BH 7: The refugees of Rock & Roll Ralph's

What does it mean to be Hollywood?

January, 2010. Less than a week until the Sundance Film Festival. This body builder at the Venice Gold’s Gym is yelling that I ain’t never going to get big lifting weight this light, an idea that has echoed through my psyche ever since, influencing my fitness approach in ways I didn’t question until recently.

The Utah festival had popped up unexpectedly as a must-attend thing. There was a backyard fundraiser at my public radio co-producer’s Venice house on Broadway. The project that she and I had spearheaded 14 months prior became, almost out of nowhere, an Internet short film phenomenon.

Some of you, I know, have seen it.

Little of my time in Los Angeles has been as a Westside resident. Most LA life memories play out east of La Cienega. The LA parts of this difficult sojourn are happening by the ocean. I get around locally by bike when I don’t have my kids.

The weeks running up to and attending Sundance were a unique scramble. (No-No got added to the festival so late that the short wasn’t included in most physical guides.) That chastisement at Gold’s Gym may have gotten classified with trying to schmooze Amy Goodman and the roar of audience laughter at an edit that had come to me at my Westside kitchen table. These memories aren’t like my others.

In the mid-2000s I nearly punched a bad novelist in the green room of the California African-American Museum. Maybe I wasn’t big enough for Gold’s Gym, but I could definitely fuck up a writer. A professor somewhere around this town now, I think, he called me a Hollywood nigga. It is such charged language, a fraught allegation.

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Before we land in Park City, let’s take a quick look out at my LA beginning, which technically was Hollywood. Physically, yeah, my apartment was Hollywood.

When my ex-wife and I first moved from The City to LA, we lived on the edge of West Hollywood, near Fountain and La Brea. It was the fall of 1994, and for the first year in that Elvira-owned apartment our nearest grocery store was Rock & Roll Ralph’s. Just far enough off The Strip that roadies and musicians could walk there from their cheap motels, this 24-hour Ralph’s was also walking distance from the Sunset Guitar Center. The 2 am crowd at Rock & Roll Ralph’s has been described as “a cross between Burning Man and Comic-Con.”

Last time I shopped R&RR—during the day—the vibe was still alive. So much so, that since then I’ve felt dialed in to detecting washed-up front men among the unhoused that I pass on the city’s sidewalks. The line between the bum who thinks they’re an audition away from being back in business and the greasy-haired guy using change to buy a Natural Light after his poorly-attended show is pencil thin.

Over the years, there have definitely been times when I have felt like a refugee of Rock & Roll Ralph’s.

At 2010 Sundance, the free booze flowed at multiple parties a night. If weed was present in Park City, I damn sure wasn’t cool enough to find it. I was smoking cigarettes like I was awaiting a verdict. Half a pack of American Spirits a day. The Adderall I had put aside that fall, after speaking gibberish to someone very critical to my comfort.

The festival went ape shit for The No-No. Our short film lost in competition to Drunk History. And I was not solid. Had not done yoga in a decade. If the work at Gold’s Gym had given me anything, it was license to have a stroke.

At a raging party filled with all manor of celebrities, I was drinking with intention. The time was the early afternoon… a bunch of you know this story. Please forgive me.

I was deep in my cups, as they say in Middle America, when another of the Dock short’s producers dragged me over to meet Bill Simmons. Especially back then, my feelings about that guy were complicated. Shit, they still are.

Standing in line, waiting to introduce myself to Bill Fucking Simmons, myself and my memoir and all of my then still-fresh ESPN history got tired of waiting. Tired like, Why the fuck am I waiting to meet Bill Simmons?

Isn’t it the Boston guy who’s supposed to go, “You think yer better than me?”

So, I just wandered away. Because, you can say what you want about me, but I am not a Hollywood nigga. I just happened to live there for a little while. Eighteen months, max.

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Here’s what I’m going to say is an Asian grandfather fishing in the stocked lake at Echo Park, where I’m really getting into the Greenfield resistance exercise equipment. The shot’s a bit abstracted, but still compelling, IMO.

I had actually lost ground in my quest to get under 190, last time I hopped on a scale. Before that I weighed 193. But the day after the last time, a 98th-percentile dump cleared my bowels.

I have mostly convinced myself that the lost ground came because of abnormal poo-poo circumstances.

Mostly.

One week out from turning 58, it’s time to ramp up, eat right, and reach a damn goal. Fact must be faced: It’s probably not realistic to be aiming for the Senior Games if I cannot reach this basic goal.

Cutting back on my 24-Hour Fitness weight training and doing resistance in the park has cut my workout recovery time in half. That’s a great start, but from Friday at noon through noon on Monday I’ll be focused on a cayenne pepper cleanse. If I don’t get through this small challenge I’ll be focused on how I failed.

But I don’t actually think I’m going to fail. I think I’m going to smoke a bunch of weed, do so much yoga, and be one with this cleanse.

For sure, I realized recently that getting big isn’t what I’ve even wanted. It’s just something some guy in Venice told me to do.

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About this installment…

I just don’t know whether this one is good or not.