Clamor & Craziness

It’s late, not too late but I just want to write now so I don’t forget anything, not sure how I’ll be doing in the morning…the minor question on my mind is shall I be up at 6:00 am to play golf?

So, Clamor event was, in a word, surreal, one of those evenings to go down in the yearbooks, and Ludin came!  But before I get into that just wanted to remember another fav eating spot, el rincon chileno, it’s a great chilean restaurant right next to a little chilean deli that sells empanadas and really good chilean wine really cheap, and caramel in jars and T-shirts that say Chile and the staff call you mija which means little daughter, and it looks like this…

I forgot to eat today, so we dropped by before setting up for some empanadas and a cachito (pastry and caramel dusted with confectioners sugar – yum!) which last I also forgot to eat and am now realizing with terrible regret is still sitting on a battered table at Il Corral which is truly a tragedy.

So, Il Corral is a tiny underground place where some musicians live and they let people put on shows, and so here’s a photo of one of tonight’s acts…Cookie Jar is the guy in the pink dress (he had already lost the fairy wings and pink boa sadly), they were really quite entertaining.  And please note the stuffed, er, raven?  On the wall.  And the rope hanging down from the ceiling, it’s for swinging.

Next up was…was…it shall come to me…experimental though, highly experimental, and that’s about all I can really say about it.  A cello with much foot pedal action, high sustained humming noises, something that sounded suspiciously like a jack hammer, the guitar making low moaning noises.  Our slide show was in the background, a hit with the cool fugazi lyrics and photos of slum conditions and adds for the new lofts coming into downtown…looking something like this…

but the unforgettable bit was meeting Tomatoes and friend, can’t believe I forgot the friend’s name, terrible thing to do, but before I go into their lovable characters I shall let you see them in the flesh…my coworker Lidia is on the left, she’s a character as well, but not quite in the same way.

It is indeed a bit hard to believe…When Tomatoes wandered in the front door of Il Corral as I was sitting there with Bev minding the cash box, he asked me if his outfit was all right…I told him as long as the trousers stayed on he was just fine, I just had to say it, they were already at half-mast.  They didn’t stay on in the end, but I shall get to that later.  You can’t tell but he’s also wearing a red cape that sparkles.  I wandered outside a bit later to smoke (I was drinking don’t you know, and Bobby and Lidia were pushing cigarrettes) – which is when above photo was taken, and Tomatoes was saying that he had been doing coke all night the night before, and it had been a really bad idea.  His friend was drinking something called Sparks which was funnier, I’ve never heard of it before, but it comes in a can that looks like a battery and is essentially carbonated cough syrup with malt liquor.

So, why is Tomotoes called Tomatoes?    Apparently his friends from the barrio in Houston Texas gave it to him because of his rosy cheeks.  He is sometimes called pureed tomatoes because apparently he used to be a skater but was a really bad one and so he had quite a lot of accidents.  He really likes getting his picture taken, I was racking my brains after I first saw him come in about how to get one tactfully, but there was no need for tact!  And then Lidia started him talking about his tattoos and that’s when he dropped his pants, dear oh dear.  So I have a great photo of him with pants down and lidia bending over to inspect his legs, but I have decided in Tomatoes’ best interests not to post that.  I quite liked him actually, he was a very happy and mostly respectful drunk and I imagine meeting Cheech and Chong back in the day wouldn’t be much different.  let us just say that he was wearing some kind of silver bikini thong sort of thing…Bev and I are both agreed that boxers are really the only repectable underwear for men, I mean, you can wear the other kind but it really does detract from your image.  That’s an aside, I shall just leave you with one last glimpse of this facsinating man…he wanted this picture to be a good one…sultry, beer gut sucked in, I think both of us did all right:

And to cap off the evening, as we were standing outside a group of about 15 mariachis came ambling by, softly strumming their instruments and singing bits of sad songs, which made tonight a truly LA experience.  I tried to get a shot but Tomatoes kept jumping into it.  Ah well, after a bit of chatting with the other folks there and a little clean-up we packed up my laptop and the projector and drove on home…