It seems fitting that the air here in Pasadena smells like acrid smoke; the sky is coated with ash and smoke and the sunrise was a bleary red.

It's our fire season.

Last night I drove north on the 110 to my apartment staring at the glowing orange folds of the Hollywood Hills taking in the fearsome and inspiring view. I was extremely tempted to forget going home and head up the 101 to take a better look, but it was past midnight and the last thing they need up there is more fucking tourists.

We have our seasons here. They aren't bound by the amount of time that seasons last in other places. It depends on the weather, current economic forecasts and how many stupid people have control of the evening news.

The Fire Season lasts until the humidy climbs back up and the tempuratures drop enough that it can rain all night. Then the Flood Season starts. The Flood season isn't necessarily because of the rain - though it helps. Things like underground water pipes tend to burst and/or people hit fire hydrants with their cars during this time. Don't ask me why. There's just more water than normal around.

Flood Season lasts until the Santa Ana Season, typically some time in March. The air is terribly dry, wind burn is common as are the poison clouds hovering in girls' bathrooms in junior high and high schools made entirely of hair spray. Static cling and grit-in-your-eye are common traumas.

At some point in May or June the Santa Anas give way to Tourist Season. Foreigners who flood the area and force any Angeleno innocently minding their own business to listen to their stories about how "back in Nebraska/South Dakota/Ohio/etc it can still get below zero at night." Hey people - we don't fucking care alright? Either we've been there and we fucking left or we HAVEN'T been there and have no interest in knowing what we're missing first *or* second hand.

Tourist Season gives us the most bad press. They assume that cause the weather is nice the people they encounter will be nice. Why should we be nice?? You're cutting us off on your way to Disneyland while we have to get to work! And we're supposed to be thrilled about this?

Anyway I really don't want to get off on a rant about damned foreign drivers who don't know the first thing about driving on LA's roads and assume it's the locals who are at fault. Fuck You.


I wanted to talk about fire.

And about tomorrow.

Seriously, there isn't much to be said about tomorrow. Sadly, everybody who has someway of saying something to lots of people will be saying it over and over again, louder and louder, ad nauseum.

The only thing that has me interested in terms of commemoration is that at 8:47AM local time in each time zone around the world there will be at least one if not a dozen choral groups performing Mozart's Requiem. Around the world this adds up to over a hundred (okey I wasn't paying *especially* close attention to the news story, they kept playing parts of the Kyrie in the background) groups around the world, starting very soon in Auckland, New Zealand and ending in American Samoa.

I don't know if KCRW will carry the chorale from Seattle that started the idea (they'll be performing at Safeco Stadium), but I'll definately tune in for that. Otherwise I think I'm going to opt out of listening to any broadcasts, radio or otherwise.