Like many Americans, White Fang struggles with the time change. Everything is off for her, when we go to bed, when she dines ferociously on kibble and bits of bacon.
“Why, why, why?” she wonders. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”
“I have no answers for you,” I say. “Because no one really knows.”
The other day, people were driving all screwy down the boulevard and I knew just why. They were all resetting their car clocks, which is something L.A. drivers do at 50 mph. In fact, L.A. drivers can do almost anything at 50 mph – knit, canoodle, kibbitz, roll a joint. Anything but drive.
Meanwhile, it’s mating season here in Los Angeles, you can see it in the ball gowns and on the hiking trails, the way everything is dressed so suggestively.
White Fang told me she is hoping to meet a nice coyote this month, for basic companionship and perhaps something longer term.
Fang spotted a nice coyote recently in a nearby ravine — gorgeous day, long grasses, the air a little minty. The coyote was ghostly and quite beautiful, golden and thick with fluff. In general, we Erskines seem drawn to objects that are fast, furry and extremely feral.
You know, it’s hard enough to be a human in L.A. Can you imagine being a wild animal here, trying to eke out a life – and raise babies – in these scruffy hills, as the grease smoke curls up from a nearby Carl’s Jr.?
So, I admire the coyotes, and I’m sorry if one snatched your cat or your rat or your Pekingese.
I like them because they are literal underdogs – trapped, poisoned, shot. Rarely, do you see them hit by cars. Too sly for that.
Know all that yipping they do during full moons? That’s when coyotes hold their mixers.
Many folks think they’re celebrating their kills, but as my pal Steve Searles notes, the last thing a wild creature will do when he bags a rabbit is to announce it to the entire neighborhood. He’s going to quietly enjoy his dinner alone.
So, the coyotes’ choir work – dominated, as usual, by the sopranos — celebrates our rampant spring fever, or simply the joy of being an underdog in a city that overworships winners and loud, lousy restaurants.
Speaking of winners, Suzanne and I were at a disco party the other night – one way to avoid meaningful conversation. At one point I lured her out on the country club deck to gaze up at the dark mountains
I told her to imagine all the life that was going on up there, the preying and the carousing and the choirs…those dark hills brimming with needy, primitive hearts, sipping from the streams, nibbling on the bramble, exchanging first kisses … those foothills staging a disco party of their own.
“You can see all that?” she asked.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of camping.”
Then we went back inside, where Donna Summer was sing-screaming and L.A.’s mating season was in full swing. And I thought: ‘THIS MUSIC! EWWWW!”
Which made me glad to be alive today, not yesterday, nor 45 years ago when this incessantly static and processed stuff was all the rage.
As a nation, I don’t think we’ve ever really recovered from disco.
For the occasion, I’d bought a disco shirt online. When it didn’t arrive in time, off I went to buy another disco shirt. So now I have two disco shirts, paisley and with flecks of used aluminum foil. Want one?
FYI, the dance floor had a slight lift to it, to accommodate the flashing lights underneath, and along the edges was this tapered three-inch dropoff.
I later told Smartacus how I’d disco’ed awkwardly off the dance floor at the party, but my dancing is such that Suzanne never really noticed, because that’s how I disco, my arms flailing, my legs kung-fu spasming, while I grasp for a railing that isn’t there.
Help! Help! Help!
To my credit, I avoided the waiters with trays of steaming coffee and leftover cocktails with napkins wadded up in them.
I avoided other dancers, including the one with a gold fish in his disco boot heel.
I avoided the birthday girl (a Superior Court judge), in her faux raccoon coat and gold-lame disco pants, torn in the crotch.
I avoided barreling into the DJ, who then asked for a selfie, because – presumably — he’d never seen anyone dance with such courage.
“Sometimes,” he explained, “these strobes trigger seizures.”
Yeah, sure they do.
Coming Saturday: Pasta, Gin and Joni Mitchell
Thank you for the hundreds of notes I received on last Saturday’s tribute to my late son. I wasn’t able to acknowledge every single message. Obviously, my heart bleeds for any parent who has lost a child. There is no agony to compare. Hugs.
What happened to you?
Looked all over and saw you had joined WSJ to write. Wondered: did Chris move to New York?
Nearly panicked realizing how much your two articles a week get me through life.
Dani in Chatsworth
Awwww, how sweet. But what’s this WSJ thing people keep mentioning? That’s news to me.
Glad to see you still writing for us! Thought you’d drop me from your subscriber list or moved on to greener (paying gig) pastures- lol. We enjoy reading about your adventures and take on life!
Sorry about that. A technical glitch that only took me six weeks to solve!
One of my happiest memories with my little sister is a Palm Springs Mexican cantina night, and making our way from her driveway to the back door in the pitch black with a pack of howling coyotes descending on us. I’m helpfully screaming, “hurry, hurry,” as she digs in her purse for that blasted door key, answering me, “I am, I am.” We’re both laughing hysterically, trying not to pee, just buzzed enough to have died a happy death. Oh, you had to be there. … I don’t think Daditude joined the WSJ, Erskine is congratulating a friend – I know this because X mysteriously let me back on last week despite my existential threat to humanity. Does it signal something? Winds of change? Pax.
So I see you and Suzanne are putting those waltz lessons to good use. Thanks for the smiles.
Today’s column on coyotes and disco reminded me of a couple of things. I love your conversation — real or imagined — with White Fang about coyotes.
One morning when I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains and commuted to Silicon Valley, I was sitting in my car, waiting along with a lot of other folks for the one traffic light in town to change to green. And then this extremely nonchalant coyote comes loping through this line of idling cars. I figured that he might have been heading to the San Lorenzo River, which at that point is more of a creek than a river, for a drink of water.
As to disco dancing, have you ever heard The Tubes’ song, “I Slipped My Disco”?
“… maybe it was my technique or just my shoes…”
Thank you for your humor.
Kay Arnold
Can you please add an event? I would like to meet you someday, might even switch to gin for the occasion, give K One a rest.
And I thought I had inadvertently done away with the two-a-week messages from you! Thank goodness you’re still around, Sorry, though, that I missed the tribute to your son!!
l
Hi David, you can find that column, and catch up on others, at ChrisErskineLA.com
I like that you go places that I have not gone to, or rarely or no longer experience, and vividly cast about for “fast, furry, and extremely feral” memories. That sounds like Spring is leaning over the horizon, sounding off. Donna Summer may have been the teflon queen of disco, The Bee Gees the lyric soprano kings, but The Pointers ( three sassy sisters) were the twitchy short-skirted, slim legged, stiletto-heeled soul of it all. Try waking up to their “Jump For My Love”, followed by “Fire”, “Slow Hand”, and “I’m So Excited”, ( in that order), and you will know that the Spring of something is in the bed with you, the day ahead charged with the incessant greening beat and floral rhythms even coyotes—with their keen sense of smell—know so well this time of year. Oh! Our “primitive needy hearts”. Spring is in the rose, the nose, the toes, the hose, the bows, the flows, the flower shows, and your prose. And so it goes…
Glad you are back online; we enjoy your wit and wisdom…The remembrance of dear Chris really hit home as we have son dealing with ALS right now. Thanks and blessings.
Hi Jim. Hugs to all of you.
Well, in one of those insane serendipitous moments- jump on to YT- and what is recommended but a tall, very young Donald Trump on Soul Train -disco dancing- my maniacal laughter may have startled our senior citizen neighbors but was a major stress reliever for me! Hope you go to YT and find it. : )
Yay! Received your post via email!! Color me happy. Oh I could read it on X or Facebook but this way is so much more personal! That’s not creepy in the least! lol
Gawd, it’s been a rough two months. I figured you went on vacation. You certainly deserved it. After the new book, the book talks and the destination wedding. I missed you tremendously. Glad to have you back! I’m really savoring catching up on two months of reading. Welcome back, Chris!
Hi Linda. So sorry. The emails quit going out. I think we’re good now. You can catch up at ChrisErskineLA.com. Cheers