Q: With whom did you have lunch?

A: Mel Torme

I started a new gig this week doing architecture or something close to it. I took the gig for a variety of reasons: nice people, interesting work, I get to take the bus to work and the location can't be beat, a few hundred yards from Westwood Village and a one minute walk from Pierce Brothers Cemetery.

In case you don't know, Pierce Brothers is the final resting place for the likes of Walter Mathhau, Jack Lemon, Dean Martin and of course the delicious Marilyn Monroe.

Not one to let hidden benefits go unrealized even when they involve brushing up on Tomcat JSP server configuration, I grabbed my reading, rode the elevator downstairs and took a seat on a bench in the sun located at the marker where Mel Torme's soul rests.

Pretty cool, huh?

But that's not what I really want to write about. I really want to write about taking the bus to work part of the gig. You see, in the final analysis, talk is cheap. At one time it wasn't. But since talk seems to have been relegated to the back halls of persuasion, it's become about as valuable as Beta-max video and 8 track cassettes. So not for a moment do I want to give the impression that my political action ends at the end of my tongue. Thus, when the opportunity came along to get a gig that would get me out of the car and on to my feet, I took it. You see, there is some romantic resonance to the saying, “Think globally, act locally.”

So tomorrow I'll plunk my seventy five cents into the fare box and take a 10 minute ride into Westwood Village. At some point I will probably squawk a bit about the debacle of foreign policy in Iraq or the fact that there is little articulate discussion in the public arena about how a state can wage war quickly and effectively against a stateless belligerent. I'll probably get a little bummed. Then, in order to renew my spirit, if the sun is just right and warm, I might go downstairs, grab a bagel with a schmear and have lunch with George C. Scott, if he's available.