" THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS "

 The SEASON III INTRODUCTION : BREAKFAST

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The year after The Riots, life in Los Angeles continued. People went to work, children were born, time kept ticking and the story never ended. For those in the heart of the story, for those who were touched by the event, for those who lost and hurt and got burned: life would never be the same. An event that was your life, your experience, your history was being told by newscasters, mainstream publications and radio disc jockeys who knew nothing about what it was really like and never would know. The day after The Riots, a child woke, poured a bowl of Kellogg's corn flakes and watched cartoons on the television. The commercials in between told the child that when the milk was poured into the bowl, that it would, 'Snap - Crackle and Pop,' the child looked around the room, looked around the house, looked around the streets and noticed that every-thing had snapped, crackled and popped. 

 

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"Police car sirens and lights engaged twenty-four hours a day, soldiers from the army reserves of the United States of America in camouflage standing on every corner, an entire world that, 'Snapped - Crackled and Popped.'  And Life went on."

 

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The plastic had melted, the glass had warped, the wires lay open exposing copper, lead and silver, the perfect square box was now imperfect, corners were entirely melted off, the handle that changed the channels had broken and someone had attached a small vice grip tool in its place. The smell of burnt wood, ash and oil permeated the air. Helicopters, sirens and flashing lights became the norm. The curtains frayed at the edges and all along the sides been stained by fire, air, earth and water, the most basic of elements utilized in a fashion that created destruction, instead of construction. The rug was soaked and laden with tiny bits of broken glass, ember and grease stains. Smoke of all color and size wafted through the windows. Angry footsteps inhabited the ceiling, the hallways and alleys. A toy fire truck that lay in the backyard for years was now replaced with a real fire truck that roared incessantly passed its house, at all hours of the night and day. Police car sirens and lights engaged twenty-four hours a day, soldiers from the army reserves of the United States of America in camouflage standing on every corner, an entire world that, 'Snapped - Crackled and Popped.'  And Life went on. 

 

Houses went up for sale. Lots stood empty, Ashes piled up. Businesses were abandoned. Families were broken. Dreams were deferred. Third strikes were established by the law and people went to prison for stealing a pizza, a pair of shoes, a case of toilet paper. Men and woman in all manor, in all shapes, in all colors and sizes broke. Screaming through the streets, "Why?" But even a child knows that if you want to learn algebra, you don't ask why. You simply work on the equation, by learning the rules to the diagram, in geometry and trigonometry, there was no time to ask why. Even beer commercials directed the child to not ask why and shoe companies reenforced that ideology by telling the child to, "Just Do IT!"  So the child did. Empty slogans had manipulated the population for 100s of years and so the population, in its desperation, in its pain, in it's agony and in its defiance, invented some empty slogans of its own and then quite suddenly, those slogans were inhabited, not so empty after all, for this was not a politician with a team of advisors, this was not a police chief with a speechwriter, this was not a corporation with a dozen brilliant ad executives working on a new account, this was the mother - f*cking - public. 

 

 

"Houses went up for sale. Lots stood empty, Ashes piled up. Businesses were abandoned. Families were broken. Dreams were deferred. Third strikes were established by the law and people went to prison for stealing a pizza, a pair of shoes, a case of toilet paper.Men and woman in all manor, in all shapes, in all colors and sizes broke. Screaming through the streets, "Why ?"

 

 

These were real people, this was a real event, this was the city of a child who ate corn flakes while watching television every morning before school. And when its family and when it's friends and when it's neighbors and when its city began chanting the empty slogan that rang through the city like a Bell on Sunday, this child inhabited that slogan: No Justice / No Peace, Know Justice / Know Peace. Dragnet and One Adam Twelve and Police Woman and Baretta and Starsky and Hutch and CHIPS and The Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, to quote a popular phrase in poetry, "...Will not seem so damn relevant, because the revolution will not be televised,"  and yet: It was televised after all. The transmission of images was blast across the city in the earliest hours of the event. The Parker Center flash-point had ignited hotspots all along the vertical and lateral thorough-fairs through the city of Angels in a giant grid that only those flying in airplanes and helicopters could view. With the exception of those multitude natural forces of life known as the animals, who watched in glee as the humans failed once again at their own game. A game of self extinction, an experiment of too many mice in a maze called Los Angeles.  

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Hawks circled overhead, crows cawed, seagulls glanced, thrashers, bluejays, sparrows, woodpeckers, pigeons, hummingbirds and all manner of birds flew overhead. Bees returned to their hives, butterfly nestled under branches, spiders strengthened their webs, ants collected bits of this and that, squirrels climbed palm trees to get a better view, coyotes howled through the hills, deer looked on pensively, mountain lions patiently waited, possums stopped playing dead and walked along the tops of fences, a family of bears escaped from the zoo, an elephant stepped on its trainer in a parking lot downtown, snakes slithered to higher ground, raccoons sensed some easy pickings on the horizon and all the while domesticated dogs and cats sat with their owners, watching television. The first time it rained after The Riot, an inordinate amount of chemicals spewed through the streets. Into the gutters, down the sewers, along the pipelines and on into the ocean: Formaldehyde, asbestos, concrete, plastic, tar, asphalt, rubber, fiberglass, aluminum, glass, lead, resin, stucco, lime and drywall.  

 

 

"The chemicals that trickled down through the ashes, through the soot, through the smoke and through the tears had accidentally informed the organism, transformed the organism, reformed the organism and the child, who had sensed all along that all was not well, would never, ever, be the same again. "

 

 

The entire contents of dozens of 99 cents stores which included: bleach, roach killer, hair spray, comet, windex, baking soda, nylon, air freshener, butane, high fructose corn syrup, polyester, lysol, both the regular scent and the new and exciting pine flavor, all rolled into one giant blob of city sludge and plopped itself into the intestines of the City of Angels, rolling through the LA River and dumping itself, directly into the sea. Blue fin tuna, albacore, barracuda, lobster, sea bass and even mackerel were no where to be seen. There were no shark attacks to worry about. Sharks were too smart to swim in waters infested by chemicals of that variety. Within their very organism, they have a built in mechanism that can detect one ten thousands of an ingredient in the water from miles away. This device was originally evolved, no doubt, for survival, in search of something to consume, but due to the stupidity of the human race, the callous nature of the corporations, the shortsighted views of the now angry populist, this devise was used to avoid certain areas and avoid it they did.  The chemicals that trickled down through the ashes, through the soot, through the smoke and through the tears had accidentally informed the organism, transformed the organism, reformed the organism and the child, who had sensed all along that all was not well, would never, ever, be the same again. Nor would the place that they call the City of Angels. 

 

The little plastic box that had for decades transmitted ideas somehow still worked, the device that transferred images, sound and motion on a regular basis, continued  to do so.  Tony the Tiger, exclaimed to the child that the food it was eating, the contents it was consuming, the simple little flakes of corn in all manner of speaking and description could be defined in a two word phrase that was simple and easy to remember: "They're Great!" The big rabbit with the floppy ears was told time and time again that he was indeed a silly rabbit and that, "Trix are for kids!"  The Frito Bandito, Captain Crunch, Count Chocula and a Lucky Charm with a Shamrock were also present, representing an old school variety of corn paste, flour, sugar and salt, added preservatives and in some cases food coloring that sometimes caused cancer, with a simple reminder that if you ever ended up in prison, you would indeed have to choose a cereal that represented something familiar to your general genetic make up.  And of course there was the award winning commercial that had Mike-y and his brothers, representing a product that somehow encompassed the child's entire existence, by calling itself, 'LIFE'.  

 

 

"The picture was not as clear, the colors not as crisp, the audio was warped, the depth was foggy, the vertical and lateral lines often separated, but the endless trail of information, disinformation and programming continued on, it taught the child and eventually, the child had learned to transmit its own programs."

 

 

"He won't eat it..." his brothers exclaim, as they put a bowl of blocked wheat style cereal in front of the freckled faced child, "...He hates everything."  Then, quite suddenly, the  boy begins to shovel the wheat blocks into his mouth as his brothers excitedly exclaim, "Hey Mike-y! He Likes IT!" For those with simpler tastes, you had Aunt Jemima and or Quaker Oats, in case you ever forgot who founded this country and what your position in the hierarchy was to begin with. Yes, the little box in the corner with the wire in the wall and the antennae on the roof still worked. And the child watched it. The picture was not as clear, the colors not as crisp, the audio was warped, the depth was foggy, the vertical and lateral lines often separated, but the endless trail of information, disinformation and programming continued on, it taught the child and eventually, the child had learned to transmit its own programs. The child and its family and it's neighbors and its city were all so busy programming, they had no time to wonder, just who exactly was actually eating the giant bowl of cereal that they were all now living in ?  The entire city snapped, it crackled and it popped, surely someone was bound to eat it.  

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