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Of course we couldn't go to LA and not visit Hollywood. So we took the LA Metro (senior off-peak): Pershing Square to Hollywood (8-9 stops) $0.35.

But it is and always has been a bit trashy.

To see more photos of Hollywood, from the LA 2012 album,
click on the pictures above

 

We went for a ramble down Hollywood Boulevard, over the 'star's set in the pavement, and there was Alex Trebek, the recently deceased host of one of my favourite TV shows - Jeopardy!.

Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard, and Marilyn Monroe are, of course, immortalised in the Hollywood Museum.

Paulette features in 'Stardust' a novel by Joseph Kanon, set in that era, mostly in Hollywood, that I had just read. Seeing the picture seemed serendipitous! 

I can recommend Stardust. It's great mystery/detective/spy story, historically detailed, beautifully written.

***

Further down is the Chinese Theatre, where those who have 'made-it' in 'Tinseltown' can leave their hand and footprints in the cement. Several of the women and one or two men had tiny feet  If you can't read them here they are in the attached album at the end.

 

***

On the last day of our trip the plane didn't leave until late so it was back to the Broad for me and more shops for Wendy.  We still had several hours to spare. Wendy having some last-minute shopping to attend to, so I decided to take in a movie. What was showing this arvo? I could catch a bus. Might it be to Barbie or Oppenheimer?

When we were in Canada in July we saw enough US TV not to miss the hype when Oppenheimer got its release (Christopher Nolan's new ‘blockbuster’).

This was another instance of serendipity, as I had just ordered Joseph Kannon’s ‘Los Alamos’, for my Kindle, having recently read his brilliant ‘Stardust’ (see above).  And here we were in Hollywood on the last day of our trip. Stardust indeed!

To read my review of the movie click on the image below:

ABomb

Go and see Oppenheimer, you will think about it for days afterwards.

***

Now, after six weeks, it was time to go home:

 

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Travel

USA - middle bits

 

 

 

 

 

In September and October 2017 Wendy and I took another trip to the United States where we wanted to see some of the 'middle bits'.  Travel notes from earlier visits to the East coast and West Coast can also be found on this website.

For over six weeks we travelled through a dozen states and stayed for a night or more in 20 different cities, towns or locations. This involved six domestic flights for the longer legs; five car hires and many thousands of miles of driving on America's excellent National Highways and in between on many not so excellent local roads and streets.

We had decided to start in Chicago and 'head on down south' to New Orleans via: Tennessee; Georgia; Louisiana; and South Carolina. From there we would head west to: Texas; New Mexico; Arizona; Utah and Nevada; then to Los Angeles and home.  That's only a dozen states - so there are still lots of 'middle bits' left to be seen.

During the trip, disaster, in the form of three hurricanes and a mass shooting, seemed to precede us by a couple of days.

The United States is a fascinating country that has so much history, culture and language in common with us that it's extremely accessible. So these notes have turned out to be long and could easily have been much longer.

Read more: USA - middle bits

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Royal Wedding

 

 

 


It often surprises our international interlocutors, for example in Romania, Russia or Germany, that Australia is a monarchy.  More surprisingly, that our Monarch is not the privileged descendent of an early Australian squatter or more typically a medieval warlord but Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain and Northern Island - who I suppose could qualify as the latter.

Thus unlike those ex-colonial Americans, British Royal weddings are not just about celebrity.  To Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, in addition to several smaller Commonwealth countries, they have a bearing our shared Monarchy.

Yet in Australia, except for occasional visits and the endorsement of our choice of viceroys, matters royal are mainly the preoccupation of the readers of women's magazines.

That women's magazines enjoy almost exclusive monopoly of this element of the National culture is rather strange in these days of gender equality.  There's nary a mention in the men's magazines.  Scan them as I might at the barber's or when browsing a newsstand - few protagonists who are not engaged in sport; modifying equipment or buildings; or exposing their breasts; get a look in. 

But a Royal wedding hypes things up, so there is collateral involvement.  Husbands and partners are drawn in.

Read more: The Royal Wedding

Opinions and Philosophy

Conspiracy

 

 

 

Social Media taps into that fundamental human need to gossip.  Indeed some anthropologists attribute the development of our large and complex brains to imagination, story telling and persuasion. Thus the 'Cloud' is a like a cumulonimbus in which a hail of imaginative nonsense, misinformation and 'false news' circulates before falling to earth to smash someone's window or dent their car: or ending in tears of another sort; or simply evaporating.

Among this nonsense are many conspiracy theories. 

 

For example, at the moment, we are told by some that the new 5G mobile network has, variously, caused the Coronavirus pandemic or is wilting trees, despite not yet being installed where the trees have allegedly wilted, presumably in anticipation. Of more concern is the claim by some that the Covid-19 virus was deliberately manufactured in a laboratory somewhere and released in China. 

Read more: Conspiracy

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