Happy birthday, L.A. (242) and Beyonce (42)

SNL; Frank Black; Xochitl, A. Wells, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly

In the brisk fall and windy winter, it gets nice as the skies clear to reveal snowcaps.

This is a nice shot of our sweet city with a reservoir/lake/algae pond in the forefront.

Want a nice beach? Go next door to the OC or up to Zuma and Malibu's coast on PCH.

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Y'all think Sasha gonna let Becky win out? (QB)

Happy birthday, Queen-for-a-day Beyonce. QB is playing Los Angeles' Sofi Stadium tonight, having added one more night to her run to celebrate her birthday with everyone dressed in chrome and silver, trying to wash the taste and memory of Taylor "Nazi Barbie" Swift out of our mouths and minds. Swift's Eras[e] Tour mostly did that, but we're sure we went because our credit card bills tell us so (and that yucky taste in our mouths). It sucks being hypnotized, robotically standing in line to buy merch only to resell it online at a hefty profit. Who cares about that Nazi princess? We've got the Queen B tonight!

We fell in love with Beyonce when we heard her duet with some fat guy named Jay-Z. She is so beautiful and her voice is gorgeous. Only problem was...

The problem was, it wasn't her. It was Alicia Keyes! So what does QB do?

It's not a great song (for men) but Sasha Fierce sure can dance.

(The Decline of Western Civilization) FEAR: "I Love Livin in the City"

There are Buddhists in LA (Ven. Piyananda)

This unceded Tongva (labelled Gabrieleno by the imperial rulers) Indian land used to be Mexico. That world was known as Alta California or "Upper California." Mexico held on to Baja (Lower) California, with beaches as beautiful as the Santa Monica Bay, where we dump our sewage as Aldous Huxley famously explained in "Hyperion to a Satyr," about the water treatment plant out by LAX Airport that doesn't work so well, especially when it rains.

And when does it ever rain? When it pours. When we get a deluge, the banks of the LA River overflow. And it is that river that gave the city part of its name, El Rio Porciuncula. LA has a long name, roughly equivalent to Buddhist Bangkok's official full name, except with imperial Catholic overtones.

• LA's name: On Sept. 4th, 1781, a group of 44 settlers known as Los Pobladores ("the townspeople") founded this town or pueblo they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, which translates as "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels" [24], the lady being Catholicism's Virgin Mary. The original name of the settlement is disputed. The Guinness Book of World Records rendered it El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula [25], the last bit being the name of the river named after a place in Spain.

Full moon over my Lamby, L.A.

Two-hundred and forty-two years ago, this was sort of Mexico but mostly Spain, due to an imperial invasion, conquest, and occupation.

All this unceded land belonging to indigenous nations, who stewarded it for 10,000+ years, was going to waste in Spain's mind. So the invaders went north into the hinterlands and established concentration camps all along the way, each a day's horse ride from the next, quaintly referring to them as California's "mission system."

Church and state, hand in hand, kidnapped women and children. Then Spain enslaved the men who came to save them. Hitler took note of this European success story and implemented it in and around Germany. The Fuhrer also took the idea and practice of eugenics from the European experiment in the Americas, particularly the U.S. of A.

Tongva kids (some blended) don't all look like you would think. We're still here in Tongaavar.

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L.A. under a full moon and smoggy sun

So the concentration camp/"mission" she was busted and imprisoned at before forced relocation was the San Gabriel Mission in beautiful San Gabriel, California, in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley, in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountain Range of the expansive forest just behind LA, where the Tongva once freely roamed like grizzly bears alongside them, from the peaks to the sand on the coast, where they often met their friends, the Chumash or "Beautiful People" of Malibu and neighboring Ventura County.

Toypurina: Joan of Arc of CA

The Tongva (Gabrielenos) had friends behind the Orange Curtain, where the Acjachemen (Juaneno or St. Johns) and Luiseno (St. Louis people) lived in rivalry but peace, just like LA and the OC exist today. The City of LA, with 3.something million inhabitants became a real incorporated city sometime in like the 1940s. And now it's the capital of the world (in our minds), due largely to the influence (hegemony) of Hollywood.

LA Latinx walks around like Toypurina

Now, centuries later, after El Pueblo moved from the San Gabriel Valley (next to the Saint Gabriel Mountains, which gave its name to the local, backwards inhabitants resisting enslavement and ethnic cleanings, almost-successfully led by one Joan of Arc figure named Toypurina, a Tongva warrior princess who was to lead a rebellion against the Spanish invaders and rapists.

Unfortunately, someone ratted her out or a Spanish soldier who spoke the local language overheard her, so she was arrested, imprisoned, and forced to marry a white man and have his babies, in a practice known as "rape" in most places but called "re-education" in police states and oppressive fascists states like the future Los Angeles.

PHOTO GALLERY AND COMMENTARY

The million dollar homes of L.A. (Yeah, a million doesn't get you much in this market)

White City, now burned down, overlooking LA, above Altadena on Echo Mountain

Los Angeles has the best and biggest spiritual bazaar by LAX: Conscious Life Expo

Some killers still eat meat in L.A. These cows escaped the slaughterhouse, running wild

The pre-colonial Native diet was largely plant-based like this vegan cookbook shows.

Most years we have Disclosure Fest in Downtown LA. This year it's in the Luxor, Las Vegas.

L.A. can be so deceptively nice, like at the Lotus Festival pond in Echo Park near DTLA.

Culture? Every year we have a massive Festival of Books at USC with the LA Times.

It's a Mediterranean climate that looks like a desert, with super blooms after the rain 

We have science and UFO sightings over Hollywood (see the sign) at Griffith [Central] Park

Either those are UFOs, like the Battle of Los Angeles, or just more police helicopters.

It's mostly a movie town, so nothing much is real, like the unbelievable hiking trails

The morning views and sunset hikes are a big draw for healthy hikers on the go

There's lots of hardcore rap just as hardcore punk got its start on these mean sunny streets.

Thanks to the work of Tongva tribe members and allies, we tossed Columbus for IPD!

We have our own radical radio station (KPFK) that's always on the verge of going out of business

We have so much life in LA, and we try to film most of it. Come to my movie premiere on...

We have wild parties and wildlife, like now dead P-22, a 7-foot long maneater in Griffith Park

What must the space aliens think when they fly into LA to the lights of Griffith Observatory?

There's water here, mostly wasted down the concrete canal flood control channel

We protest, even our own like racist Nury Martinez and her cohorts, for being anti-Black

It's mainly a concrete jungle, with lots of traffic and industrial pollution and hot smog.

But we love it, when we can see it, from Griffith Observatory looking toward The OC.

Here's a map of old town, laid out as a grid to maximize real estate sales with mountains behind

It's a great place, a smoggy basin with lots of earthquakes, tourists, smog, and traffic

Like Manhattan we have a skyline so Woody Allen can make better bicoastal movies.

It snows in sunny Los Angeles County, mostly on the mountaintops, hails elsewhere.

JOKE: Q: Why is it so smoggy in LA? A: So God can't see what we're doing down here.

It's a big sprawling megalopolis of 88 cities and many more neighborhoods with no center.

That time Alexis from Claremont College and I OCCUPIED LA's first skyscraper.

Oh, we have looters, too, and like to be a police state at the drop of a hat with paramilitary.

L.A. actually stands for "Latin America" or so we like to think for all of our Latinos and cars

Our favorite Mexican-American monk, North Hollywood

The Valley has a tribe the Harakmogna, who have a cultural center next to tallest Mt. Wilson

The concentration camp at Mission San Gabriel, home of Tongva heroine Toypurina

There's Buddhism everywhere, like in the Valley (Northridge) with morning Zen meditation.

When the next pandemic forces us to wear masks again, we're ready.

That time Pussy Riot came to Los Angeles (2023) with Nadya getting all sexy and radical.

The weather is easier to handle with very attractive meteorologists and news anchors

The rain leads to mud that erodes the foothills then leads to grass then leads to wildfires.

The last place you want to end up is Skid Row on drugs or buying made in Asia goods

We have centiury-old designated cultural treasure neighborhoods that yet survive.

The old houses, some of which housed rich Blacks, still stand, like on Mt. Washington

This is a good depiction of Tongaavar, what LA was called before Los Angeles

Most of the time the mountains over DTLA have no snow, just barren crumbling limestone

We're vegans and quasi-vegetarians who care about animals and our human health (NoHo)

Tens of thousands come out to try the vegan items for sale, mostly kind junk food

We have secret waterfalls like this one at Eaton Wash in Pasadena with easy access.

Shambhala LA still exists online and at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena

See you all at the Beyonce Birthday show tonight at SoFi (the LA Forum). Wear silver.