Power To The People

There's a move afoot to turn Kern County into an epicenter of alternate energy. Who's spearheading this forward thinking, environmentally friendly effort? The City of Bakersfield? The County?

Noooo....

It's the oil companies!

What kind of a crazy, mixed up world is it when the most progressive element of society is Chevron? It's Bako!

Already a consortium of companies operate one of the largest wind farms east of the city in the Tehachapi Mountains. And Chevron is in the process of turning an abandoned oil refinery near the heart of Bako into a state-of-the-art solar energy field.

And the response from the city? Indifference at best, and contempt at worst. On a news report regarding the solar plant, they interviewed a city official who gave grudging support for the project, but then stated that the land would have been better used for new homes.

Let's forget for a moment that there are currently thousands of unsold or half constructed new homes, slowly rotting away in the former fields on the outskirts of town. Let's focus on the fact that this is an abandoned oil refinery. Chevron and it's predecessors have been dumping God knows what on the property for a hundred years. It's a toxic waste dump. And this guy wants to just bulldoze it all and slap up new homes. I can't say I'm surprised, but still. That's going to take some savvy marketing to try and convince new home buyers that birth defects are an upgrade, like granite counters. Even Chevron knows this - it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to try and clean it up, if it's even possible. So rather than deal with it, they turned it into something productive and won some attaboys in the process. And some nifty tax beaks to boot.

I got a first hand look at Bakersfield's bizarre outlook on the future when, in an ironic twist of fate, I was hired to design a brochure hawking all the economic opportunities Bakersfield has to offer.

Because, as we all know, I'm one of Bako's biggest boosters.

Needless to say, it was a very thin brochure. Thankfully I was able to work from home, so only the dogs heard me laugh out loud as I read through the copy.

When I got to the section on Technology, it wasn't as if solar and wind power were ignored - both received a single sentence mention. But the bulk of the copy dealt with a new, emerging, high tech field...

Space Tourism!

"Tourism" seems a bit of stretch, unless "up" is now considered a destination.

You see, the sprawling Edwards Air Force Base lies out in the eastern desert of Kern County. And it's there that Sir Richard Branson has chosen to base his new venture, Virgin Galactic. Where the plan is to offer people a chance to soar into space on a little astronaut outing.

For $200,000 a pop.

One day.

In the future.

Maybe.

And it is here that the city and county have chosen to place their bets. Doubling down on the notion that the millionaires and celebrities who could afford such a venture can be lured into town for maybe a quick bite at Carrows or a night at the Doubletree. It's stunning in it's stupidity.

Perhaps it's time for a new slogan...

"Bakersfield - Where Forward Thinking Is Ass Backwards".

F-Ville

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. Mostly hate.

I'd made peace with it over the past few months by simply never logging on. Or almost never. I receive email notifications whenever anyone leaves me a message on Facebook, and on those rare occasions, I'll log on to reply. Or not. But the days of endlessly scrolling through everyone else's fabulous life with a mixture of bitterness, sadness and envy are over.

But about a week ago I was the victim of a surprise attack, and since then have been under constant assault.

From Farmville.

I have no idea why the sudden barrage, the game has been around awhile. Probably because my "friends" are incredibly slow witted. Whatever the reason, for the past week, every one-off acquaintance who considers themselves a "friend" has been panhandling on the outskirts of Farmville...

"Become a Fan!"

"Listen to the Podcast!"

"Send me a Pig!"

Here's the thing...

I LIVE IN FUCKING FARMVILLE!

It isn't a game to me. I have to deal with it every day.

Oh sure, it's fun and cute and everything... listen, add in a couple of tons of manure and some poisonous aerial pesticides and see how much fun it is. You don't wake up every day in a town that smells like a cow's ass, covered in a layer of dirt.

I doubt seriously anyone would play this stupid game if they had to smell it.

So take your little cows that don't shit and your toxin free crops and take a hike.

P.S. I don't want to be in your fucking Mafia either.

Uncanny Valley Of The Dolls

I was reading a fascinating article about the "Uncanny Valley". It's a term used in robotics and computer animation to describe a phenomenon that occurs when measuring people's emotional response to ever increasingly lifelike machines and animated characters. As a general rule of thumb, as robots and computer generated characters become more and more lifelike and "real", people's emotional response is increasingly positive, following a fairly consistent upward trajectory.

Until you reach 90% "real".

Once you hit 90%, people's responses plummet and turn into outright revulsion, scoring about the same as viewing a human corpse or contemplating zombies.

But if you keep moving forward and make your creations 95% "real", emotional responses shoot right back up and continue their upward climb as if nothing had happened.

The graph looks like this (hat tip Wikipedia)...


See that steep cliff? That's "Uncanny Valley".

Welcome to Bakersfield.

I realized that this goes a long way towards explaining my hatred of this place.

Bakersfield is 90% "real".

If it was 85% "real", it would probably come off as kind of quirky and would probably be a more interesting place to live. If it was 95%, it would be close enough for jazz and be at least tolerable. But it's Bakersfield's dumb luck to find itself firmly settled on the Uncanny Valley floor.

It's nice to know my feelings aren't completely irrational, that they are at least partly backed up by pseudoscience.

Maybe one day Bako can nudge up their percentage and make this place somewhat livable.

They could start by importing some Zombies.

Census And Sensibility

We received our census form in the mail a couple of weeks ago and I'm conflicted as to what to do with it.

The answer seems obvious enough. Filling it out is the right this to do. In a perfect world, that would be the end of discussion.

But this isn't a perfect world, it's Bakersfield. And in Bako, doing the right thing runs smack dab into my denial about actually living here. Ours is an unfortunate, temporary situation and shouldn't be formally recognized on any government forms. At least that's what I tell myself.

So I've been somewhat guilt stricken.

But then I saw a report on the local news reminding people of the importance of sending it in. They said not filling it out could potentially cost Bako and Kern County seats in Congress and the State Legislature.

Hmmm.... Kern County only elects whackjob, wingnut Republicans.

And not filling out the census could mean fewer of them, you say?

Into the trash it went.

It's for the greater good.

Best Laid Plans

I have a new found respect and admiration for whoever runs the planning department for the City of Bakersfield. It wasn't always so. I once believed only a knuckle dragging moron could design such a byzantine, convoluted layout for a city.

But I've since done a 180.

Why the change of heart?

Well, over the weekend I took my own little Magical Mystery Tour of the city, and in my travels I came upon this...


The "Arc de Bako".

Grand, no?

A monumental arch, spanning a wide, tree-lined boulevard, welcoming one and all to Bakersfield.

It all looks rather newish and evidently replicates an arch that once stood downtown. But here it was, a little out of the way I thought, a gateway to someplace special.

But where could it possibly lead? Was there someplace new and spectacular I hadn't heard of?

A civic plaza, perhaps?

A performing arts complex of some kind?

A Great Park?

Sports complex?

Convention center?

Well... not quite.

It leads here...


And you have to pass the jail to get here.

It was then that I realized this isn't the work of rank stupidity. It couldn't be. No one could possibly in a million years believe this was a good idea. Which means only one thing...

It's the work of some evil genius. Like a Bond villain. A double agent. Someone with an ax to grind against the city who is covertly working to undermine it and make it a laughingstock. Or more of a laughingstock than it already is. Someone with the charm and persuasive powers to get who knows how many city departments to sign off on an idea that is clearly an embarrassment.

It's brilliant.

Sir, or Madam, whoever you are, my hat is off to you.

Bako 911

If you ever have the misfortune to be visiting Bakersfield, you'd best be minding your P's and Q 's because the cops here are a little trigger happy. Every morning when you turn on the local news they've shot someone overnight. It's so common they might as well just make it a regular segment, like weather and sports.

It almost always happens in East Bakersfield, which locals will tell you is the "bad" part of town. They clearly don't get out much, because to us newcomers the whole town seems pretty bad.

It's gotten to the point that I rarely take note of it anymore, it all just blends in with all the other babble...

"Highs today will be in the upper 60's, BPD shot and killed a man overnight, and low's will be in the 40's, so take a jacket because it's going to be a little chilly out there."

But then one morning the daily shooting report left me completely gobsmacked.

BREAKING NEWS

"Within the last hour, Bakersfield Police attempted to stop a man for questioning in East Bakersfield. When he wouldn't comply with their requests, officers shot him. He's currently awaiting transfer to KMC (Kern Medical Center) while officers wait for the arrival of a Spanish speaking officer."

So... let me see if I understand this.

Police attempted to stop and question a suspect, who didn't speak English.

They ordered him to do something, in English.

The suspect, who didn't speak English, didn't understand what they were saying and didn't do as they had requested.

So they shot him.

And NOW, as he's lying on the sidewalk bleeding to death, they're going to hold off getting him medical aid while they wait for the arrival of Spanish speaking officer who can explain to him exactly what just happened.

Sounds about right.

An hour later they did an update, and they were STILL awaiting the arrival of someone who spoke Spanish!

Listen, Bakersfield aint that big. I could be halfway to LA in an hour. Something tells me they weren't really trying.

Call it a hunch.

All things considered, it could have been worse. When I first hear the report I thought the reporter said "KFC" and I immediately got a mental image of the poor guy's gurney being wheeled through drive-up to pick up a bucket of Extra Crispy. And that didn't seem odd to me.

Go ahead an laugh.

It could happen here.

Crossroads Of The World

Or... not. Sadly, the roads never meet. They're miles apart, in fact. Seems like such a missed opportunity.

Come to think of it, this town is nothing BUT missed opportunities.

Speaking of which, it would appear we missed the lawnmower races this past weekend.

Bummer.

So SO

"She thinks she's better than everyone else just because she lives in Esso..."

Esso? There's some place called Esso? I know this is oil country, but that seems a bit much.

I was outside one of my local clients having a smoke, eavesdropping on a gaggle of "Real Housewives of Bakersfield". The woman speaking was late 30's and appeared to be a frequent flier with many of the local plastic surgeons. She was wearing skin tight white jeans and a bolero jacket that was no match for her enormously enhanced chest. Her face was pulled taut and she looked like she was in a wind tunnel.

It quickly dawned on me that she wasn't saying "Esso", she was saying "S.O."... as in "Seven Oaks". Seven Oaks is Bako's manufactured, master planned answer to Beverly Hills. It looks like any of the other recent housing developments, with the same Caliterranean McMansion architechture, except the houses are bigger and undoubtably have more "upgrades". The houses go for around $500K, which wouldn't even get you a condo in the real Beverly Hills. It's considered to be in the "good" part of town, not far from abandoned power plants and oil refineries. That's Bako for you.

Really, people - this whole acronym thing has to stop. I blame it all on that idiotic TV show of years past, "The O.C.". As someone who grew up in Orange County I can assure you that no one ever referred to it as "The O.C.". If someone were to ask you where you were from, you politely changed the topic. It was the decent thing to do. Of course this was long before the area got it's nouveau riche makeover.

Soon the LA broadcasters were referring to it as "The O.C.", and the trend started to spread like a virus. Next up was the low rent areas east of LA in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, which for some unknown reason had long been referred to as "The Inland Empire". Not anymore.... now it's "The I.E."

Oy vay.

And now it's infected Bako. "S.O." isn't the only offender. There are several others. The most egregious is "N.O.R.", which stands for "North of the River". Since the "river" is nothing but a trash filled dry gulch, you'd be hard pressed to know when you ever traveled north of it.

Unfortunately, it appears to be a trend that that shows no signs of abating - I've recently seen "Bakersfield" abbreviated as "B.K." I always thought that was shorthand for "bankrupt".

If the shoe fits...

Random Good Things About Bako #6

Surprisingly enough... Downtown Bako is actually pretty cool.

Or at least it once was.

Now it's a ghost town, a boarded up wasteland of junkies, drunks and transients. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to take a little walking tour lugging a big digital camera. But there's a lot of potential there, if only the locals realized it. There are a few urban pioneers scattered about, but without a critical mass and some foot traffic it's going to be an uphill struggle.

But never say never. When I was in college in Pasadena, the Old Town area was in far, far worse shape. The city used to have to fence it off, tarp it over, and try and dress it up with bunting for the Rose Parade, lest a national TV audience see how derelict and shabby it really was. But now it's a thriving shopping area and it's bustling every night of the week.

So, you never know. Maybe one day Bako will figure out they have a little unpolished gem downtown.

The Lady In The Bubble

Let me first state that smoking in a dirty, nasty habit and the boyfriend and I both rue the day we ever started. We've had a devil of a time quitting and have made many attempts over the years. They say there's no "good" time to try and quit, but there are in fact "bad" times to try, and being exiled to Bakersfield is definitely one of them.

So we went ahead and rented a "smoking" duplex.

Which brings us to our passive aggressive, bi-polar neighbor, Mary.

Mary does not like our smoking one bit.

At first it started with a bit of kabuki theater, a grand performance of hacking coughs the minute we stepped out the back door. She doesn't appear to work and evidently spends the day lurking near her back door waiting for us to come out. I believe in law enforcement circles that's referred to as "lying in wait".

She then ramped up the show and turned her back patio into an al fresco ICU unit, with heavy gauge plastic (pictured above).

And recently she's upped the ante, angrily voicing her disapproval every time we step outside. Who she's talking to is anyone's guess. I assume it's her dogs, but for all I know it's the voices in her head. Whatever the case, we're clearly the intended audience.

But here's the thing...

We don't smoke outside anymore.

At least not near her. In deference to her issues, if we do smoke outside, we go to the far side of the house, 50 feet away and around a corner, next to our other neighbor Cindy, who smokes like a chimney and couldn't care less. Or we just smoke inside, which we're allowed.

But that doesn't matter to Mary. She will not be ignored.

So I open the back door to let the dogs out into the yard...

"Oh my God the SMOKE is awful!"

I step outside to water the plants...

"Oh my God they're SMOKING again!"

I'm in the backyard, shaking out a rug...

"Everyone get inside... (to the dogs) I don't want you exposed to all that SMOKE!"

I take out the trash...

"Oh my God it STINKS out here!"

Needless to say, no one's ever smoking and there's never any smoke. But in Mary's mind, huge billowing clouds are wafting over the fence and slowly killing her.

We should be so lucky.

Spring Has Sprung

Today is the first day of Spring!

And in Bako that can only mean one thing... cockroaches!

Sorry... "waterbugs".

They're back. They actually started showing back up over the past week as the weather turned warm. They never actually went away. During their "off season" they left a skeleton crew, but you could at least go a few days without finding one of their lifeless bodies. They aren't always dead - twice last week both the boyfriend and I were jolted awake in the dead of the night by something skittering across our bare skin.

Lovely.

At any rate, it's a relatively nice day, and my partner is stuck at work, so I'm off on a photo safari to capture the highlights, or lowlights as the case may be, of this fine metropolis.

Save Money. Live Bitter.

On Wednesday the new WalMart Supercenter opened. It's 200,000 square feet of cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap.

It's less than 5 miles from the WalMart Supercenter that opened in November. That one is also 200,000 square feet of cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap.

Both are less than 10 miles from the other two Walmarts, which, although not "super", are each 150,000 square feet of cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap.

By my rough calculation, that's 2 square feet of cheap, shoddy, Chinese-made crap for every man, woman and child of Bakersfield.

And as far as I can tell, that's about all there is to Bakersfield. There's no "there" here. It's one ginormous suburb that's all "sub" and no "urb". People go about their lives, work a 40 hour week so they can then go blow it all at Walmart. And then go in Monday morning and do it all over again. Maybe eat at Applebee's, or Olive Garden, or some other massive corporate "casual dining" chain.

The sad thing is there's actually a quaint part of downtown. Cool, older buildings that anywhere else would've been renovated into unique stores, restaurants, maybe galleries. But all the storefronts sit empty or boarded up. They'll be having none of that Commie "unique" crap here, thank you very much. They'll do the American thing and buy crap made by real Commies... at Walmart.

It's some weird hive mentally. Actually, it's more like sheep. Conformity rules the day here, and no one colors outside the lines. And as far as I can tell, that's how they like it. You could really see it around the holidays in the front yards. Everyone had the same shabby decorations, the same inflatable monstrosities, the same lights, the same wreaths. Why? Because it was all at Walmart.

And it was cheap.

And disposable.

Like your free will.

With Two You Get Eggroll

Knowing full well that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results", we went ahead and ordered Chinese take-out.

We hadn't planned on it. Throughout the course of the day I had repeatedly asked my partner if we needed anything from the store. It's a testament to my great love for him that I would voluntarily offer to descend to the Ninth Ring of Supermarket Hell if need be.

"No, we're good" he said. "We have plenty to eat here."

Five minutes after arriving home... "We have nothing to eat here".

So it was either spin the roulette wheel on Chinese take-out, or endure an hour wait for a table at Applebee's.

We chose a different restaurant, hoping for different results. And to a certain extent, we got them. The food this time at least had flavor. Exactly what flavors, I couldn't tell you.

And the food came in colors not found in nature. I'm pretty sure it would have glowed in the dark if we had had a black light.

Twelve hours later I still feel like I swallowed a barbell.

At least my fortune cookie was good...

"Your Fortune Is About To Change For The Better!"

Of course, this was from the same people who describe their food as "Perfect Every Time!" so I don't think I'm going to hold my breath.

Holy Rollers, Batman!

All I can say is the Evangelicals better be watching their backs. They may think they have a stranglehold on this town, but they have some serious challengers and they have been hitting this neighborhood hard.

We've already been hit up twice by the Mormons and once by the Jehovah's Witnesses, who came back and jammed the above pictured flier in the door.

Is it blasphemous to point out that Jesus looks kinda hot?

Although, if the goal is wooing new converts, I'm not sure the whole S&M subtext is the way to go. I mean... the thorns, the lash marks, the bound wrists? It seems a bit much.

But what do I know? They've obviously been doing this a long time and know what works for them.

It should make for an interesting crowd at the upcoming revival meeting.

Death Becomes Her

The boyfriend and I were having a pleasant enough evening - "America's Next Top Model" was on, so how could we not? Plus, we had "Hoarders" on the DVR so it was like date night. We were chit chatting on the couch at one point when the conversation turned to death.

Specifically, our own.

In all the years we've been together the subject of our own mortality never came up, not even after watching five seasons of "Six Feet Under". But six months in Bako is enough to make anyone start thinking of the afterlife.

I was surprised to find out he wanted to be buried. I had always assumed we'd be cremated. Don't know why I assumed that - probably because that's what we did with the cat. At any rate, his only stipulation was that, despite his family's wishes, he be buried nowhere near his evil stepmother.

Me, personally, I don't really care. Once you're dead you don't really have much say in the matter. If I had my preferences I'd probably be cremated and my ashes spread at sea. But for all I care you could just as well stand me out with the trash. Say a little prayer as the little mechanical arm flips me into the back of the truck.

My only stipulation is that I will not die in Bakersfield.

I don't care what he has to do, if something happens to me and I end up in the hospital on life support with a grim prognosis, he's to steal my body and haul my ass over the county line so I can die in LA.

With dignity.

The F Word

I thought I had burned through all the possible emotions during the ordeal of the last year. All the bad ones at any rate. But yesterday I came face to face with one I thought I'd already dealt with...

Fear.

I'd had the fear of losing my job, which I did. I'd had the fear of losing the house, which we did. I'd had the fear of moving to the wasteland of Bakersfield, and here we are. What else was there to be afraid of?

As I learned yesterday, there was still the fear of coming to a complete, hopeless dead end in your career. Or more accurately, having your career become completely irrelevant. I overcame the other fears, or at least was able to gloss over them, by telling myself there would be other jobs, other houses, eventually. But I don't think there's going to be any glossing over the fact that the career that I had, and the work that I loved, my be gone for good.

Since the Fall of '08, when everything fell apart, I've scrambled to stay afloat, performing freelance triage, trying to keep the career alive until things rebounded. A year and a half later, things seem to be getter worse, not better.

The bulk of my income, such as it is, comes from two agencies - one in Bakersfield, one in LA. The Bakersfield agency has been in a long, slow death spiral from well before I arrived on the scene. It's only accelerated since the start of the new year, and now appears to be finally circling the drain. I give it a week, maybe two. I'd already been looking for something to replace it, but there's just absolutely nothing here.

But more distressing are the dark rumblings coming from the LA agency. I'd noticed the checks stopped arriving. You tend to notice these things when you're living check to check. A call to the accounting department revealed that half the department, and who knows how many more, had been let go. Whoever I spoke to assured me they'd jump right on it, but you could hear the panic in her voice.

So yesterday I hit the digital bricks, looking for work. I'd exhausted my contacts and sources years ago, and most of them are out of work now anyway. You know it's bad when a former studio VP is reduced to teaching spin classes. She and I used to be fairly inseparable back in the day. She commanded a multimillion dollar ad budget and we jetted all over the world doing photo shoots of movie stars and drinking heavily. Now she teaches a Butt Blaster class.

So I spent the better part of the day trawling for... anything. I'm registered with half a dozen placement firms in LA, but haven't heard a word from any of them in over a year. They have thousands of clients for each potential opening, but there aren't even any openings anymore. Craigslist, which not that long ago was a pretty fertile place to find work (at least for me) had nothing. Not unless I want to learn to become a tattoo artist, which maybe I shouldn't be so hasty to rule out. LinkedIn is a perverse joke - everyone on there is out of work. But we're linked! And then I found one site that was comprehensive, that culled together job listings from all over the web and condensed them down into one search engine. You entered your zip code, a few key words and a radius in miles that you'd be willing to commute. I entered our old zip code in LA (hope springs eternal) and chose "25 miles". Nothing. Fifty miles. Nothing. Seventy five miles, 100 miles. Nothing. It maxed out at 150 miles, and at that distance I'd be commuting to Mexico, but I had nothing to lose. And still... nothing. I tried every permutation of key words I could think of and yet... nothing.

My take away from the whole experience is that I am now officially useless, irrelevant. I might as well make buggy whips, that's how in demand my skills now are. And that was when the fear really hit.

Now what?

Not Our Kind, Dear

And people wonder why we've made no friends here...

When You Get Caught Between The Moon And... Bako

Christopher Cross is coming to Bako!

There's a blast from the past. A couple of months ago "Sailing" came on the radio and I found myself wondering whatever happened to him. I hadn't heard anything about him in 20 years.

He'd so dropped off the map I just assumed he was dead.

But it turns out he's playing Bako.

Same difference.

Mercy Mission

The boyfriend and I took yesterday off to perform a humanitarian aid mission.

For ourselves.

In LA.

It wasn't for pleasure - we actually ganged up some doctor and dentist appointments. It's not that we don't trust the third world medical care available in Bako. Well, actually, that's part of it. But it's more about the fact that we've convinced ourselves that our stay in Bakersfield is just an unfortunate temporary setback. Why switch to a local doctor and risk leaving town in a few months minus a limb or major organ? Exactly.

Besides, we love our primary care physician. He's wise and kind and he sent us home with a boatload of anti-depressants. The doctor looked at the chart and noted that we were now living in Bako. My partner brought up the subject of maybe getting a little something to alleviate the blues and started to explain our situation, but then the doctor raised his hand and cut him off.

He knew.

He started writing a prescription and then stopped, looked up and said "I've treated people from Bakersfield... I'm going to give you something stronger."

Not only that, he scoured the office for every free sample he had because he feared a 60 day supply wouldn't be enough.

And they say you can't get quality medical care anymore.

We didn't do any shopping, because we're broke. I did take the liberty of getting a decent haircut. The Super Cuts hatchet jobs were starting to take a psychic toll.

And then we drove back.

In tears.

Baku #6: Bad Sushi

So far from the sea,
and yet I order sushi.
What was I thinking?

The Halfs And The Half Nots

Today marks the six month anniversary of our exile in Bakersfield. Or as I like to think of it, the halfway mark. I say halfway because we signed a year lease here at Casa Bako and we aren't in the financial position that we can just walk away. Plus, we'd probably be sued for breaking the lease and then there'd be a public record of us living here, and I don't think anyone wants that.

Six months... it seems like it's been a lot longer. The boyfriend is at the edge of an emotional meltdown. So am I. I keep telling him to just pretend we're like Martha Stewart in jail and it's only a matter of months. Just hum a happy tune and make ponchos and it will all be over soon.

Despite what's written in the blog, we really did make an honest effort to make a go of it here, to view the glass as half full. In the first couple of weeks it actually seemed like a possibility, settling here. But then the hopeful optimism faded, the scales fell from our eyes and the empty glass reality set in.

The whole "fish-out-of-water" scenario makes for great (or not so great) sitcoms, but for real life there's precious little to recommend it. There isn't anything inherently unlivable about Bakersfield, if you choose to live here. Clearly half a million people seem to think so. And lord knows there are worse places still. But circumstances landed us here, not choice, and if the circumstances were reversed I'm sure the outcome would be the same. If some poor Bako ex-pat had landed in West Hollywood they could easily write just as snarky a blog about the experience.

So we're doing our time, trying not to break, another six months. And then what?

Where will we go? How will we get there? And what will we do once we're there? No fucking clue.

But we're halfway there.

And They Say There's No Culture Here...

Bakersfield is host to many traveling art exhibits. Fine art is never more than a track or two away.

Also Sprach Zarathustra

It's gotten to the point where the mere thought of going to the supermarket makes me break out in hives. I've written before about the cow-like behavior of the fine denizens of Bako when confronted with a checkout counter. Suffice it to say it's like watching the first 20 minutes of "2001: A Space Odyssey", where you watch the apes learn to use bones as tools and then one of them up and clocks another in the head with one. Every time I'm in the line I think about doing the same thing to the person in front of me with their brick of Velveeta.

There's a constant refrain that crosses my mind, day in and day out, like a mantra...

"Nobody Can Be This Stupid".

And yet, they are.

Today the woman in front of me, mid 30's, was furiously trying to key in her Club code, to no avail. The helpful checker said he'd input it for her if she'd just give him the number. And she just went B L A N K. Just stared at the guy, dumbfounded.

Your Club code is your phone number. What the hell had she been trying to type in? Was she just mesmerized by the pretty numbers?

I found myself hoping she was a scam artist, that she didn't have a Club code and was just trying to wrangle a pass by acting helpless. But no, she dug in her purse and found some form of ID and dutifully recited her phone number to him like a first grader.

At least that roadblock was relatively quick. I wasn't so lucky last week when I ended up behind Grandpa Walton. He seemed kindly enough and was jovial, bantering with the checker and bag girl.

Until they scanned the bread.

His favorite bread, the only kind he ever bought, we soon learned.

The price had gone up.

Four cents.

Welcome to "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Discount Shopper".

He flew into a RAGE, cussing, demanding to see the manager, screaming to the high heavens about "highway robbery" and "screwing the people". And then he harrumphed off into the bread section to find a cheaper selection.

For ten minutes.

And I couldn't do a thing about it. The checker wouldn't clear his order so the rest of us could get on with our lives. And I was pinned in from behind by an immense woman and her two corpulant offspring, her cart piled high with Funyons and Diet Mountain Dew.

Eventually the old man came back.

With the same bread.

"Just scan it" he said, "but you're all crooks!"

It was his favorite bread.

At any rate, the title to the post doesn't just refer to the Strauss music from "2001". I discovered it also refers to a novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same".

Just like the checkout lines of Bakersfield.

The Yellow Roz of Bako

Pinch me. I just met Roz.

I was walking the dogs through her condo complex and was right outside the RozCave when suddenly the door started to open. There it sat.... the black Vette Rozmobile... and ANOTHER CAR!

That's how she's so elusive! A decoy car.

Although it's not much of decoy if you're goal is being incognito - it's a lemon yellow Ford Explorer with a license plate that reads GODDES.

Now that I think of it, I have seen it in the neighborhood, but I've always mistaken it for a security patrol car. I mean, who orders a lemon yellow car?

As I stood there trying to process everything, the door to the garage opened and there she was... Roz.

A vision.

Same bad permed afro.

Skin tight (p)leather pants.

And a floor length, leopard print duster.

With a hood.

She raised her hand and said "hi".

I almost died.

She hopped in the Explorer with ease, not an easy feat with a full length fake fur coat.

And she was off.

I wonder if she has a second 'Lil Roz in the Ford?

I also feel somewhat vindicated - everything about her screams "Realtor", and in my gut I was sure she was. But my many realtor friends had said that wasn't possible - you can't squire around clients in a Vette. Well, the Explorer solves that little conundrum. I'll have to scour the real estate listings in the paper. I must know more about her.

There's A Shocker...

So the Republican State Senator who represents Bako, the one who has vehemently railed against anything perceived as being "pro-gay", Roy Ashburn, got popped last week for a D.U.I.

Leaving a gay bar.

With a trick.

Today he was on the local radio, starting his pity tour.

And to his credit, he admitted he was gay (it must have been a little shocking to his wife and four kids). But he insisted that it wasn't relevant. His homosexuality, he claimed, was "a private matter".

It's always "a private matter" when they get caught.

Funny, I don't remember it being "a private matter" when they took away our right to marry.

Empires Will Fall

Geographic nicknames.

Like most idiotic things, the blame for these rests squarely on television. Because broadcast signals don't end at the city limits, TV stations come up with terms to cover their entire market.

Living in LA, everything from San Diego to Santa Barbara was referred to as "The Southland". Pretty innocuous, and reasonably accurate. Same with San Francisco and Oakland being "The Bay Area" or Minneapolis/St. Paul being "The Twin Cities". Makes sense to me. Some of them are just silly sounding, at least to a visitor - greater Chicago is referred to as "Chicagoland", like it's a theme park. And some are just downright creepy, like Dallas/Fort Worth being ominously branded "The Metroplex", which not only sounds vaguely "Matrix-like", but also over-promises what the city ultimately delivers in the "Metro" department.

And speaking of over-promising, there's Bakersfield.

When you live here, you don't just live in Bakersfield, or the San Joaquin Valley.

No, when you live here, you live in...

"The Golden Empire".

Sounds magical, no? Like a Philip Pullman novel, a fantasy world of wonder.

Well take a look at the photo above - there's your "Golden Empire".

But no matter. Never ones to let reality get in the way of good branding, everything here is "Golden Empire This" and "Golden Empire That". The local news is broadcast "in the Spirit of the Golden Empire". The meager public transportation system is "Golden Empire Transit", which the locals just refer to as "get bus", making everyone sound like a neanderthal or Koko the Talking Gorilla.

Were it up to me, I'd probably go in a different direction.

"Greater Shitsville", while being spot on, is probably a non-starter from a marketing point of view. "Dogpatchland" lacks rhythm and doesn't fall trippingly on the tongue.

No, it has to be something more melodic, more memorable.

Which is why, after much thought and given the chance, I think I would christen this godforsaken place...

"The Hooterplex".

And The Winner Is...

I found it oddly surreal and sad watching the Oscars tonight. It used to be such a big deal to me, but tonight just felt detached and foreign, Maybe it's the fact that just a few short years ago I always threw a huge catered Oscar party, and now I sit and watch them from Bakersfield. Maybe it's the fact that I no longer work in "the biz". And not by choice.

When I first started working in entertainment advertising, in the pre-digital era, I was the one stuck at our production house on Oscar night supervising the ads that would run in the next day's papers all over the country...

"WINNER X ACADEMY AWARDS!"

Usually we had them mocked up with "WINNER 0 ACADEMY AWARDS!" before the show began, and ratcheted up the count as the evening went on. One year I had the misfortune to work on "The Prince Of Tides", and Barbra Streisand had been such an absolute bitch throughout the whole process that we decided to do it backwards. The film had been nominated for 9 or 10 Oscars and we had it mocked up with "WINNER 10 ACADEMY AWARDS!", and as each category came up, and it lost, a cheer would go up as we ripped the number off and put the next lowest one on. When "Best Picture" came up, it's last chance to take home an award, and it lost, we popped champagne. Totally shut out. Nada.

I'd chalk it up to karma, but in Hollywood, assholes win all the time, so it was nothing more than a fluke.

One of my first apartments was a block from the old Spago restaurant, home of the legendary Swifty Lazar Oscar party. It was limo gridlock for blocks, with Wolfgang Puck being helicoptered in from the Governor's Ball downtown. Years later the hot ticket was the Vanity Fair party at Morton's, a couple of blocks from my first condo. And once my career took off, I adopted Oscar night as "my" holiday. Other people were known for their Christmas parties, or their Labor Day pool parties, I was known for Oscar night.

But those days are gone.

Memories.

Misty water-colored memories.

Of "The Way We Were"... "WINNER 2 ACADEMY AWARDS!"

Taxicab Confessions

I saw a Taxi!

No, not those in the picture above. Those belong to one of my neighbors, the meanest looking lesbian I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of mean looking lesbians in my day, so that's saying something. She has an equally mean looking Rottweiler. And the taxi collection above, neatly displayed on the back dash of her Hyundai.

I will never understand lesbians.

I see her out when we're both walking our dogs, but we've never spoken. Whenever the Rottweiler gets wind of you, it goes berserk, and although she's built like a linebacker I have my doubts about her ability to maintain control of the dog.

So we run away.

But I digress.

No, I saw a real, honest to god Taxi, just like you see in big cities and on TeeVee. I was shocked that I was shocked, but we've been here almost six months and I'd never seen one. Something once so common and unremarkable is now like a meteor sighting. I guess it just never occurred to me that you would need taxis here. Public transit here is a joke, so everyone has a car. And anyone misfortunate enough to be visiting more likely than not arrived by car. Although there's an airport, it sits mostly unused. What little air service there was was prohibitively expensive and has been mostly discontinued in the economic downturn.

The only reason I can see for hailing a taxi is if you had a little too much hooch down at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and you need a lift back to Outer Hooterville.

Doesn't seem like much of a business model to me, but what do I know.

Such A Drag

My heart skipped a beat as I caught a tease for an upcoming story on the morning news... "coming up, this weekend's big Drag Meet!"

Imagine that! Drag Queens in Bakersfield! Finally something fun to do this weekend.

I grabbed my coffee and waited for the story. But joy soon turned to sorrow as I discovered it had nothing to do with Drag Queens.

Something about "funny cars".

Oh well.

I guess we'll just have to make do with this weekend's other offering...

The Spring Poultry Show.

Random Good Things About Bako #5

I love old signs, and I found this beauty in downtown Bako. The photo doesn't do it justice - it's huge.

Of course I'd never eat here - I don't have a death wish.

But I love the sign.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

So we're halfway through "No Cussing Week" in California and I haven't heard a fucking word about it.

Wonder how that's working out.

Flash Forward

Back in the 80's, when I was in college, there was all kinds of crazy talk about one day, in the future, designing ads on a computer.

I know, kooky. We'd be living under the sea and vacationing on the moon before that happened.

I was attending a prestigious design school. An, expensive, prestigious design school. And for all that money, they were bound and determined to PREPARE US FOR THE FUTURE. So they opened one of the first computer design labs. Although Macs had recently been introduced, they were, in hindsight, pretty rudimentary and little more than word processors. No, for us, nothing but state-of-the-art would do. Our little lab was outfitted with...

The "AESTHETES 1000".

It was Dutch.

And they cost $250,000.

Each.

It was bigger than a refrigerator laid on it's side, and resembled the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The desktop surface sported a keyboard and hundreds of color coded membrane switches. Embedded at the far edge were a dozen small monitors, each displaying a constant stream of code, like "The Matrix". At eye level were three large monitors to display our futuristic computer designs. Sitting at it you felt like you were in Mission Control. The Future had arrived!

It took awhile to get the hang of it, but after several weeks I became quite the master. Enter in a dozen coordinates with the keyboard, then hit an equal number of switches, in the correct order, and voila!

A square.

Actually, mine was more a rhombus.

By the end of the class I could not only do squares, but circles and triangles too.

And I took my new found computer knowledge out into the work force and discovered...

Nobody had an Aesthetes 1000.

Are you kidding? For a quarter of a million dollars? There were cheaper ways to draw a square. Like with a pen.

At any rate, it was soon a moot point. Within a year, Macs had advanced light years and the first design software was introduced, and before you knew it, the Aesthetes 1000 was obsolete and consigned to the dustbin of computer history. Can't even find it on Google anymore.

Macs soon became the standard for the design industry, and still are to this day. There was a steep learning curve as we all switched to digital, but once proficient, it was pretty easy to keep up with the times. The upgrades and advances were incremental and manageable.

And then the damn internet arrived.

People at the time said it was the future of design, but at dial-up speeds that seemed pretty unlikely. At best it could display the same static images we designed for print. But with the arrival of broadband and new software, soon design was moving and morphing, spinning and jumping through hoops.

And you had to keep up.

I made a good faith effort for years, signing up for night classes and weekend seminars, spending thousand of dollars for courses and software. But as soon as you learned one, a new one sprung up to render it obsolete. I learned one program, which was soon dead. Then another. And a third. Soon after I completed the course for the third one, a new program came out...

Flash.

It immediately rendered the last program I learned irrelevant.

"I'm not falling for THAT again" I thought. So when the opportunity to learn Flash cropped up, I passed.

And Flash has been with us for the past ten years.

At first not knowing it wasn't much of a hindrance. Working in Flash is essentially writing computer code, a decidedly "left brain" pursuit. Art and design is pure "right brain", and never the two shall meet. I've never met anyone who was good at both. People who claim they are are usually half-assed at both. In a simpler and more genteel time, designers would design the logos and web pages and ads, storyboard how it should all spin around on the web, and then pass it off to a code jockey to make it all happen.

But when I found myself back on the job market a couple of years ago, it soon became apparent the knowledge of Flash had become a prerequisite. The prevailing attitude now is "why pay two people for one job", and since programmers can't design worth shit, we'll make the designers learn code.

So reluctantly I signed up for yet another weekend course.

From the moment I opened the program I knew there would be problems. The control panel looked like the flight deck of a 747. The instructor moved fast and within an hour I was already deep in the weeds. It was obvious I stood about as good a chance of learning the program as I did of learning to pilot a jet plane. But still I soldiered on.

At the morning break, I ran into the instructor out on a smoke break.

"So why did you sign up for the course?" he asked.

I explained that knowledge of Flash was a deal breaker for any job these days.

"Well, not for long" he said.

He then explained that Flash was pretty much obsolete - new programs more adapted to all the social media were already widely in use and newer ones still were on the immediate horizon.

"Plus," he added, "Flash programmers are a dime a dozen - the market is saturated."

I quietly went back into the classroom and closed up my laptop and left.

At any rate, the reason I mention all this is an emailed job posting I received this morning that brought back years of programming angst.

Two years ago when I lost my job, I signed up for a service that collates job listings that match your predetermined criterion from all the online job boards. I've applied to hundreds of them without so much as an auto-response. The email used to run several pages long, with 20 or 30 jobs a day. Now it arrives with only one or two "jobs", usually unpaid internships. Some days it doesn't arrive at all... no jobs today.

But the one this morning caught my eye because of this:

REQUIRED SKILL SET
Must have expert proficiency in: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Dreamweaver, Microsoft Office, Powerpoint, Keynote, Quark, Wordpress, Filemaker Pro and Cinema 4D.
Must have working knowledge of Javascript, CSS, HTML/DHTML/XHTML, Flex, Action script developer, Maya.
Knowledge of AJAX, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Facebook, MySpace, iPhone apps a HUGE PLUS.

That's 24 programs! That's like learning 24 languages. Do you know anyone who can speak 24 languages? I sure as hell don't.

And don't let the listing fool you. If there's one thing I've learned, it's how to decode job listings. First of all "working knowledge" means you better know how it works, because you're going to be working with it. It's not like "working knowledge of Spanish" because you can order off the menu.

And second, any time knowledge of a particular software is listed as "a huge plus" means not knowing it is a huge minus.

But this is just insane. It's enough to make you throw in the towel and sit back and await the arrival of our new Robot Overlords. Because at this rate the Robots will be the only ones qualified to get a job.

I know, sounds kooky.

Shop Til You Drop

No, that's not the jail. That's the mall.

The only mall for a hundred miles in any direction.

Hope you weren't planning on doing any window shopping.

I will say this for Bakersfield - they have perfected the art of Penitentiary Architecture.

Incarceration Chic.

Everything here, from office parks, to schools, the post office, looks like it could be quickly and easily converted to a lock-up.

Just in case...

Baku #5: Rats

A Cold Night Shimmers.
Quiet Last Smoke Wafts Skyward.
Rats Eat Fruit Above.

Good To Know

A word to the wise... any news story that begins "Accused animal hoarder..." is not going to end well.

And Then Reality Hits...

Just spent the afternoon collating my tax information. I've put it off for awhile because I knew it wouldn't be good, and my accountant has played along, because we both know I've sunk below the point where I need "an accountant".

We used our unfortunate move to Bako (change of address, lot's of 1099's went to the old address, blah, blah.blah) as an excuse to whistle pass the graveyard for the past two months.

But the truth was bound to come out... I officially make a THIRD what I once made.

So...OK...let's look at the glass as one third full? Right?

RIIIIIIIGHT.

Im raiding the decorative wet bar.

Perhaps I Spoke Too Soon

In my previous post I mentioned how Orange County had transformed itself into a somewhat enlightened society and that perhaps there was hope for Bako.

But it would appear they may be more like kissing cousins that I had thought.

Case in point - this weekend, the Roller Derby returns!

Or "Rollery" Derby.

Oy. Doesn't anyone here use SpellCheck?

Idiots.

Anyhow, it's the Bakersfield Revolution vs. The OC Rollergirls!

The OC Rollergirls? Yikes.

It's a double header, so mark those calendars.

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

We took our "Get Out Of Jail Free" card and left town for the weekend. Went to visit family in the People's Republic of Orange County. Seriously, I never thought I'd see the day Orange County would look like a bastion of progress, but then again I never thought I'd ever be living in Bakersfield. I guess if they can be dragged kicking and screaming out of the Dark Ages, there's hope for Bako, although I have no intention of hanging around long enough to find out.

At any rate, this is the sign you see as you enter the town. It replaced the far superior and fraudulent sign I posted as my first picture. Any sign announcing your arrival is a little superfluous -you can smell you've arrived ten miles out.

I couldn't help but notice it had been tagged.

So sad.

Not the tagging, the quality of the work.

While Bako does have it's gangbangers, they are definitely minor league, junior varsity thugs. You can tell by their grafitti - it's derivative and uninspired.