Walking around the Civic Center today, I discovered that Radio Shack is moving; supposedly it will be gone in 30 days. It comes as no great surprise because, little by little, the store inventory has been vanishing — a sure sign that things were ending. To Xavier and his crew at Radio Shack, who kept us all sane in a world of constantly changing electronics: a heartfelt thank you for all those times of advice and help. I only hope Xavier and his crew can be persuaded to hang out their own shingle somewhere in Malibu so we all know where to go for electronic help. It’s not the big stuff where we all need help. We need help on the 1,001 little things where the knowledge only comes if you do it all day and begin to know the idiosyncrasies of all the various electronics. However, the news isn’t all bad and you can take heart. Rumor is that a yoga pants store is coming into that location, so if you’re down to your last seven pairs of yoga pants, you should feel secure, because help is on the way.
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They have been doing some roadwork in the center lane of PCH in the area of Carbon Beach where Karen and I have rented a condo. The work requires that they gouge out the center lane pavement, after first hammering it into submission, and then putting it into a grinder, which practically turns it into thick dust that is then put into a new pavement that’s put back into the excavated lane. It’s an amazing process. It’s quick, it’s efficient and it’s amazingly noisy and the concussion shakes the fillings in your teeth. Sadly, the work is done in the evenings, so between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. Monday night, I kept dreaming about being in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with big drills grinding up the earth. It also gave me some new insight as to what may have happened to poor old Jimmy Hoffa.
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The international soccer organization FIFA, which apparently governs the world’s most popular and probably lucrative sport, has been kneepad-deep in scandal since the U.S. IRS started looking into tax law violations within FIFA. The scandal has grown and has finally ensnared the top dog, Sepp Blatter, who has just announced his resignation and, I’m guessing, probably has a reasonable chance of being indicted. Typically, prosecutors start at the bottom and work their way up the command chain, giving immunity to those below to give testimony against those above. In what might be a harbinger of something else, an event honoring former Sheriff Lee Baca has been postponed, which may mean, because I have a bit of suspicious mind, that jail abuse case is getting close to Baca. Or it may mean nothing more than the date didn’t work or that ticket sales were slow. They already indicted Undersheriff Tanaka and the U.S. Attorney prosecutors may not want two defendants. Two defendants can always blame each other and the case gets muddied, whereas a one-defendant case is almost always cleaner. Maybe Baca lucked out, or maybe he really didn’t have a clue. Time will tell.
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We’ve just come back from a road trip to Sacramento — north on Highway 5 and back south on Highway 99. It truly is an eye-opener to drive through California, and everyone should do it periodically. What you see is that the coastal areas are wealthy, comfortable and healthy, and the capitol, Sacramento, is booming with jobs and new restaurants. The Central Valley is considerably poorer and older, and the new affluence hasn’t reached most of them. The center of the State is significantly more agricultural and there, water doesn’t mean lawns, it means jobs. That is not to say that they are doing a good job with their water. You don’t see fields covered with plastic using drip irrigation as you see all over the Middle East and other drier areas of the world. Our California farmers were raised on cheap, plentiful water and are resisting mightily changing their farming methods. They’re going to have to or get out of the business. My guess is there are certain agricultural products that are too water hungry to be grown in California anymore. It’s actually the same with our gardens here in Southern California and many also in Malibu. People have spent a fortune on landscapes and spent years growing those gardens, which are beautiful, but external circumstances have changed and those gardens may become a thing of the past. We’ve spent a lot of time in Arizona the last year and the gardens there are very different — very drought-resistant. Initially, they looked kind of barren to me but, as time goes on, your eyes get used to it and you begin to see the beauty in the desert landscape. Los Angeles is on the edge of a desert and our greenery is going to have to change, or we are going to run out of water.