Welcome to this week’s Sunday Magazine Section

This week Bumbastories Sunday Magazine features:

Another George Packard Report about a Carl’s Jr. construction site

A Raymond Chandler-like detective story about an L.A. Private Eye

An Illustrated poem 

An Art Review

And a song.

So relax. Loosen your seatbelts, take off your socks and shoes……..Well, maybe you should leave your shoes on……

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George Packard Report

George Packard, roving reporter for Bumbastories was out on his bicycle again. Roving the streets of Los Angeles, Packard was looking for a big story, breaking news, a journalistic coup de grace, a scoop. After some time pedalling and combing the streets, George stopped at the Yogurtland for a frozen yogurt. It was soft-serve and quite delicious. No scoop, though.

It wasn’t long, though, before George was back on the bike. Roving again, combing the streets, looking for another scoop – or at least a garage sale. George headed toward the site of a potential scoop that he had started to investigate two weeks earlier. It was the Carl’s on Fairfax and Olympic, and they were remodelling. George personally thought this was a major news story, as he knew that Carl’s quite well. Quite well indeed. However, he was well aware that this story was not a scoop. George Packard, retired schoolteacher and roving reporter, still maintained a modicum of contact with what is called reality.

They had razed everything and were now building a new Carl’s from scratch. Imagine that! George had wondered how they had disposed of all the rubble from the old restaurant. Much of it must have been highly combustible! George considered the quantities of Carl’s frying oil smoke that must have permeated that fine timber or fiberboard over all the years. George stopped to consider all that poly-unsaturated and polysaturated smoke from all those french fries, chicken nuggets, Carl’s Famous Catch fish sandwiches, not to mention the onion rings! George tried to think of something else.

As George Packard observed the progress made in the construction, it seemed to him that Carl’s was maintaining the high standards of structural integrity we’ve come to expect from the company of the Carl’s Famous Big Star and the Carl’s Six-Dollar-Burger. George Packard felt confident in the future of America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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An Illustrated Poem

 

The sound of the fountain

Splashing…….

The impacts of the accelerating droplets of water

Create a clatter

With no rhythmic pattern

Just a continual patter

The water drops falling where they may

See?

A circle is formed – a band – of splashing

And from these random impacts of water

Regular waves emerge

The water molecules amass patterns

That eventually reverberate

Endlessly

 

 

 

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A song with a very urgent message, a sappy but very beautiful Bee Gees song that Bumba and Maybank keep trying to get right. Got To Get A Message To You. Sing along if you know it, sing along even if you don’t.

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A Detective Story: Ted Morris, L.A. Private Eye

Ted Morris of the Los Angeles Private Investigations Agency examined the house across the street. The woman – Angelina Montez was her name – for whom he had been combing the streets of old Los Angeles for the past three weeks, had just walked in the door. Ted Morris stopped walking and stood still in the middle of this quiet street in this pleasant L.A. neighborhood, and gazed casually at the very lovely little house that this most dangerous of women had entered.
She probably won’t be long, thought Morris. It’s just a delivery after all.

Ted Morris, Private Eye, moved further up the street to wait.

When she emerged from the building half hour later she was accompanied by a young buck with greased-back hair, a long, wiry fellow, who looked both ways furtively as they stepped out onto the sidewalk and began to walk briskly, arm in arm, up 8th Street.

Morris followed at a distance of course.

Story to be continued……

 

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A Bumbastories Art Review

I myself drew the assignment. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) this week opened its new exhibition Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky – a superlative review of the post-Impressionist and Expressionist art of Germany and France of the early 20th century. Nearly all the works presented were strongly influenced by the discovery, at the turn of the century, of Vincent Van Gogh’s amazing body of work.
This rich and varied review features several Van Goghs which this writer had not seen before – which is always a great treat. The wide collection of German and French impressionists and German Expressionists includes a magnetic Paul Klee, several wonderful Kandinskys, some fine Gaugains and Kirchners. In short, a great exhibit, which Bumbastories strongly recommends to anyone within striking distance of the L.A. basin.

More on the exhibit next week.

Wishing one and all a good week……