suck. I talk about Mamarama.

Happy Birthday Cole!

Tomorrow (March 10) is the seven-year anniversary of the day that Cole was pushed and pulled out of my body, with no great ease — I still haven’t worked up the nerve to watch the video. With Bud out of town (worst possible timing, as it turned out), I’ve been playing single mom. Or as Cole said to me yesterday, “You’re double mom.”

“What’s double mom?”

“You’re lonely, but you’re doing the work and just as good as two moms.”

He was worth every stitch of episiotomy. Happy birthday Cole!