Going to California with an achin’ in my heart
May 22, 2005 | 12:00am
Between your hotel in Orange County and Los Angeles is an hour of nothing," says René Novella, our Rico Suave of a tour bus driver.
I am in California with other Filipino journalists for an assignment, and on our free day it was decided that we are going on a tour of Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, and Beverly Hills in all their celluloid, silicone, and glitzy glory. We spent three days in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was one of the most serene cities I ever saw. Rush hour there was notable for its absence of rushing. You could cross the main street on a red light without the danger of becoming roadkill. The city is ideal for a Norman Mailer novel, a Paul Simon song ("Michigan seems like a dream to me now…"), or – at its quietest – an episode of The Twilight Zone.
A ROD SERLING VOICEOVER: Consider the possibility that you’ve bought real estate in the deserted city of the Twilight Zone. Population: You.
The city of angels, devils and light on the other side of the coast is a different story. (When I think of the O.C., I picture beaches and Peter Gallagher’s extra-bushy eyebrows.) When I think of Los Angeles, I picture Jim Morrison and The Doors performing their drunken ode to LA women, the blues, and "motel money murder madness."
I picture The Eagles, pink champagne on ice, and the warm smell of colitas rising up through the air. A place where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Cue Don Felder and Joe Walsh guitar solos here. And, while you’re at it, pass the dutchie on the left- hand side.
I think of California in songs. Where the leaves are brown, the skies are gray (The Mamas & The Papas). Where there is a girl with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair (Led Zeppelin). Where shadows weigh a ton (Phantom Planet). Where you get hardcore soft porn and dream of Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers). Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty (Guns N’ Roses). Where you get the urge like Mick Jagger in Sweet Virginia to sing, "Thank you for your wine, California… thank you for your sweet and bitter fruits."
So, contrary to what our man René claims, even a one-hour bus ride on the freeway is entertaining.
While navigating the freeways that are a crucial part of California’s car culture, René – who maintains an impressive fleet of limos and tour buses – spills the beans on the stars he chauffeured in the past. Frank Sinatra was unapologetically crabby during the party for his 85th birthday. Dirty dancer Patrick Swayze turned out to be short (more like a "tiny dancer" then). Arnold Schwarzenegger loved to smoke cigars with the limo drivers. Kevin Bacon and Nicolas Cage were surprisingly friendly and easygoing.
"Some stars you don’t even recognize when you pick them up," René relates. "They sit at the backseat of the car and then put their face on during the trip, and then suddenly… Tawny Kitaen comes out of the car."
Factoid of the day: Kitaen is a B-movie actress who starred in Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again video, among other horrors.
"(Comedian) Paul Reiser – Helen Hunt’s co-star in Mad About You – was (in the process of) telling us this long joke. But before he could reveal the punch line, he got into another car and rode off (laughs)."
René says he chauffeurs athletes of all types. Tiger Woods was standoffish. He refused to sign autographs for the person who graciously hosted a dinner for Woods and his posse. Acting as The Equalizer, René drove the golfer to another event at breakneck speed, "hitting all the speed-bumps along the way (laughs)."
Shaq, on the other hand, was the essence of cool. He gladly signed jerseys and a basketball for René’s son. And O’Neal wasn’t rattled at all by a pesky skunk that ran under their limo. René says Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio was also another nice guy. So here’s to you, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.
We get to Mulholland Drive, which celluloid surrealist David Lynch immortalized in the film of the same name. I half-expect someone from the group to be replaced weirdly by another being (one of the director’s usual unnerving themes) in mid-tour, or a midget in a cowboy hat to peek from the bushes of the famously weird road.
We get to Sunset Boulevard. The Strip – spanning from Crescent Heights in the east to Doheny Drive in the west – is famous for its nightspots, shops, restaurants, gaudy neon, vanity boards, and rock n’ roll icons, stars, hangers-on, barflies, hucksters, refugees, and suicides that have given the boulevard a mythic appeal.
"Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell, I don’t want to go to Sunset Strip," so goes the Cake song. But one could always counter with Mötley Crüe’s "Long legs and burgundy lips… Girls, girls, girls… Dancin’ down on Sunset Strip."
"This is the Viper Room, which is owned by actor Johnny Depp," says René, pointing to an unassuming black club with white signage. Acts such as The Cult, the Black Crowes, Screaming Trees, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, and Iggy Pop have played here. This is the club where actor River Phoenix overdosed on a lethal speedball cocktail, and where Tommy Lee tussled with the paparazzi.
René points to the park with the public toilet where George Michael was caught pleasuring himself and to the Chateau Marmont where Saturday Night Live legend John Belushi died from a heroin overdose. The Lizard King lived for a time in the chateau, getting drunk nightly on bourbon and Baudelaire, "breaking on through to the other side."
On The Strip also is a bar called The Cat Club, which is owned by Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats, and where an all-star band called the Starf*ckers (which include ex-members of Guns N’ Roses, LA Guns, KISS, among other glam rockers) play on special nights.
Two doors beside The Cat Club is Whisky A Go Go, the legendary club where Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Van Halen, GNR, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and a posse of others played maximum rock ’n’ roll. I read in an issue of Classic Rock that it is easier to say which bands have not played in the Whisky than the other way around.
Factoid No. 2: The bar originally featured a-go-go dancers – girls in white boots suspended in cages above the dance floor, writhing and spinning accordingly. (In the Oliver Stone Jim Morrison biopic, caged girls are seen surreally cavorting to The End, which probably made even Oedipus turn in his grave.)
We pass by the Virgin Megastore, which sits on the same spot where the legendary Schwab’s Pharmacy once stood. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack there in the ‘40s while buying a pack of cigarettes. Songwriter Harold Arlen wrote Over the Rainbow Under Schwab’s neon sign. How ironic. Charlie Chaplin used to play pinball in the back room. He’s a pinball wizard, there has got to be a twist.
The Roxy is one of the places where Frank Zappa recorded his brilliant live record "Roxy & Elsewhere." Other rockers who played here included Neil Young, David Bowie, and Van Morrison.
Next to it is the Rainbow Bar & Grill, which is where rock stalwarts – John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, the guys from Led Zep – hung out. In recent years, the nightspot has attracted actors such as Robert DeNiro and Jack Nicholson. (Velvet Revolver is slated to play in one of the Sunset Boulevard bars – I think the same day as our flight back to Manila… tough luck.)
"And that…" points out René, with each of us anticipating the historic, rock ’n’ roll significance of the spot, "is where I got my first parking ticket (laughs)."
Afterwards, we head for the mansions of the stars in Beverly Hills and Bel Air.
We learn that producer Aaron Spelling has so many rooms in his digs that he built one solely for, get this, "wrapping gifts." I think there is a room there where Aaron’s team of witches is concocting a magical brew to give daughter Tori acting talent, which we all know money can’t buy. The Playboy Mansion has lots of, err, bushes – but we spot no Bunnies, unfortunately. George Harrison’s house has those huge exotic statues fronting its gate. Its owner is sorely missed because of the profundity of his music and musings. Mick Jagger’s abode has a hip beige gate. The Stone built that mini-city on rock ’n’ roll, as well as aching songs about love, loss and honky-tonk women. Rod Stewart used to be neighbors with Gregory Peck. I wonder if Rod the Mod kept the solitary Mr. Peck awake with his gravel-voiced renditions of Hot Legs. Who’s that knockin’ on my door… Gotta be a quarter to four? Jim Carrey’s domicile is still under-construction. The lot is sprawling; the house, monolithic. It has columns, for crying out loud! Yeah, like a Roman Senate.
They say a person is a sum of all his travels. I guess I’ll take a bit of Los Angeles – its stars, its silicone sisters, its extraterrestrial rock and rollers – with me when I get back to my own drat of a home city with its floods, lingering fishsmells and death-defying tricycles. It’s better "to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime," to steal a line from one of Martin Scorsese’s films. But home is where my woman is: The one who in her past life might have inspired Led Zeppelin’s Going to California or the Stones’ Moonlight Mile, the one who is the center of my constellation, the necessary star.
My own lost angel in the city of night.
For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.
I am in California with other Filipino journalists for an assignment, and on our free day it was decided that we are going on a tour of Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, and Beverly Hills in all their celluloid, silicone, and glitzy glory. We spent three days in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was one of the most serene cities I ever saw. Rush hour there was notable for its absence of rushing. You could cross the main street on a red light without the danger of becoming roadkill. The city is ideal for a Norman Mailer novel, a Paul Simon song ("Michigan seems like a dream to me now…"), or – at its quietest – an episode of The Twilight Zone.
A ROD SERLING VOICEOVER: Consider the possibility that you’ve bought real estate in the deserted city of the Twilight Zone. Population: You.
The city of angels, devils and light on the other side of the coast is a different story. (When I think of the O.C., I picture beaches and Peter Gallagher’s extra-bushy eyebrows.) When I think of Los Angeles, I picture Jim Morrison and The Doors performing their drunken ode to LA women, the blues, and "motel money murder madness."
I picture The Eagles, pink champagne on ice, and the warm smell of colitas rising up through the air. A place where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Cue Don Felder and Joe Walsh guitar solos here. And, while you’re at it, pass the dutchie on the left- hand side.
I think of California in songs. Where the leaves are brown, the skies are gray (The Mamas & The Papas). Where there is a girl with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair (Led Zeppelin). Where shadows weigh a ton (Phantom Planet). Where you get hardcore soft porn and dream of Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers). Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty (Guns N’ Roses). Where you get the urge like Mick Jagger in Sweet Virginia to sing, "Thank you for your wine, California… thank you for your sweet and bitter fruits."
So, contrary to what our man René claims, even a one-hour bus ride on the freeway is entertaining.
While navigating the freeways that are a crucial part of California’s car culture, René – who maintains an impressive fleet of limos and tour buses – spills the beans on the stars he chauffeured in the past. Frank Sinatra was unapologetically crabby during the party for his 85th birthday. Dirty dancer Patrick Swayze turned out to be short (more like a "tiny dancer" then). Arnold Schwarzenegger loved to smoke cigars with the limo drivers. Kevin Bacon and Nicolas Cage were surprisingly friendly and easygoing.
"Some stars you don’t even recognize when you pick them up," René relates. "They sit at the backseat of the car and then put their face on during the trip, and then suddenly… Tawny Kitaen comes out of the car."
Factoid of the day: Kitaen is a B-movie actress who starred in Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again video, among other horrors.
"(Comedian) Paul Reiser – Helen Hunt’s co-star in Mad About You – was (in the process of) telling us this long joke. But before he could reveal the punch line, he got into another car and rode off (laughs)."
René says he chauffeurs athletes of all types. Tiger Woods was standoffish. He refused to sign autographs for the person who graciously hosted a dinner for Woods and his posse. Acting as The Equalizer, René drove the golfer to another event at breakneck speed, "hitting all the speed-bumps along the way (laughs)."
Shaq, on the other hand, was the essence of cool. He gladly signed jerseys and a basketball for René’s son. And O’Neal wasn’t rattled at all by a pesky skunk that ran under their limo. René says Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio was also another nice guy. So here’s to you, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.
We get to Sunset Boulevard. The Strip – spanning from Crescent Heights in the east to Doheny Drive in the west – is famous for its nightspots, shops, restaurants, gaudy neon, vanity boards, and rock n’ roll icons, stars, hangers-on, barflies, hucksters, refugees, and suicides that have given the boulevard a mythic appeal.
"Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell, I don’t want to go to Sunset Strip," so goes the Cake song. But one could always counter with Mötley Crüe’s "Long legs and burgundy lips… Girls, girls, girls… Dancin’ down on Sunset Strip."
"This is the Viper Room, which is owned by actor Johnny Depp," says René, pointing to an unassuming black club with white signage. Acts such as The Cult, the Black Crowes, Screaming Trees, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, and Iggy Pop have played here. This is the club where actor River Phoenix overdosed on a lethal speedball cocktail, and where Tommy Lee tussled with the paparazzi.
René points to the park with the public toilet where George Michael was caught pleasuring himself and to the Chateau Marmont where Saturday Night Live legend John Belushi died from a heroin overdose. The Lizard King lived for a time in the chateau, getting drunk nightly on bourbon and Baudelaire, "breaking on through to the other side."
On The Strip also is a bar called The Cat Club, which is owned by Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats, and where an all-star band called the Starf*ckers (which include ex-members of Guns N’ Roses, LA Guns, KISS, among other glam rockers) play on special nights.
Two doors beside The Cat Club is Whisky A Go Go, the legendary club where Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Van Halen, GNR, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and a posse of others played maximum rock ’n’ roll. I read in an issue of Classic Rock that it is easier to say which bands have not played in the Whisky than the other way around.
Factoid No. 2: The bar originally featured a-go-go dancers – girls in white boots suspended in cages above the dance floor, writhing and spinning accordingly. (In the Oliver Stone Jim Morrison biopic, caged girls are seen surreally cavorting to The End, which probably made even Oedipus turn in his grave.)
We pass by the Virgin Megastore, which sits on the same spot where the legendary Schwab’s Pharmacy once stood. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack there in the ‘40s while buying a pack of cigarettes. Songwriter Harold Arlen wrote Over the Rainbow Under Schwab’s neon sign. How ironic. Charlie Chaplin used to play pinball in the back room. He’s a pinball wizard, there has got to be a twist.
The Roxy is one of the places where Frank Zappa recorded his brilliant live record "Roxy & Elsewhere." Other rockers who played here included Neil Young, David Bowie, and Van Morrison.
Next to it is the Rainbow Bar & Grill, which is where rock stalwarts – John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, the guys from Led Zep – hung out. In recent years, the nightspot has attracted actors such as Robert DeNiro and Jack Nicholson. (Velvet Revolver is slated to play in one of the Sunset Boulevard bars – I think the same day as our flight back to Manila… tough luck.)
"And that…" points out René, with each of us anticipating the historic, rock ’n’ roll significance of the spot, "is where I got my first parking ticket (laughs)."
We learn that producer Aaron Spelling has so many rooms in his digs that he built one solely for, get this, "wrapping gifts." I think there is a room there where Aaron’s team of witches is concocting a magical brew to give daughter Tori acting talent, which we all know money can’t buy. The Playboy Mansion has lots of, err, bushes – but we spot no Bunnies, unfortunately. George Harrison’s house has those huge exotic statues fronting its gate. Its owner is sorely missed because of the profundity of his music and musings. Mick Jagger’s abode has a hip beige gate. The Stone built that mini-city on rock ’n’ roll, as well as aching songs about love, loss and honky-tonk women. Rod Stewart used to be neighbors with Gregory Peck. I wonder if Rod the Mod kept the solitary Mr. Peck awake with his gravel-voiced renditions of Hot Legs. Who’s that knockin’ on my door… Gotta be a quarter to four? Jim Carrey’s domicile is still under-construction. The lot is sprawling; the house, monolithic. It has columns, for crying out loud! Yeah, like a Roman Senate.
They say a person is a sum of all his travels. I guess I’ll take a bit of Los Angeles – its stars, its silicone sisters, its extraterrestrial rock and rollers – with me when I get back to my own drat of a home city with its floods, lingering fishsmells and death-defying tricycles. It’s better "to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime," to steal a line from one of Martin Scorsese’s films. But home is where my woman is: The one who in her past life might have inspired Led Zeppelin’s Going to California or the Stones’ Moonlight Mile, the one who is the center of my constellation, the necessary star.
My own lost angel in the city of night.
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