The absolute most delightful silent film was being made in Echo Park at the weekend. It’s so pleasing to spend a day with good-idea people who enjoy working hard at something intriguing and exciting and enjoy lugging cameras, top hats, unwieldy helium balloons and broom-handle-dangling butterflies up steep hills in awful heat. Photographic evidence is appearing gradually here, bit by bit.

Rachel (Equal Rachel , formerly Other Rachel but only when I wasn’t already Other Rachel) sang “la, la, la!” all day like no other and by sundown had us all spontaneously lalalaing along in random bursts of sun-baked glee. She kept her eyelashes on marvellously, too, although the glue felt like sleep in her eyes. While Charon and Josh worked butterfly magic on Rachel’s fingers, Josie and the boys and I sat dazed before a fan in a little Echo Park Ave art shop front with Those Birds lined up and on shirts, feasting on disturbing Korean “French Pie” pastries that tasted like chemicals and left a bacon-fat-like film on the roof of one’s mouth (they come in little packs of two, but I’m not sure anyone ate the second portion.) We later (in Charon’s treasure-trove home) upgraded to “Upgrades,” which weren’t very good either and could only be considered an upgrade on something as bad as the French Pies. I’m starting to feel dreadful for small Korean children — are there no better Korean treaty snacks?! Maybe we only get the bad ones here. Anyway, sorry for dwelling on the food — more pix soon, promise.

[More on this stuff in butterflies and iced tea.]

In light of intriguing research discoveries involving neurotransmitters and why we check our email so often (most recently discussed in Tapey and at Cha Cha/Lounge Bar/Bar Lounge/Thataway (where some rude and creepy guy leaned in a rude and creepy way) and to be explored somewhat more “formally” in the usual forums soonish or thereabouts), we regretfully write to inform you that our test subject has fallen back to the tiger lily (most recently dropped under the tongue in a plush hotel suite in Marina del Rey, Californ-eye-ej, way back in the summer of hazel eyes). Prescribed by an overly bejewelled shop proprietess on Abbot Kinney who picked the purchase with a wave of her crystals (I was there for work, I swear), the potion, i mean, essence (look, Equal Rachel, that bar wizard’s got me thinking all magical like!) was supposed to… do something, feminine powers or whatever, goddesses, blah blah, but all it ever seemed to inspire was Much Worse Dreams Than Usual and some of you know that’s really saying something. Right? If you’re reading this nonsense, please raise your hand. Seriously, digitally. I mean it. I’m back on the tiger lily horror dreams for fun, c’mon, I want a break. A little crumb, anything.

Anyway, you just ask me in the morning, kiddo. Wake me up and ask me anything.

…Poland, land of my misnamed and illiterate ancestors? Apparently somewhere there’s an immigration document signed (with Xs) by “John” and “Mary” on their arrival in England. They were my great-great-grandparents and their surname stayed in my family until their grandson, my grandfather, got sick of people asking how to spell it and changed it to something entirely more simple (and, interestingly, somewhat Irish, which matches up great with the rest of my family tree.) It would be my last name, and I think want it back. I went to the Public Records Office in London years ago seeking it to no avail. I figured I’d find my granddad’s birth record, but I tried all the Cs and Ks from five years before and after — yes, I was there for hours — and couldn’t find a trace of him.

Anyway, I spent a few days in Krakow this spring and have been slacking on editing the photographs. I wish I was there again. I hereby swear to the residents of Kazimierz that I’ll wear quieter shoes next time I’m running down Ulica Mieselsa in the middle of the night, but I’ll probably still yell frantically in broken Polish if you try to put ketchup on my pizza. And to the old woman selling fruit in the market, I promise to once again keep quiet when you gleefully let Americans pay double what you were asking for your already overpriced wares. It’s funny. To everyone who works in shops and restaurants, thank you in advance for understanding my dreadful attempts at your language. To Alchemia, save me a seat under that scary little window with the net curtain shivering in the breeze like a horror film waiting to happen. To the train worker who tried to help us with limited English and then, when realising he’d made a mistake, tracked us down on the platform and with a construction worker to translate, thank you for the best welcome to a country ever. You deserve some kind of national medal of honour. To the “Native Americans” busking outside the Barbican, you are great. To the two best cab drivers in the world, I saved your cards. Between Polish, English, Russian and German, we will figure out where we’re going. To the woman at the train station who tried to serve us bread she pulled out of the trash, you managed to be the only person in Poland who was mean to the American. I know, Americans who don’t speak a word of Polish probably annoy you, but seriously. To the beautiful boy who works at the airport, hello! To Singer, please be just as confusing as last time. To all my skinny LA and London friends, I’m gunna get fat and happy on pierogi, so there.

The last Little Radio summer camp of the year was fun. Black Pine, Spindrift and Dead Meadow played (Jason had a copy of The Master & Margarita in his bag ), The Baron DJed, Michelle Nicole manned the merch in face paint and I experimented further with bikini-clad photography.

The NY Times says bangs are back. Try telling that to a girl who went as Jane Birkin to a dress-up party and she’ll just say “huh? Back? Where’d they go?”

PS — I look like Mama Moomin, it’s true.

Stretching back even further through desert reminiscences (as I have been uncontrollably of late), we find ourselves in the Rancho Mirage of August 2004, skinnier and browner than we’ve ever been since. Two hotel rooms, four kids, one migraine, Spindrift and Gram Rabbit, fake calls from roadside phone booths, two “Swedish” pancakes, one Dr Pepper bottleful of bourbon and lots of smuggled rum preceded my realisation that there had been an adults-only pool all along.

Palo Alto, Jackson, Vienna, Suva, Munich, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Richardson, Mechelen, Atlanta, Denver, Reno, King of Prussia, Brentford, Sydney and San Luis Obispo, I love you. If you’re in these cities, contact me pronto.

(Honorable mentions go to San Francisco, Philadelphia, New Brunswick, Adelaide and Washington, but gosh, you puzzle me so.)

These are old cuz I’ve been busy. More soon, or something, maybe.

Hannah was in town from London on the start of her epic journey (you can read her LA adventures—bar shaking and country songs at Little Joy, Spindrift at the Roxy followed by her not-very-good first burrito, choosing her favourite member of Blitzen Trapper at Spaceland, being bored at the Short Stop, eating pear tart at Elf, buying new Havaianas in Venice, sacrificing sunglasses to the Pacific and more—on her travel stories blog) so we did what I haven’t done for years, went to the beach.

In my first Californian year (2003—officially the best year ever, in retrospect) I laid out on the Venetian sand rereading Salinger short stories over and over in only red flip flops, red bikini bottoms and red lipstick, very 21 and 22, every weekend. Now I’m almost 26 and the Havaianas have been in the boot of an ex boyfriend’s car for years and the bikini bottoms still fit but my bones don’t stick out like they used to. The lipstick still looks good, though (”Vinnie” by Delux).

I had few friends and was still a westsider—on week nights I’d stroll to the Santa Monica pier after work and only ride the seven back to my bare little flat behind the strip club once the sun was well and truly down. In those strange sun-bleached days, the highlight of the week was making it to the library in time to type up the novel I was so earnestly writing. How times change. Having no money, no computer at home and no one to talk to makes one quite productive, in silly ways. It wasn’t like I was curing cancer, or anything, but I sure did write and draw a lot.

It’s summer in Los Angeles, so I wore a dress. It was lunch time, so I walked down the street. Three men tried to get me into their cars. One actually pulled over, got out and tried to follow me down the street. It’s ridiculous. GENERALISATION ALERT: The men here are bananas. They can all go away, please.

Further to the topic of male-female relations, my coworker and I got onto the subject of “The Rules” this morning (pre lunch stroll stalkers). From “The Rules”, apparently: “On all nonbusiness e-mails, responding once for every four of his e-mails is a good rule of thumb.” That one would kill me. I like people who can string a sentence together. Dating without email would be a nightmare. Anyway, once you’ve somehow enticed some poor sucker by not answering his emails (because rudeness is so entirely bewitching), he’s supposed to marry you within two years or you dump him. Aiyayai.

If you’re not depressed enough yet, try this one: “Take care of yourself, take a bubble bath and build up your soul with positive slogans like “I am a beautiful woman. I am enough.”" — Does this make anyone else want to drink the bubble bath and simultaneously slit their wrists? Seriously, what girls do this stuff? And what kind of lunatic men go for it?

The healthy way to go to be cheerful, clearly, is to spin around and around and around at the El Rey jumping up and down singing and looking up at the giant chandeliers all sparkling with seven tons of shiny confetti raining gently down and LOVE smacking you in the face from every direction. The effects wear off too soon (I find the Polyphonic Spree after effects similar in duration to those of Atarax—official antihistamine of the gods, TM—in that they last approximately 24 hours until you build up a substantial tolerance) but while it lasts it’s like a perfect, non-jittery energy rush that can smack you off your feet without letting you hit the ground if you let it. If they’d just play here every other day or so, I’d be a much nicer person. I might get sort of distracted and only answer one email in four, though…