Yoga Freaks*

*not to be confused with "Goa Freaks," one of my favorite books

I've taken classes from some, ahem, interesting yoga teachers while living here, but my latest teacher takes the cake. Last week I thought he was handsome in a Luke Perry sort of way, but this evening he taught class wearing earrings, a shiny necklace, and makeup. He was also sporting baby-smooth legs and a lacy red thong under his shorts.

While waiting for class to begin, I picked up the L.A. Times and read a review of a book called "Parts per Million" about the possible link between numerous cancer cases and the nineteen oil wells at Beverly Hills High School. There's a plant at Century City and another forty wells "near Cedars-Sinai Medical Complex." I'm wondering if they mean the one that is located around the corner from me (there's another complex that is a little further west). If there are oil wells around here, then it's official, I am completely unobservant. The review is here:
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/la-bk-abcarian22jul22125320,0,5526634.story?coll
=cl-books-features

The Birds and The Lemons

There are hummingbirds in the flower bushes outside my front door these days, and I scooped up a large lemon that had fallen from a tree while walking home last week. Yet despite the fragrant atmosphere and all the increasingly interesting dates, my switch has yet to be flipped. I haven't had a bona fide crush since moving to L.A.

I do, however, have allergies (or a head cold), and I spent almost all of yesterday in bed reading "The Post-Birthday World" by Lionel Shriver. The protagonist in the novel is a woman in her early forties who is in a comfortable if plodding relationship but is tempted to abandon her ten-year partnership for a romance with a dashing but flighty snooker player. Alternating chapters follow the outcomes of staying or leaving, detailing the excitement along with the incredible tumult and stress that results from her choosing the snooker player but also demonstrating with the opposing storyline that there are no truly "safe" decisions. I related to the narrator's romantic conundrums but also drew parallels with my decision to leave Austin for L.A.

Recommended Reading, Part II

I'm in the midst of reading a book called "New York & Los Angeles," edited by David Halle. As the title suggests, the book compares and contrasts the two cities, with the idea that "New York and Los Angeles are the two American cities with the strongest claims to global city status" (Gladstone and Fainstein, p. 79).

As a sidenote, I once read that Houston might become the most important city in America, due to the rising importance of oil. But now that Halliburton is relocating to the Middle East...

Anyway, this section from the book was enlightening to me:

Unlike the economies of paradigmatic American industrial metropolises such as Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, which were based on "Fordist," mass production industries churning out automobilies, steel, machinery, and domestic appliances, the economy of Los Angeles is composed of "enormously diverse, flexible production sectors, including financial and business services, high-technology industries, and various craft, fashion and cultural product industries ranging from clothing and jewelry to motion pictures and music recording" (Halle, p. 14).

"Flexible" is the key word here, the one connected to my job search difficulties. A lot of work here is contract and thus based on connections. As a newcomer, that's a problem. For a former city employee, it's confusing.

Another interesting bit:

New York and Los Angeles are the premier cities/ metropolitan areas for immigration in America, in a close race with each other to rank first in terms of their numbers of immigrants (Sabagh and Bozorgmehr, p. 99).

Someone wrote into my blog that I was writing only about "white" Los Angeles, but I explained that I must have been giving a "vanilla" impression because I was trying not to divulge too many details about the people I was meeting here. In actuality, I have been hanging out with several East Asians, Asians, and Latinos (both foreign and American born) as well as African Americans. I have also been steeped in Jewish culture here. My acquaintances may tend to be professionals (regardless of ethnic background), but just going to the grocery store or the gym here is a true experience in "cultural diversity."