Pratie Place - first anniversay.

Today is Pratie Place's first birthday. I've fed the blog almost every day for a year!

I posted three times on my first day, January 15 2005.

The first was about mariachi music. I still love it, and had the opportunity to put a few sones together and perform them, with my band Mappamundi and then with the kids of the Village Harmony travel camp where I taught in July.

If you come join us at Village Harmony Adult Session II this summer, you can sing or play this fast-moving polyrhythmic music with us.

Mexican songs can be about the most (supposedly) devastating sadness, yet they sound at the same time so very cheerful. This is the opposite of Yiddish songs, which often sound heart-rendingly sad when they are really about successful love ventures or good food.

The second post was about catching up on years of pop-culture tv while I used the elliptical trainer. I still put the socks over the handles when it gets cold, because the room is not heated. Of the shows I watched then, I stopped watching Six Feet Under and MI-5 because they got meaner and more upsetting. I've plodded along with the others, adding, among others, House and Smallville (it's so stupid, but the recaps by Omar G. at Television Without Pity make it worth continuing).

Hour-long tv shows are best. Without commercials, they are about 42 minutes long - showing how much of your hour you spend waiting for people in the ads to finish buying things, shouting about things, selling things, or (if you watch Univision) worrying about fungus between their toes.

Sometimes I get sick of tv shows and watch movies - right now I'm working on "The Long, Hot Summer."

My third post for January 15, 2005 was about Chicken Boy, a Los Angeles icon. This is a picture of him in his glory days, atop a restaurant which was then torn down. Chicken Boy was saved by some devoted fans, but he was too large to be lodged in his full glory anywhere.


My bandmate Ken Bloom's sister was one of those devoted fans - she took us to see her Chicken Boy Museum, where the head was displayed on a pedestal. Then we visited his body at her home (left).

A couple years ago three members of my band played some gigs on the grounds of the Hollywood Bowl (we are way too minor-league to play INSIDE it!) and Bloom's sister took us around visiting. She had the body of Chicken Boy in her back yard at the time. It filled up the entire back yard.

UPDATE: We've been told that Chicken Boy has been put back together and is currently on private display, location unknown.

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