25 photos featured in my Flickr Gallery: Morning In Hermosa Beach 8.24.13 

There are a few places along the coast of Southern California, where I live, which haven’t made it to PhotoPosts on Xanga. My old “stomping grounds” of Hermosa Beach is one of these places. I lived just south of Pacific Coast Highway at 3rd Street, roughly 15 blocks from the ocean, for three years in the early 80s. Frequently, I’ve gone back with the express purpose of having one of my “Photo Expeditions” but the small upscale town is usually filled with both locals and tourists during the day, especially during the summer. 

 I like to take photographs of “busy” places at times before or after they get “busy” so early mornings are a good time for an expedition. However, early mornings along the beachfront usually brings a thick “marine layer” (otherwise commonly referred to as “fog”) This clouds the air, hides the sun, and sometimes makes taking clear detailed photos somewhat impossible. When I woke up Saturday morning, the air was clear, the sun was rising in the eastern sky, and the “marine layer” (which does creep in across the hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and has been keeping the sky clouded until after noon most days this summer, even inland where I live) was nonexistant. A good sign. So I packed up the cameras and headed for my old “hometown” of Hermosa Beach, about 10 miles up the coast. The fog wasn’t that thick. The only people out and about were diehard joggers, bicyclists, dog walkers, and of course surfers. I didn’t want to pay $1.25 an hour for metered parking, so I parked the car at Valley Park, along Valley Drive, roughly 6 blocks from the shore, and walked down to the strand.

The Strand is “home” to dozens of closely packed two story beach cottages, which sell in the millions and rent for (hold your breath) $500.00 a night, $5000.00 a week, or $20,000.00 a month. (or thereabouts. Some (ahem) deals can be had. Here is “a house divided” which contains both USC and UCLA students. (I went to USC in the 70s, but I lived at home in Glendora and drove 50 miles to school each day.) A trip from Hermosa to the campus is about 15 miles up the 110 Freeway. I wanted to take photos of the living rooms and inside some of these places, which have large windows facing the sea, immediately behind me. Nobody was up yet, but I felt as if I would be “intruding.”

A surfboard themed artwork, flanked by waves, with the Hermosa Beach city logo in the center. You can see the professional volleyball “courts” in the distance, and the concrete pier runs along the beach into the ocean in the far distance.

Here are some beachside dining and drinking establishments. I’ve been snockered in the Poopdeck many times in the past. Good Stuff cafe is about to open. The Mermaid is on the far corner, right on Pier Avenue, which butts up against the pier.

I shot some photos around the volleyball “courts”. Beach Volleyball tournaments are regularly held in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Pacific Palisades, Will Rogers Beach, and in Santa Monica during the “season”. Here are some bagged balls in preparation for a “match.”

A referee sits here during game time.

This shot show the Tim Kelly Lifeguard memorial (the surfer statue), a wooden fence, and the Hermosa Pier, on which I only found a few fishermen this early in the a.m. I arrived between 6 and 7am. I shot this photo about 7:15 or thereabouts. The large building at the beginning of the pier is the Lifeguard headquarters.

Shooting the Strand northwards from the back of the Tim Kelly memorial. Tim was a legendary lifeguard instructor for Junior Lifeguards in the city.

A lifeguard “opens up” for the day. His familiar yellow truck is on the sand, and he’s unlocking one of the wooden lifeguard stations along the Hermosa coast. I like it that we still have the old wooden stations here in Hermosa. From Pedro on south, it seems that newer more “modern” stations constructed of plastic are replacing the historic stations I love and remember.

A shot without the “framing device”. I shot both these from the pier with a telephoto lens.

A bicyclist passes Hennessey’s Bar and Grill right at the end of Pier Ave. on the Strand. The sign states: In Heaven there is no beer. That is why we drink at Hennessey’s”. (I’ve had more than one drink at Hennessey’s in the past.)

In about two hours, this place will be packed with people. Looking east toward Hermosa Blvd on Pier. This part of the street has been closed to traffic for a couple of decades now, but when I “hung out” here in the 80s, you could drive right up to the beachside establishments. I rode a motorcycle in those days, so didn’t need much space to park, either.

The mural on the side of Cantina Real restaurant. The city has commissioned public murals (a very interesting one is coming up) Hermosa, like a lot of SoCal cities, champions artistic endeavor, and a walk through the area is always a feast for the eyes.

The older brick building in the center is the famous Lighthouse Cafe, home to many famous blues and jazz performances. The list is just too long to post in a caption. I’ve provided a link in the Bibliography below.

A cop car makes it’s early morning rounds. The pier is center of the photo. You can see the Lifeguard tower headquarters. I’m shooting from the patio of the Cantina Real restaurant. Hennessey’s is across the street.

The Treasure Chest gift store, and Zeppy’s Pizza. Fat Face Fenner’s Falloon is across the street, but I neglected to get a photo showing another historic Hermosa bar. At the top of this entry is a link to my complete gallery of over 175 photos on my Flickr account. If you have a Flickr account, you can add me as a ‘contact’ and get announcements when I add photo galleries. (I now have about 8500 photos online, replicating and surpassing the amount I had on the failed Webshots service, where I a was a fixture for almost a decade.) Of course I’ll continue providing these detailed “walk with me” PhotoPosts here on Xanga, where I’ve also been a fixture for almost a decade!

If it still existed, I would have taken a photo of the restaurant at which I had breakfast most mornings (Usually a chile topped Hermosa Omelette or a guacamole topped Redondo Omelette, and I might have them mixed up). This is a view showing Pier extending up the hill. The cross street is Hermosa Ave.

Some birdies get breakfast around this bicycle’s tire. Somebody must have spilled something!

This is the clock tower at the front of the Pier Ave. walkway. The tan building “Mexican Junkie” is the building which housed the restaurant I used to frequent, but senior memory is not allowing me to remember it’s name. At least a lot of the old places are still the same. It gets difficult to find any sense of history in SoCal at times.

This is a most interesting trompe l’oiel mural dedicated to the Lighthouse Cafe on the side of the Chamber of Commerce building on Hermosa Ave. The artist is Tim Pugh.

A shot toward the Sea Sprite Motel showing some of the artistic front yards in town. I didn’t get many shots of the ocean simply because it was pretty fogged up, but at least the town shots are clear, and you can get a feel for the place if you’ve never been in beautiful Hermosa Beach , California.

A little later in the day I attempted to take another expedition to Manhattan Beach, the town to the north of Hermosa, but it had warmed up to summer temps, and the crowds were overwhelming. I couldn’t even find metered parking, and all the “free” spots along Valley were taken, including all the parking spots at the park I’d parked at earlier. Well, it’s almost time for me to head to the courthouse for jury duty. Gotta leave Hermosa Beach for the time being and get back to “real life.”

EDIT: 5:13p.m. Thought I’d add a couple more photos now that I’m not rushed to get to Torrance Courthouse. (I am on a jury, and hopefully the trial will be over by Tuesday. Of course I can’t write about it now.) Here is a photo taken from Pier looking east. The Orange storefronts and the blue one below them used to be the “Either Or Bookstore” a great place to get a coffee and browse the books, almost like in a library, back in the 70s-90s. It closed in 1999.

This is the Comedy and Magic Club, another Hermosa institution. Jay Leno still polishes his standup monologues for the Tonight Show on the stage. I’m not proud of the fact, but on one of my insane drunks back in the early 80s I heckled Jay while in the audience during one of his sets. (I was a real ahole at times and people didn’t want to take me anywhere!)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Hermosa Beach Official Website

Wikipedia entry on Hermosa Beach

Wikipedia entry on Beach Volleyball, California Beach Volleyball Association

History of The Lighthouse Cafe

Posted: August 28, 2013 8:44 AM 

I’m an open book on the internet. In fact, if I ever publish my memoirs, of which I’ve nearly completed writing in the near decade I’ve been a blogger and over a decade in which I’ve been posting personal ‘reminiscences’ on my website, I’ll call it “Reading Me Like A Book”, not so coincidentally the title of one of my many poems, written back in the 80s before I ever heard of the internet.

As a blogger, I’m perfectly transparent, but I’ve always made a point not to write about people in my life without their permission, if they are part of my current group of friends. As I age, that group gets smaller, and most of the folks about which I’ve added many “colliding words” of my longtime blog “WhenWordsCollide” are from my past, and not people I ‘know’ or with whom I regularly interact.

When I got together with Liz (@The_Queen_Of_Swords) I was writing my popular Xanga series “My Sexual History”. I told her: “You know you may become a chapter in my blog, don’t you?” To this day, nearly 10 years later, I haven’t written that chapter, cause Liz is still one of my friends. I received a comment on one of the chapters of “Dear Misanthrope: My Life With Pat.” in which the writer told me he hoped I’d gained permission from my ex paramour before writing about her. I didn’t. For all anyone knows, I don’t use her ‘real’ name anyway. If she were to read the story (and as I write in said story, she never even read the poems I dedicated to her, she just wasn’t a reader) I would hope she would notice I may have written about some bad times with her, but I never hated her and forgave her for any misconceptions in our relationship after it ended. 

I just wrote an entry about “My Strangest Xanga Relationship.” The “relationship” happened “on Xanga and is fresh in the memories of anyone blogging here. The gal about whom I was writing did not use the username “QueenLoonatic”. Everyone who commented on the entry knew exactly who I was writing about, but I wrote the entry hoping that even though I was calling the relationship “strange” I wrote it with the express purpose in mind that if the subject of the entry were to read it, they wouldn’t get too upset. I’m always making the attempt in my writing to be truthful, open, and reasonable, even if writing about something or someone who hurt me or whom I may have hurt.

Among the blog entries written by other Xangans I’ve read in my near decade on Xanga, are many in which the writer doesn’t necessarily want their subject to read what they are writing. These bloggers may have friends and family from which they want to extract themselves for a moment, and “rant” or “expunge” their “true feelings” about some thing or event. In my long history “here” I’ve always pooh poohed this “confessional” type of blogging, proclaiming that I’m not that way. I’m the “open book.” I don’t care about what others think. I’m writing the “truth” and I’m gaining permission if those people are in my current “orbit.”

The previous paragraphs are merely the prelude to what I want to say here right now, and believe it or not, I’m writing this as a Xanga blog because perhaps the person about which I’m going to write a bit in the next few paragraphs may get upset if they read what I’m about to write. As usual, I’ll make an attempt to present the facts as well as possible, and not hurt them if they do stumble upon this. I won’t use the gentleman’s real name. I will tell you that I reconnected with an old friend (miraculously, a real good friend at the time, but one whom I’ve never written on the internet, and I’ve written nearly every “chapter” of my long life right here in cyberspace.) and after visiting my old friend, I felt sort of strange, and would like to relate the tale. I told some folks at work, and received some feedback, which I believe is why we, as humans do take to certain forums on the internet to relate these tales. And here is mine.

I was a pretty big “druggie” during the late 70s and early 80s. I have written about some of these times, In 1977 I was fired from my job as a manager at Ole’s Home Centers because I supposedly wore a “dirty shirt” to work one day, but I was actually fired because I and a lot of the folks who worked for me in the garden department would party pretty hard, and sometimes most of the department would call in “sick” following some party or other in which I was involved.

Danno, Steverino, and I were good buddies. Both of the guys worked for me as salesmen in the garden department. We went to rock concerts at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, high as kites. We dropped acid (LSD) together, drank gallons of beer, smoked fields of marijuana, and played loud music. One time the cops came to my apartment in the midst of a party and I answered the door saying “I’m dazed and confused” It was raining at the time, and the policemen wore yellow rain slickers. After they identified themselves. “We’re the police!” I proclaimed “You aren’t the police. Police are BLUE. You’re YELLOW.” Good times. I’ve possibly forgotten most of them.

After I stopped my wanton ways, and joined the establishment in which I’m now ensconced as an electrical designer, I lost track of Danno and Steverino, although  at one time we called ourselves “The Three Musketeers.” I rarely think about those times, and haven’t really written about them, possibly because the old axiom that states that if you remember the 70s you didn’t really live through them. Most of that time is a blur.

Imagine my surprise when Danno sent me a “friend request” on Facebook. I thought he must surely be dead. I CAN remember staying at his place in North Torrance drunker than a skunk on Friday nights where each of us would just stare at each other across the bar declaring “Fu*k you.” “No, Fuuu***k YOU,”

Good times.

I gave Danno my phone number and he called me a few weekends ago. He still lives in North Torrance, only a few miles from where I live. In the time since we hung out together, he’s had a stroke, is partially blind, doesn’t drink anymore owing to an auto immune disorder (like AIDS), doesn’t have a license and can’t drive because he’s legally blind and is pretty much housebound. He lives with his wife and six dogs, has four grown children, and though when I knew him he was an outrageous comic artist, since his stroke he can hardly see and on the phone joked about how he has a large comic collection he can’t even see to read anymore.

We talked three times on the phone over the weekend. After the third time, I got the idea that perhaps he really didn’t have anyone to talk to. Like me, a lot of folks in his life had passed away. Almost his entire family was gone (mother, father, brothers) and one sister was pretty far gone with alcohol poisoning and another was estranged. We reminisced, and caught up on small talk.

Last weekend I made a date to visit him. When I asked him if he were free, he joked “Let me see what it says in my calendar.” The poor guy doesn’t seem to go anywhere, and all he has is memories. I spent about two and a half hours visiting. His wife slept late, and when she awakened, paid me only the smallest bit of lip service, then left to go shopping with her daughter (now adult, whom I last saw as a five year old). The dogs drove me crazy. They barked whenever I made a move to get out of my chair. Danno and I reminisced some more and he told me most of what had happened since we stopped being buddies. He still smokes marijuana. (I wouldn’t accept a toke, since I was driving. I would smoke if at home, but the same applies as with alcohol, I just don’t imbibe if I’m out and about. Of course Danno didn’t seem to EVER go out.)

After a while, I simply had to take my leave, and Danno kept talking about this and that. He wanted to write a story with me. He wanted to get back together. I begged off,  I really did have to go somewhere, but I felt bad because I felt as if we’d gone pretty much over the territory with which we shared an interest. I am NOT the person I was back in 1977.  Even though Danno has gone through some bad luck, he was in effect, the same guy.

This isn’t a bad thing. But as I drove home I got to thinking. I’ve reconnected with quite a few folks “from the old days” on Facebook. And even before then, I remember reconnecting with people on Classmates.com with whom I went to high school. After the requisite greetings and “what have you been up to’s” I found I don’t have a lot in common with old classmates. What we shared in high school was HIGH SCHOOL. We don’t really have any connections nowadays.

Sure, some old classmates are among my Facebook Friends. One gal who was on my staff of the school newspaper “likes” my status updates, and I do hers, but we’re not physically nor emotionally connected. I WAS connected with Danno, but I felt more like I was visiting a person who’d had an accident in his hospital room and wanted to exit said room as soon as possible after an hour or so.

I hate to relate that when I got home Friday night and saw a message on my phone I hoped it wasn’t from Danno inviting me to go visit again. This may sound harsh, and perhaps it is, but I’ve found that when reconnecting with people on the internet, we have the option of walking away from the computer, and doing our “connections” on our own time, siphoning those entries or “status updates” which interest us, and ignoring the rest. In “real time” especially when sitting in someone’s living room, and confronted with “real time” and “real situations” especially when we find we really don’t have anything currently in common with the person with whom we’ve reconnected, it’s a tad more incongruous. I like to think I’m one of the best friends a person could have, and I’ve “lost” a lot of friends over the years. But perhaps in my advancing stages of life, I want to be more or less “on my own.” 

This visit won’t be my last. I’ll probably call Danno again in a week or two, perhaps have another long phone conversation, and maybe go visit. I’d love to show him some of my videos. (But he’s partially blind) I’d love to talk about weight lifting or eating healthy or some of my other current interests, but he’s not into that. And I’m possibly not into the things he is, and certainly don’t share the things in which we were both interested back in our “druggie days.”

Who knows? Maybe we’ll visit more and more. Or maybe less and less. My point is that when we get “friend requests” from old friends, we sometimes find that the thing or event or shared experience which bound us “back in the day” simply doesn’t exist anymore, and therein lies the rub. 

Posted: August 24, 2013 7:01 PM

 TEST FOOTAGE: GAGADANCE 2013

 I admit it, I’m a bit of a ham. I posted this on FB a few hours ago. (Actually posted it on Gaga’s FB wall. She’ll never see it though.) At first the song didn’t reach out and ‘grab’ me, like, say “Poker Face” or “Telephone” but last night I was boogieing to the YouTube vid and decided to videotape my “performance.” Here is what I posted on YouTube: 

“I usually don’t like to present the process, preferring to present complete MikeVideos, with full credit sequences, special effects, in high resolution. I was just fooling around last night. This isn’t choreographed in any way. The sound is coming out of the computer speakers. It’s at a low resolution. I was doing something else with photos at the time and didn’t adjust the lighting correctly. But you never know. I’m 60, and could die at any moment. So thought I’d at least put this out for the requisite 27 or so views from my Facebook Friends and fellow Xangan buds. Gaga herself would possibly say that art should have no limits. So here is a limited beginning to my possible APPLAUSE dance video, with no limits. THIS IS COPYRIGHTED MUSIC.” 

 I’ll post it here too. What the hell. I even made an “mikepop” self portrait. It’s below. (I’m a “scary” little monster.)

Posted: August 18, 2013 7:04 PM

If somebody paid me for it, I could probably call myself a “professional blogger”. From my beginnings as a webmaster, way way, way back during the last decade of the last century, I have always “timestamped” each paragraph I posted online. I started ‘internetting’ late in life. I’m 60 as I write this latest in a long long line of blog entries, and the first words I ever posted to the internet, when I was 46 years old, were the words contained in a poem I wrote to celebrate the occasion. It was called “bornagain”.

Many of the countless essays I’ve essayed over the decades online propose that our “online lives” are essentially our legacies (or could and possibly should be). I cringe when a site on which I’ve meticulously laid out a virtual roadmap of my existence goes dark, because I have to dredge up those files and post them somewhere else. Since my first website began to light a personal beacon in cyberspace, I’ve nearly written my complete autobiography (and it’s a long one, like this post is going to be). I’ve “published” serial “blognovels”. I’ve posted hundreds of poems. (thousands if you count the ones I transcribed from the “pre internet age”)

During this time I’ve made lots of supposed “friends.” Some I’ve met. A few I’ve loved. (And I’ve had sex with at least one, but I’m not telling.) As I age, and as the internet ages with me, it seems like younger generations don’t create the “divide” we did back in the late 90s. (or earlier, if you’re old enough to have had a home computer and “social networked” on the hypertext based internet which existed before the web in 1989.) To someone who has grown up with digital connections and online friends lists, there may be no difference between someone with whom one skypes daily and someone with whom one shares a walk to school in real life. With homeschooling becoming more widespread, and with universities establishing ‘online’ schools, there may even be a school of thought which supposes that interacting IRL may someday be moot.

This is the story of the strangest relationship I have had on the Xanga blogging service, where my sporadic blog finally ended up in 2004. We begin in May of 2009 with a chatboard post. I’d just celebrated my 56th birthday, and my 5th Xangaversary was coming up at the end of the month. I rarely “used” the chatboard, sort of a cross between an Instant messenger and an email client. Xanga was experimenting with so many things back then in an attempt to stop users from migrating to MySpace that there seemed to be a quite nervous atmosphere around the blogsite, and lots of stuff would appear, disappear, reappear, and generally bamboozle both newbies and longtime bloggers like myself.

“Hey Mike, I am glad to have you on my friends list. I saw you over on TheBigShowBlog where you were commenting on “dropping like flies.” I am trying to build up a very intelligent readership for my Xanga which I have only been blogging for about a week, and you looked like a great person to touch base with.

By the way, I have always thought that bald men are the sexiest of all.” QueenLoonatic (not her real username)

In those days, I was known for my long letter/comments which I littered among the posts in the Xangasphere. The message from QueenLoonatic intrigued me. She appealed to my intelligence, offered gratitude, asked for assistance, and sort of flirted for good measure. The message pushed a few of my buttons, and I visited her fledgeling blogsite, dropped a few comments, and began what at first seemed like a healthy, friendly, internet relationship.

In time, we were not only visiting each other, but private messaging as well. I make a point not to “do chat”. However, our interplay on the Xanga message service was quite vibrant, and became personal. She asked for adivce on a number of topics, always stoked my ego and fanned the flames of my boiling desires. She flirted shamelessly, both in messages and in her blog entries. We talked about depression, and opened up to each other. She would mention me in her blogposts, and I would reciprocate. We seemed to be good online buds. We were both in the same age group. She posted photos of herself, both older and recent. As do I. She kind of reminded me of my old girlfriend Pat, a gal I attempted to “save” when in a real life relationship back in the 90s, and with whom I was hopelessly in love (but which relationship, as I’ve written, became sort of a living hell till it finally ended). Queen and Pat even looked alike somewhat. I probably transfered a lot of my feelings for Pat to QueenLoonatic, and possibly should have seen the similarities as triggers, but I naively kept up appearances, and for a year or so, I actually thought perhaps QueenLoonatic and I may someday become an “item” and she might become one of those rare “online personalities” who would eventually show up in my real life.

She lived a few states away from me, but blogged about plans to move to Southern California. I was pretty excited at this prospect. We messaged about meeting each other.

By 2011, I wasn’t blogging as regularly as I was in the years previously. I would go on long hiatuses. When I “met” QueenLoonatic I’d just purchased my home, and had just received my hip revision surgery, so blogging was low on my list of pursuits. However, I would sometimes “come back” to Xanga in a creative whirlwind, and create posts which would appeal to the community at large. I was constantly jesting with Dan over at TheTheologiansCafe, the most popular blog on Xanga, and I was friends and correspondents with many of the “Xangalebrites” of the day. It was a comment I lefr on a post on the popular TheBigShow’s blog from which QueenLoonatic began her correspondence with me.

Both mine and The Queen’s posts were at opposite ends of the blogging spectrum as far as content, but she and I both shared one particular blogging trait. Our entries were long. Both of us could ramble. Some of her early comments on my blog entries would even state that she didn’t read the whole thing. I posted, and still do post entries which dovetail with my other internet endeavors, usually of a creative nature. I also blog my memoirs. Queen would post long rambling entries containing humorous images she got from around the internet, interspersed with “commentary”. We would joke about whose blog entries were longer. While I never concentrated on getting on “Top Blogs” all the time, because of my many hiatuses, the Queen seemed to be obsessed with this particular accolade. If I got a “Top Blog” entry, she loved it when her next post would become “Top Blog”. Both of us liked to knock TheTheologiansCafe down a few pegs, as he was Top Dog of Top Blogs, and remained so until he left Xanga recently.

After coming back from a hiatus, I’d find the Queen’s entries to be a staple on Top Blogs. She finally accomplished what she wanted to do from the beginning, “build up a very intelligent readership” for her Xanga blog. While it might be argued that there are degrees of intelligence, she covered all the bases. Like a lot of Xangalebrities, she could brag about a friends list numbering hundreds if not thousands of users. Lots of bloggers respected her, and read her posts religiously. She never lacked for content. She was quite witty, very opinionated, and seemed willing to share much of her life.

I should have seen some clues that all might not be completely right with this particular blogger, and that I may be setting myself up for a fall emotionally by being her friend. However, as the clues appeared, I may have just ignored them, as I also do in the real world when interacting with people. I tend to overlook faults, and concentrate on the positive aspects of humanity.

Two interesting things happened during 2011. One time I clicked her username from a comment she’d left me, and was blocked from her site. This sort of came out of the blue. I messaged her. She claimed to be ignorant of the process. We caromed back and forth, but I couldn’t “see” her site. She’d still leave me comments, but without being able to leave comments, I feet sort of “blogemasculated” and told her in a message that a block could only come from her computer. She claimed that she had been hacked. Then she “confided” to me that an old boyfriend of hers had been staying over and got jealous when he saw our messages. He had blocked me. After a while I was allowed back into her site, and things proceeded as usual.

At about the same time, a new blogger appeared in the Xangasphere. He claimed to be homeless, with sporadic access to computers. He called himself OuthouseDog (not his real username.) As with most of my internet relationships, he first visited my blog, left a comment, and asked to be my friend. We kept up correspondence, and I read touching stories of an old relationship in which he was involved. He had a daughter, who blogged on Xanga as well. During those times when I was “active” on the service, I counted both QueenLoonatic and OuthouseDog as trusted friends. Sometimes the Queen would post a popular entry which would draw ire from others in the Xangasphere. During 2011 and early 2012, the core bloggers in the “Top Blogs” arena became like warring tribes. The “cliques” or “gangs” (not used derogatorily) of blogging friends in 2008-2010 became more like real “gangs” using words instead of bullets to make their points, and the years of the “comment wars” began on the front page of Xanga. TheTheologiansCafe’s blog usually started these small skirmishes with some offhand “question” about a “topic du jour”. Bloggers like QueenLoonatic would “weigh in” with an opinion. Others who shared her views would support her. Others would disagree, sometimes in not too freindly a manner. By far, the Queen was not the only one who participated in these “wars” but she was, at the time, possibly the most popular “Top blogger” behind TheTheologiansCafe.

QueenLoonatic sometimes seemed to play both sides of the fence on some issues, although I am only surmising this, and not accusing said blogger of being anything except upfront and righteous in her opinions and viewpoints. Xanga’s top blogs page was a bubbling cauldron of controversy, and the Queen liked to stir the pot. She would make and break friendships like they were simply kindling for her fires. When I would visit her, I sometimes had to go through five or six highly opinionated entries before I could find one on which I feld some common ground on which to comment. This blogger who told me she didn’t know how to “block” or “unblock” somebody on the service was soon blocking and unblocking like crazy.

After one hiatus, I returned to find QueenLoonatic and OuthouseDog claiming they were married. I was confused at this revelation. Perhaps they only recently found each other online and got into a relationship? Seems like they’d been married for years. They had a loving relationship. Now we can be whomever we want to be on the internet. At one time, there were dozens of “Miley Cyrus” blogs on Xanga when that celebrity first became famous. I had once surmised that the Queen was an outgoing vibrant, A-plus personality like me from the way she blogged. She messaged me that she was really quite shy, and intimidated “in real life”. But the internet afforded her a “place” where she could overcome these fears. She flirted with me for years, and had even floated the possibility we would meet someday. It sort of flummoxed me that she was in a longtime relationship, her partner also blogged on Xanga, and never talked about her as a partner, and was similarly among my friends list. Could he have been the “old boyfriend” who had blocked me? Could the Queen herself have done so because of something I wrote, or some perceived emotion she received because of something she saw or some comment she read?

Who can tell. I messaged her questioning why she never told me she was married. Her answer: “You didn’t ask.”

In early 2012, another longtime Xanga friend of mine began to get popular in the “top blogs” page, and developed a following. I’d always perceived this person as a bit of a wallflower, not too social, like my roommate at the time, Joel (Cancerboy). Where Joel never used the internet, and seemed afraid of computers, GameBoy (not his real username) seemed to enjoy computing, was a bit of a geek, wrote prose and poetry, and was similarly opinionated, and his Xangexperience afforded him the opportunity to sort of come out of his shell. I think QueenLoonatic was much the same socially. I never could track a bead on OuthouseDog.

GameBoy’s confidence bloomed. He attended Xanga Meetups IRL and began to become more of an “active” member of the overall “top blogs” community. I really wasn’t that active by this time. I always declare “my time” on Xanga was when I was heavily involved in participatory blogrings, like Featured Grownups, in 2005-2007. GameBoy decided to “call out” the Queen as someone who was two faced, played groups of Xangans against each other, and who would just block anyone with whom she disagreed. In time, as with all Xangacontroversies, two distinct “camps” appeared. And the war was fought in plain sight on the front page of Xanga.

Both GameBoy and QueenLoonatic (and her husband OuthouseDog) regularly committed Xangacide, or just created new blogs alongside their existing ones, and each had a number of different similar usernames and blogs over the years. I never understood why bloggers do this. I guess I do from a sociological standpoint, but for me, blogs are our legacies, and it’s best to just have the one, on which you can trace your digital life the longer you blog. That’s why I’ve decided to pay for the privilege of blogging on Xanga, at least as long as it survives. (I still feel it’s a ghost town now. That’s why I’m writing this particular entry right now. I would NEVER have written this a year or so ago, right after QueenLoonatic disappeared for the last time, but I’m getting ahead of my story.)

For some, blogs are merely a platform on which to stage quarrels and spiteful wars. Some bloggers seem to ‘get off’ on this.

After a while, GameBoy and QueenLoonatic came as close to “beating each other up” online as I guess you can in cyberspace. As GameBoy’s confidence increased, the Queen lost some of the sheen from her crown, and she began to exhibit the classic psychiatirc traits of a paranoid schizophrenic. When I first found her “real name” buried deep in one of the profile pages of her blog, and would begin my popular comment/letters by addressing her as such, she would tell me not to do so, as she didn’t want anyone to know here real “identity.” This sounded strange coming from someone who regularly blogged photos of herself, and who mentioned the towns in which she lived. Also another blogger always addressed her by her “real name” and she thought nothing about it. I granted her wish, until such time as she would mention her own name on her blogposts. QueenLoonatic had a “selective memory” (again a similarity she shared with my ex girlfriend Pat). Reality for her was what she perceived it to be at any given time. If that reality changed drastically over the next ten minutes, so be it. If you wanted to be encircled in her orbit, you played by her rules. Even if they didn’t make sense to a sensible person.

QueenLoonatic soon became obsessed about reading her name online, and this stoked GameBoy’s ploy to “take her down.” This was possibly the low point of Xanga, in my experience here, and my story of my strangest Xanga relationship is nearly over, as is QueenLoonatic’s reign on top blogs. She committed Xangacide for the last time in mid 2012. She had a rollercoaster of a three year ride on the blogging service.

The saddest exchange I think I ever saw on Xanga or on the internet in general was a comment exchange on a pulse between GameBoy and QueenLoonatic. GameBoy found out the Queen’s personal information, and announced it on Xanga, since in her somewhat paranoid state, all she could think of in her waning days as a blogger was that everybody on the service was out to get her, and used her real name. GameBoy would just write her name, and she would tell him to stop. In a surrealistic display of over 300 comments between the two seemingly normal adults, it must have lasted for literally hours., amounting to a digital version of those old childhood taunts, where two kids disagree or otherwise keep stating “Did too” “Did not” ad infinitum.

I kept off QueenLoonatic’s blogsite. I made sure I didn’t add any fuel to their quarrel. I’ve always attempted to be reasonable in my dealings with Xangans, and have boasted that I don’t get involved in what was always called “Xanga Drama”. I never liked soap operas on TV either. However, knowing two individuals who are tumbling from one comment section to another (kind of like the end of the Mel Brooks picture “Blazing Saddles” where the cast of the movie go from one soundstage to another, disturbing the other movies being made on the lot.) can get tedious, if each expects their “friends” to side with them in the ongoing war. I refused. I cautioned each of them, as I have cautioned others when similar comment bouts end up in the comments section of my own blog entries, that after three times, I’ll just begin deleting the strings which don’t have anything to do with my post, and eventually I will block the blogger.

I never had to block QueenLoonatic. In fact, even after finding out she was married, and even when she was getting involved in Xanga drama, I was still hopefully surmising that i might visit her in the real world. I believe GameBoy still has an active blog. He really only goaded the poor girl, and wouldn’t let up calling her by her real name. She threatened to sue him, to sue Xanga, to sue anyone on whose blog her name ended up. She enlisted other friends in her efforts. I received emails from them asking me to remove comments GameBoy had left, etc. It got to be a big mess. I really feared for QueenLoonatic’s mental health. I wish her and OuthouseDog well. They both left Xanga eventually. And I’ve attempted to find out if she ever found a “home” on the internet again. Subsequent searches have proved fruitless.

A relationship with QueenLoonatic is not the kind of relationship one soon forgets. I’ll never forget her as she “was” when I first “met” her. A seemingly like minded “intelligent” person who desired exposure and friendship. She found both. But I think perhaps her skin wasn’t as thick as the skins of some of we longtime bloggers, and her fall was deliriously painful to watch. Perhaps she should have done things differently, but perhaps she lacked the social skills inherent in blogging. Who knows? I don’t think I’ll ever find out.

I’ve had dozens of strange relationships on the internet, and on Xanga in particular. This one stands out as the strangest. Here’s to you, my QueenLoonatic, wherever you are. I hope you are in a much better place, and have found peace, and aren’t as bothered by the bullying you suffered, and may have even instigated because of your “blogging style.”

(NOTE: I’ve changed the names of all bloggers mentioned except for TheTheologiansCafe. I’m leaving out the final chapter of this story, as it were, but will append it here as a sort of postscript. Right before the Queen commited Xangacide with her last remaining site, it has been said that she may have created another site. About the time she and GameBoy were really throwing the digital fisticuffs, I wrote one of my uplifting posts titled “What is Xanga: We are all Xanga” and borrowed snippets from the life of a recently deceased Xangan. I received a disparaging and frightfully negative comment (which usually never happens to me) accusing me of all sorts of terrible manipulative things. It REALLY upset me. GameBoy proposed that the comment came from QueenLoonatic in another quise. Logic still tells me it wasn’t her. I never remember showing her any ire or ill tidings. I try to be reasonable to most folks, and don’t like to burn bridges, either in real or online life. It may have been her, and if it were, she must have been laughing at me through our whole friendship, if she felt the way she did in her final comment. I made an attempt to visit the site, as I always do, to return a comment, but was blocked from the site. Sigh. MFN/ppf)

In my News and Notes column for August, I intimated that I would be taking a day trip up the coast to photograph the vintage steam trains and landscapes afforded a trip to the Roaring Camp Railroad in Santa Cruz this weekend. Well, California is a pretty big place. It’s been about 35 years since I was in Santa Cruz, and I didn’t realize till planning the trip on Google maps, that it wasn’t close to Santa Barbara, but closer to San Francisco. Not a day trip at all. In the meantime, perhaps with the “trains” theme still fresh, I made a short detour up to San Marino, a quick 30 miles up the 110 freeway, to visit one of my all time favorite SoCal museums, The Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Galleries, and Botanical Gardens. Usually referred to as “The Huntington Library” or simply, “The Huntington.” The museum is a mix of art, flora, and although mostly closed for renovation this time out, the Library contains many old and rare books. Mr. Huntington was a railroad magnate, and owned the famous “Red Car” trolley system in So Cal. Huntington Beach is named after him, and was a planned community he designed in the early teens. He also at one time owned the downtown L.A. “Yellow Car” streetcar system. His uncle owned the Southern Pacific railway.

Huntington was an avid art collector, and the Huntington Library, nestled in the town of San Marino, an upscale suburb of Pasadena, was once his home. Well, the Library itself is a separate building. But the main Art Gallery, which was closed for renovation last time I visited in 2005, was his residence. Here is a view of the north “sculpture garden” lawn to the side of the art gallery.

There were lots of photographers gathered around these flowers, and when I got up close, I noticed they were all attempting to get shots of the hummingbirds, who were having a bit of an early lunch. I snapped away, hoping for the best.

This is the main library building. The statues to the right and the left of the entrance (on the right) and the exit (on the left) were wrapped, and the only place open was a small gallery on the left. The Library building houses some rare manuscripts, books, and Illuminated Bibles from the days before printing. Sadly, I didn’t get to see them, since they were in the part of the building closed for renovating. However, I’ve seen them on past trips to this special place. A full set of about 400 photos I took yesterday can be found on my Flickr Gallery folder, Huntington Library 8.10.13 HERE.  (And I’d like to mention, even though I’ve had my Flickr Gallery up for over a year, only recently have I made an effort to upload the many photos I once had on my old Webshots site to Flickr. I now have almost 8500 photos in over 30 themed folders!  (That last sentence is a link to the sets page. Check it out sometime. And if you’re on Flickr, add me to your contacts, and I’ll reciprocate!)

Here’s Apollo, as the text on the wrapping states, awaiting his revival when the Library building reopens!

This would have been the main entrance to the residence. It’s now the north “side” of the Art Gallery, and the statue garden stretches behind me. You can see one of those hummingbird photographers to the right middle. The entrance to the Art Gallery is on the left. There are more gardens on the right. The Huntington has quite a mix of sights for the visitor. It was free the first time I went to see the place, in the early 70s, on a high school field trip. It does cost $20.00 for an adult admission during the week, and $23.00 on weekends, but it’s worth it. I was there about a half hour after opening. (10:30am) and stayed till about an hour before closing (4:30pm) on Saturday.

This is the statue at the entrance to the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries which display American art, from the founding of the country, up to and including Andy Warhol! I‘m lying down on my back, prompting one visitor to remark, “You’ll get your pants dirty” to get this shot looking up to the skylight.

This statue, titled “The Council of War” is about two feet tall. Honest Abe consults with his cabinet.

A striking statue of a Roman war criminal with beams of light streaming in from the top of the gallery space. The piece is about 10 feet tall and is called “Zenobia in Chains” by Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, sculpted in 1859.

An open area rimmed by large windows provides the backdrop for this statue, sitting atop a pedestal. Other statues are themed for “morning” “daytime” and “night”. 

I’ve got over 30 photos on this PhotoPost, and I’m missing some of the places I visited on the grounds just to save space and time. (As mentioned, as usual, I have the whole shebang on Flickr, and if you select “slideshow” it’s almost as if you’re walking around with me. (Flickr slideshows are possibly the best on any photo sharing site on the internet IMHO.) This is the walkway around the rose garden. 

And here are some blooms.

I’m on a diet, and I’m trying to save money, so I didn’t expect to eat on the grounds. But I got hungry around lunchtime, so took the opportunity to sample a grilled chicken sandwich and a beer before going to “Japan” and “China”. Parking is free at the Huntington. The lunch was $9.95. Not bad, really, for this pretty large sandwich. I had a beer, but you can opt for different beverages, for a range of prices.

Although a lot smaller than the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the Japanese Garden at the Huntington is a quiet, peaceful place to stop and take a breather. There is a full Japanese house displayed at the top of the hill, and this wooden bridge spans the koi pond.

 Another view of the koi pond at the Japanese Gardens.

 I was really thrilled to see the excavation for the Chinese Gardens last time I visited the Huntington in 2005. This 4 acre (and not finished yet) Chinese garden ( Liu Fang Yuan, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance) is the largest Chinese garden outside of the country of China itself. I had to exercise a great deal of patience in order to get some of my signature “unpeopled” photos, since there were lots of tourists and visitors on the grounds of the museum. 

 I could have stayed here at the Chinese Garden for the rest of the day. It was quite peaceful and extraordinarily beautiful. China is among the countries I plan on visiting sometime after retirement (“only” seven years away!) But in the meantime, there is quite a feel of the “mother country” here at the Huntington Library. Since this is a relatively new area, I spent a lot of time wandering about, as I’d never seen it before. 

 Peaceful, quiet, reflective.

 The  ”Bridge of the Joy of Fish” looking east. 

 An artistic rock sculpture, which looks amazingly like a seahorse. I didn’t notice that when I snapped this photo, and can’t find evidence whether this was planned, or is just my imagination!

 The Library usually houses the Gutenberg Bible, one of only 48 examples of one of the very first printed books in the 15th century. It’s temporarily in the main gallery of the Art Gallery building.

 Here is Pinkie. It’s a portrait painted in 1794 by Thomas Lawrence and is part of the permanent collection of art, located in the main gallery in the Art Gallery building, which used to be Mr. Huntington’s home.

 Pinkie, (above) and this painting, Blue Boy,a 1770 oil by Sir Thomas Gainsborough are possibly the most famous paintinga in the Huntington’s collection. It’s rare in SoCal for a museum to allow photography. (It’s rare anywhere for a museum to allow photography inside the galleries.) As long as you don’t use flash, the Huntington does allow you to take photos. I had the camera on ISO setting (low light without flash) but didn’t experiment too much, and these indoor shots didn’t come out as clear as I’d hoped. 

 Diana is about ready to leap off her pedestal and go “hunting” down the hall on the 2nd floor of the Art Gallery.

 Well, hope you’re not tired yet. I could have (and possibly should have) spread this series over two or perhaps three PhotoPosts, but I’m on a roll, as it were. The cactus filled Desert Garden is one of 14 themed gardens on the site. It’s one of my favorites. These golden barrel cactus are roughly 75 years old, and were grown from seed right on the grounds. Huntington bought the property in 1903 and planned all the gardens for personal enjoyment decades before the public ever set foot here. 

 Inside the Desert Garden conservatory. (which was closed the last two times I visited.)

 Lots of interesting specimens in the Desert Garden Conservatory.

 These interesting plants, called Welwitschia, come from Africa, and only have two leaves, which keep on going like the energizer bunny as the plant grows.

 I’m in electrical engineering, and found it quite humorous that I couldn’t escape my job even during the weekend at the museum, which has over 400 antique light bulbs.

 This is the “Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory” greenhouse, which has areas containing plants and flowers found in rainforests and bogs, is relatively “new” to the grounds. First time it was open on one of my visits was last time, in 2005.

 Exotic specimens in the Conservatory greenhouse.

 Outside the greenhouse is a children’s area, but which also has lots of interesting things for the adult to look at and ponder.

Hope you had a nice visit “with me” to the Huntington Library, Art Galleries, and Botanical Gardens. I’ve been posting informative and hopefully entertaining PhotoPosts for nearly a decade here on Xanga, and I’m not finished yet. I don’t know how many people are left here. (The “top blogs” page has 8 entries, sigh, and among them are titles like “Transitional Update”, “Free Blogs for Displaced Xangans”, “Xanga 2.0: What to Expect.”) I don’t know what to expect with readership anymore. So I’m just going to continue posting what I’ve always posted here on good ol Xanga. High quality blogposts of a creative, uplifting, and artistic nature.

Enjoy.  EDIT: 08-12-13 5:15am pdt: Say what you will. It’s STILL incredibly wonderful for me, as a photographer, blogger, and just being me, to wake up and find my latest PhotoPost entry is at the top of “Top Blogs”. Thank you to everyone who has commented and recommended this post, and as usual, I will make visits to your blogs and check out your latest posts as soon as possible. I said I didn’t really know what to expect when I posted this, and I was very happy indeed, and any expectations have been met and superseded! Thanks again to my readers/viewers. I’ve always been the type of creative to be inspired to be even more creative with positive feedback! MFN/ppf

HEALTH, WEIGHT, EXERCISE: 

Although in actuality, I’m doing quite well, I got disgusted at my fluctuating weight amounts. Over the July 4th holiday, drunk in celebration over a small bonus we received at work, I think I deliberately spilled some of my drink on the digital display of the scale in my guest bathroom, frying the electronics. I tossed the device, and haven’t purchased a new one.

However, without the constant “need” to check my weight (sometimes two or three times a day) I’m actually losing more of it. Can’t tell you how much, and I don’t care, but my belly is a lot smaller, and people are noticing. Below is the first of my “profiles” I’m taking to give me a chronicle of this latest weight loss. All I hve to do is get rid of the “spare tire” and my new abs will show through the fat.

I had to delay my weight training right as I was about to increase weight amounts last weekend, because I’m feeling a bit of pain in my left arm. On Saturday I finished my training, and was a bit sore, but that’s to be expected. I make sure I don’t overdo it, and then I went down to the pool, ostensibly to soak in the hot tub. I just couldn’t be at the pool, however, without swimming a few laps, and exercising on the chrome access bars leading to the pool. The soreness increased, and the next morning, I was hardly able to lift my tea cup. Weird to think I was lifting 15 pound dumbbells and a 50 pound barbell in two sets of 15 repetitions just the day before. I’ve been taking it easy since, not sure if the pain was returning nerve damage or muscle fatigue. It’s now Wednesday morning, and the pain is largely subsided. I won’t be working out again till Friday, if the pain decreases completely, and I won’t increase weight amounts until I’m sure this doesn’t happen again. Here’s some “before” and “after” photos taken about a year apart. Can you see the difference I can feel?

I’ve reduced my diet to a bowl of ramen noodles and a sandwich and a half plus a banana at lunch. Dinner is a (largish) salad. I can feel my upper body bulk, and now I actually get “hungry” at mealtimes. If I feel like breakfast (on weekends, usually) I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal. I post “instagram” like photos of my salad concoctions on Facebook, where they are pretty popular. The only meat I’m eating (besides thin deli cuts of turkey for the sandwiches.) is fish, usually on Sundays. I’ve always liked to cook, and am begining to become a pretty good one.

It’s time for an eye examination, and that will happen within the next couple of months. I looked around on the internet to see if I could find anywhere selling the black plastic hornrim frames I used to wear (I call them “Buddy Holly glasses”) I’m quite tired of aviator frames, and the “glass” area seems to get smaller every time I get a subscription changed. Well, wonder of wonders, those old black frames are “back”. They call them ‘geek chic’ on the LensCrafters website. I’m gonna go for an entirely new look. Might even shave the beard again. And perhaps even the mustache.

WEALTH:

I got a raise last week. (Only 4%, but anything helps) My credit card consolidation loan is down to under 7 grand (from an amount close to 40 grand borrowed back in 2008) I’m in the process of refinancing my car, attempting to lower the rate from 4.5% (currently) to 2.99% (which is what the flyer for rategenius.com advertised) Hope to hear from my loan officer with good news today.Things are looking up, and the light at the end of the debt tunnel has never shone so bright! (I’ve already begun making vacation plans (a two week Danube River cruise) and home improvements (a screened in porch for my “weight room”, and a fence between my home and the loud neighbors), possibly a 65″ HDTV upgrade on Black Friday this year too!) I just have to make sure I don’t acquire any more debt, and only purchase things with my own money!

XANGA AND THE INTERNET: 

Xanga didn’t close down. I didn’t think it would. I already weighed in (my Voice of Reason column below) on my thoughts. I did pay for a subscription upgrade, and will continue blogging here. I am also in the process of upgrading my personal website. I’ve only done a couple of weekends on new pages, but the front page is much more streamlined. I can’t use my old Dreamweaver program to edit my old pages, but I can code HTML,so I’m updating and fixing the code on the older pages. Check it out at www.allthingsmike.com

Back when Webshots closed down, I think I was more upset than even when Xanga announced it’s possible shutdown. I’ve constantly bragged about my rating as #6 of over 16,000 users posting photos of California. I switched to Flickr last year, but never really concentrated on adding photos and themed folders as I did on Webshots. I’m doing that now, and at last count, have nearly 8000 photos posted in 27 folders. I’m trying to average two or three folder uploads a night, and I’m adding tags for SEO. I’m also going to create folders with my “best of” photos. I’m adding links to my allthingsmike site to the Xanga photoposts. Next week I am planning on going to Santa Cruz and take a train ride up into the redwood forests in an open car. Should make for some great nature photos.

I’ve revived my old “ElectricPoetry” group on Facebook. I really like their group structure. Anyone who reads me who writes poetry and has a Facebook account is invited to join. It’s a closed group right now, with a little over 50 members. But I’ll add you if you message me or let me know you’re interested either on FB or in comments here on Xanga.

Someone recently told me they really missed the old blogrings (as do I). That only fuels my fire. I may post an Internet Island entry sometime soon. Just have to find the proper subject. 

I guess that’s it for now. I’m a bit irked that Xanga is still quite buggy, and at a time when I’m doing lots of upgrading and creative endeavors on the internet, the site is so slow and hardly works at times. I understand that is going to change at the end of August, and I’m looking forward to the “new Xanga” as a platform for my ever increasing “electronic experiment in art” online.

August 07, 2013 7:06 AM