Thoughts About Stiletto

Plotnik spent some time in Stiletto City this past weekend. Mummy P. is doing well and the city is what it isn't and what it is.

"What it Isn't and What it Is" will be a song about LA, don't you go steal it now.

Sitting out on Mummy P.'s back patio talking to The Great PD, who lives in the narrowest of cities, Plotnik realized this about his hometown: It's wider.

Not wilder, wider. Mummy P.'s lot must be twice as wide as Great World Headquarters's. This means when you sit out on her patio there is no one potentially only twenty feet away from you downhill or uphill. The difference, purely psychological of course, is that you can look out over the whole city and pretend you are a pioneer, that all that greenery below is the wild frontier, and therefore your choices are limitless and your personal horizon is as blue as the sky to the west.

That's a nice thing. And when it's hot, Plotnik feels like a kid again. Of course, he is sitting next to his mother which kind of seconds that emotion.

Do you remember the Popeye movie with Robin Williams, where Olive Oyl (Shelly Duvall) sings that great song about Bluto: "He's Large!"

(Copy this link: ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRUa_E1CugU

There you go: Stiletto City. Large, Wide, Endless.

This is also Stiletto City: the stink of the streets near the Tropical Cafe. What in the world has happened to EPark? Wasn't it gentrifying? It's a stinking mess, pocket malls half empty, paint peeling, the smell of pee on Parkman Street rivaling Market Street in Saint Plotniko. Jeez -- are even these concrete bungalows a million bucks and up?

Stiletto City has always been about hills. You need to be able look over life down in the flats, so you can stare straight into your romantic imagination.