rants, reports, raves, and embarrassments from eric trules

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From My Front Door, Remembering a Time When Things Were Not So Sweet

There was a time – not toooo long along – probably about 4 winters ago around this same Holiday and Christmas time, when I was still morbidly stuck in the LA desert. I was perhaps 73 years old, had already retired from USC (the over-priced University of Southern California) as a theater professor after 31 years, had gotten married for the first time to an Indonesian woman, also 31 years younger than myself at 55 years old, adopted our 8-year-old Indonesian son at age 68, and was still renting at “Lucretia Gardens” in Echo Park, having been in Los Angeles…

Alley Pond Park, the Cousins’ Club, and the Loony Bin

I remember two things about Alley Pond Park from my early childhood in the 1950s. Neither was that it was the second biggest park in Queens County, one of the five boroughs of New York City, nestled at the far east borderline of Douglaston, Queens, just a stone’s throw from suburban Nassau County, where I grew up…. long before they built the east-west, Long Island Expressway right through the middle of Queens and Nassau. No, what I do remember vividly, is that Alley Pond Park was the green-grassed, red picnic-tabled immigrant park of my forefathers, where my helter-skelter Russian Jewish…

Vaccine Tale with a Twist

Also posted on the ” Cultural Weekly“: https://www.culturalweekly.com/synchronous-vaccination-tale/ ———- So I’m driving home past Dodger Stadium, perhaps the biggest Covid vaccination site in our country. And living in Echo Park, as I do, actually in the hills called Elysian Heights, I live only 4 stops signs away from the World Series Champs of 2020. Seeing a very short line of cars on my way home from grocery shopping with the Fam about 4:30 on January 19, I slow down near the entrance gate at Stadium and Academy Ways, and using my gregarious New York cab driver persona, I shout out to…

Turkey Day in the Time of Corona

        Frozen turkey’s in the oven since last night. Special Trules recipe. Last employed almost forty years ago, on 23rd Street and Park Avenue South in New York City, in my clown loft, when my parents were still alive, in the early 1980s. Slow roast. Get the bird to stew overnight in its own juices. Guarantees a moist, delicious feast. Or least it used to, as I said. Let’s see. Forty years is a lonnnnnng time. The times, they have-a changed. Indeed. Bob Dylan, the sage himself, is almost 80. I’m 73. I’ve lived in sunny California…

On Losing Kobe

— Every weekday morning I wake up at 5:45 a.m., to carve out 45 minutes for myself in the bathroom (ok, on the toilet) – before I start my daily “personal homework routine” with my still English-learning, almost 13 year old, son… alternating spelling with dictation, and every morning, reading: “Charlotte’s Web”, “The BFG”… parents, you know the drill.—Ok, I sit and read the newspaper – the old fashioned way – turning the pages to find what I want to read. I have to be judicious, with just 45 minutes at hand. I look at the headlines, page 2 &…

Cirque du Soleil’s “Volta” in LA, Too Big for its Britches?

The “fabulous” 2017 Cirque du Soleil spectacle called “Volta” – opened January 18, 2020 at Dodger Stadium, right here in my hood, Echo Park. Been there, done that… except as one of Cirque’s MANY touring shows, this is its first stop in insatiable-for-Cirque, LA. We neighbors were given free tix to the night-before dress rehearsal by the Dodgers PR department. Truly amazing for the formerly neighbor-averse, now neighbor nee-r-do-well, Dodgers! Many thanks to Patrica Sanders! I remember seeing the very first Cirque du Soleil show here in LA at the 1987 Los Angeles Festival on 1st Street and San Pedro….

Sara Gazarek and Black Nile at Metro Arts’ “Jazz Tracks” in Union Station

I love Union Station.  “The Last of the Great Train Stations,” I make sure to show it to all my out of town guests, along with the Hollywood sign, Santa Monica and Venice beaches, Pacific Coast Highway, Topanga Canyon, Chinatown, South Central, and Skid Row. (More on those choices in another post.)But Union Station, our West Coast gem of international “grand central” stations (you can tell I’m from New York), opened in 1939 and was designed by architects John and Donald B. Parkinson and built by Robert E. McKee Inc. The style is a gorgeous mishmash of Spanish mission, art…

A Good Neighbor

Some people say, “Good fences make good neighbors.” I like to say, “you’re lucky if you find a good neighbor. Especially a good next door neighbor. Especially one who’s lived in the neighborhood longer than you have. One who will keep an eye on your dog when you leave town for a couple of weeks. And especially one who has fought Emile Griffith, ex-Middleweight Champion of the World. There he is. Gravel voice. Boxer’s pug face. One eye. Laugh like a happy machine gun. Eddie “El Gato” Gasporra. Echo Park resident since ‘81. Or was it ’85? Or ’89? He’s…

July 4th, 2015: Cassius & the Kid Soften the Curmudgeon

Yeah, ok, so I’m a curmudgeon. A parsimonious tough guy. On first approach, I have a stern face and a menacing growl. I put people off. I’m not very open to meeting new folks and not very easy to get to know. Some take it for arrogance, but c’mon, you know that’s not the real me. I’m just a big, over-sensitive softie. Inside, where it counts. All that barking and menacing? It’s just a front… a defense… a performance persona… to keep the hostile world at bay. It’s been that way ever since… well, forever. Or at least ever since…

Pigs, Pestilence & Rats

I’ve gotten 4 traffic tickets in the last 2 weeks. The first was for speeding on the 2 Freeway in Glendale, where the cop was in hiding under an overpass. An obvious speed trap! He said I was going 80. I said I was going no faster than anyone else in the left lane. Let’s see who’s right. I’ve called the Ticket Clinic. The 2nd was just a $73 parking ticket right here at Echo Park Lake. I was showing a new friend around the neighborhood. I was probably just in too expansive a mood, was unaware of the No…

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