The Script of lifeA Chapter by Judas Hammer From Job corps to The Crazy Brits screenplays to now exploring the straight seen on fourth street...... Job Corp was supplementing my living
expenses and I hoped it would take be to bigger and better places. Teaching had
failed me in the past and the Hollywood train and already passed. I could see
the plumb of what could have been in the distance. The facitity was a drab
place surrounded by high fences with cement dorms in the middle and various
non-descript building within the interior of the campus. I had gotten the job a month before after
being rejected twice. The facility employed many of the below average people, who themselves
would have done better if they had enrolled in a class or two.
The employees were dull, ignorant young people of all races, looking as if they
had been hit with the ‘stupid’ shovel. Many were probably the high school
forgotten or the one in the family everyone forgot about during reunion or
birthdays until they showed their plain faces and broken smile. When theses types of individuals get
together they choose to keep their way of life intact too forget the truths:
they are just the cotton filling for the rest of us. Instead of choosing a side: they play the safe area. Risk and reward are like strange lands with
hostile natives, but having a new daughter and being on the edge of homelessness
it was a bitter, poisoness pills. My only responsiblity was to was
teach the GED course until another perminant teacher could come aboard. Most of
my class were the kids and young adults that the harsh world had forgotten. They were also ignored by the staff who
somehow facied themselves better, but how can one be better when it seem like
the entire staff started in the dorms cleaning bathrooms and waking tired
trainees? The task brought in pretty penny when done
consistently. I didn’t have to worry about food, because I had gotten stamps so
the Golden State was paying for my Fresh and Easy Chicken salads and Coconut
water. Truthfully, they had been footing the bill for a good two years. I had
been on assistance so long I forgot how to purchase food with paper money. Soon, it would all come tumbling down: for that was the system. To bring you have way up to have you tumble. I rode it out while the getting was good, because when it did it: back the dollar chicken sandwiches and cup of water. Sometimes I would sneak over to the soda fountain and pinch Sprite because resembled water and could be taken easily. Sneaky
thief man! I will drink all your
soda. Your clear soda will be mine! I would eat like the
well to do until the troth was empty. The money would be towards my rent, which
was fairly cheap and what I could
purchase for my newborn daughter. The only caveat was the parking situation, if
I got around the area any less then five o’clock: finding a close spot was
impossible and once parked you could not risk moving your vehicle or be a more than a mile out on
Seventh street, watching you back as you made the eight block midnight stroll,
back after searching hours for a precious open space, while cursing the
universe for making fellow human with steel horses. Many days I woke up to the sunshine
and be out of the place by six. The air mattress was horrible and a point of
contention between Susie and I. It never held enough air and I would wake with
my back on the floor and was somehow being blamed for the failure of the
apparatus to hold oxegen. The cleaning lady later told me on my way out, the
mattress was bad and had always been that way. Seemed like Susie was in denial
or trying to hustle me or maybe a little of the two. I was not an easy hustle
so eventual Susie would relent. After completing the days toils: I would sometimes work out
on site and then head to Java and
write. The energy would be peaceful and the interior full of color. It was a
feeling of easiness rather then the stress and pretentiousness the Valley
offered. The V energy from the struggling filled the Valley air like a strong, heavy
current. I wrote my own stuff and then met the Brit for our screenplay
session. I pulled out a pocket recorder and we would talk about the
trip that was going to be transcribed into a script and probably not get
made nor bought. That was the world I knew and lived for over a decade. It
brought a chuckle to my lower regions how everyone in the city of dreams could
write a script about an event they deemed worthy of a twenty five million
dollar budget and an A list star rolling his eyes at a table read. I can’t believe I’m doing this!
I need to leave the Coke alone! But for Green tea and sandwiches I was game.
She came down and we moved outside table below the heat lamp and the brit moaned into
the recorder. Even her moan was Cockney! She sounded like her wounded heart was
abused over in the Dominican Republic, by old friends that were jealous of her
LA life which unknown to them was: a studio, disability insurance and various
other scams. She was living the LA life that was mostly- fake. All of it was an
act like a failed puppet show that was not be believed. There was no possible way to
make a puppet realistically, you always knew without much hesitation that it
was a simple piece of cloth with someone’s hand up it’s a*s. She was a
failed singer, who tried a little bit but fell into the trapping of a family,
friends and weed. But failed in LA was
not a bad thing, because everyone was a failed something. We all were at one
point or another. Yet at that very moment, she was going to
be a screenwriter: the best. Her story would break all the records at the box
office. She knew a B rated, Kiwi actor through her girlhood friend (so she
said) that could get her script to someone. Everyone one I knew seemed to have
someone in this town but that someone always led nowhere. If I had a dollar for
everyone who said their friend, cousin or uncle knew someone: I could have
bought my own studio. It was like
a rabid dog chasing his tail. That’s what trying to remain sane in the city of
fallen angels was like. If she wanted to chase her tail no problem. I knew the
truth but if it kept her mentaly sedated and healthy with the green teas. After her baited ranting she asked what I
was doing afterwards. I told her heading up to the Red Room on Fourth to have a
drink. I couldn’t afford the bar scene earlier but now I had small checks
coming so I could explore them: the expensive remixed areas around Fourth
street with the Indie movie theater, the retro thrift store, the expensive
fusion food munched on by wealth gay men and the post graduate hipster from
Long Beach State. It was everything Santa Monica with out the world wide
international spin. It was everything Belmont Shore minus the Palos Verde slash
orange country golden dusty grim, which clung to the edges or artist want. I
never liked the area much but now I was investigating everyman’s Fourth street:
where the ghetto and the gays crossed paths while the Rockabilly and hipsters
drank and plotted on the twenty year old female bar hoppers. I had been to the Red Room once before to
watch a Lakers game. The bar’s reputation proceeded it even before I walked in
the door. I had driven by one night and noticed a large group of twenty
somethings standing outside waiting to get in or maybe they were not. Maybe
they were smoking or outside for some kind of Bible reading. Jenny my kids
mother told me told me about the room and said it was a cool hang out and she
had been there a few times in the past with a friend. I visited one weekday afternoon. I didn’t
like to use Susie’s TV and was not comfortable sitting in the living room and watching the tube. Mind you I
was not a big TV person to begin with; usually I watched sports. I was also
uncomfortable with the fact she must have thought I was a thief. She would leave various objects in the open forgetting that I
was now a resident and when I returned it would be put away. I think only a
thief themselves feels that everyone wants to steal. Like suburban housewives
walking down the street that makes direct eye contact and grabs her purse flicking
it to the other side. If I digested it too much it could be a soul crusher. Reality is if a Brother from Watts
or a starving Meixcan Pisa transient wants your Louie knock off and the twenty dollars
mixed in with mints and coupons, there was nothing a Zumba loving, soccer mom
can do but watch her handbag do the hundred meets down the boulevard. So I was personally inspired to make my
way to Fourth Street rather then stay. I entered the door, which was already
open. The inside was dark and small with a bar counter to the right and a pool
table in the center. To the right was a jukebox and three tables to the side.
One was occupied by a group of thuggish Mexican men.
© 2013 Judas Hammer
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Judas HammerThe City of Angeles, CAAboutI like to write, live in La and write and make short films. and more..Writing
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