Some journalist I am. Some friend, too.

I’ve been acquainted with Abbey Stirling for nearly two years, yet did not know that she starred in a horror picture called Broken in 2005. Guess I’ve just never seen her that way. And by “that way” I mean with a knife to her throat. (We shared one zany work weekend in Miami, in which we pushed things to the limit. But the threat of death was never really present.)

Abbey’s someone I’ve only known as a writer. We worked together at the fabled MOLI gig, chilled out with Neille in London, and just talked a lot about writing. (Panderingly, I rave about Flight of the Conchords, as Abbey is a Kiwi.) So, yeah, the whole flick bit is a shock, even if she does have presence and style to spare.

So, give me a break for merely recognizing this woman as a scribe. Probably, that’s what she is. These days I most know Ms. Stirling’s work from The London Word, “a home away from home for Londoners: a convivial nucleus from which our audience can indulge and divulge” — a culture site, in other words.

And it’s one that seems to be getting bigger. A recent re-design shows a website rife with strong takes on the obligatory food and nightlife categories, eclectic blog links — my fave is the literally-named Beasts of London — and witty user comments. Here’s a culture guide that’s hip enough to be useful to the locals, yet not intimidating to dilettantes such as myself.

I’ve looked through The London Word pretty thoroughly, and found not a lick of horror. Which is not there couldn’t be some, one day. I might suggest to Abbey that she revisit “Werewolves of London” — then all of her talents could live in one place.

Here’s ratification of my conclusions about race and class implications of recent trends in social networking. Danah Boyd gave a talk called “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online.” at the Personal Democracy Forum yesterday in New York. Among the more telling quotes that Boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, collected is this:

Anastasia (17, New York): My school is divided into the ‘honors kids,’ (I think that is self-explanatory), the ‘good not-so-honors kids,’ ‘wangstas,’ (they pretend to be tough and black but when you live in a suburb in Westchester you can’t claim much hood), the ‘latinos/hispanics,’ (they tend to band together even though they could fit into any other groups) and the ‘emo kids’ (whose lives are allllllways filled with woe). We were all in MySpace with our own little social networks but when Facebook opened its doors to high schoolers, guess who moved and guess who stayed behind… The first two groups were the first to go and then the ‘wangstas’ split with half of them on Facebook and the rest on MySpace… I shifted with the rest of my school to Facebook and it became the place where the ‘honors kids’ got together and discussed how they were procrastinating over their next AP English essay.

Obviously, issues such as usability and design play big parts in the migration from MySpace to Facebook. It would be silly to ignore the roles of race and class in the present flight. I’ve been on MySpace a bit this year, primarily for reporting on my book about the definitive gangsta album. Some of these people are on Facebook, but not a majority. I don’t think MySpace’s capacity to store music is primarily what keeps these people on the site. A lot of the attraction is about community. A lot of these people probably didn’t know the literal definition of a facebook before the advent of that social networking behemoth. I know I didn’t.

Actually, the last time I was on MySpace was Monday, to move Cashes Clay into my Top 8. Cashes is my nephew Ryan. I was his babysitter during a protracted period of unemployment in the early 1990s. And he gives me one reason to always be on that site.

One of my favorite cultural critics, Ernest Hardy, has been writing extensively about the King of Pop since the singer’s death last week. These posts are can’t-miss material not just because of Hardy’s witty insights, but also because of wonderful video clips that the writer immerses in context. Check all of it out. You’ll be smarter when you finish.

Magazine journalism work has dried up in ‘09, hence my efforts at screenwriting. Were it not for my book deal and one great, secret gig, I’d not be working in print at all.

Except for Entrepreneur. I ought to thank Mike Kessler for putting me in the mix, not just because I need the work, but because the work is so, so interesting. My first contribution, a short piece on the Burning Man-born Podbelt, poured right out of a great Silver Lake party. Isa Gordon, one small dynamo of a businesswoman, devised this invention as an alternative to purses because fanny packs are for dorks and women’s hips bear weight better than their shoulders.

But read the story. It’s pretty funny, and the PodBelt is something like a phenomenon.

Finally, visit the Podbelt site. All of the bondage sexuality that’s hinted at the Entrepreneur article is embodied by Podbelt model Masuimi Max. Your mom or dad might like one of these items, even if they aren’t into kinky sex.

Richard Nixon: “There are times when abortions are necessary, I know that, you know that’s when you have a black and a white.”

And you wonder why I was so happy to have Obama. I disagree with him on Afghanistan, health care reform, gay marriage, bank bailouts. But our current president don’t want my sons dead. Sheesh.

The first one is pretty tabloid.

The second, a comic-book curiosity.

And, finally, something about his thespian work. As in, acting like he had no penis in order to make it big in America. In Newsweek, David Gates asks, “Which was the more imaginative creation: his music or his persona?”

Happy reading.

Fundamentalism in the U.S. military is the subject of a new Faultlines video. Here is, to quote from Truthdig, a disturbing look at efforts to transform American soldiers into “government-paid missionaries,” as one Christian fundamentalist group put it.

These nationalists want to create a Christian state, which is insane.

Since Thursday, life in L.A. has felt very weird.

For starters, I’ve been talking a lot with the neighbors in my Westside apartment complex. It’s an extremely international bunch that inhabit the building, and they seem like a good lot of people, but I’ve made it a policy not to have extra conversation around me until I get my career together. Regardless, from the moment that I told the woman upstairs (whose origins I can’t for the life of me figure) of the passing of the King of Pop — at that point only confirmed on TMZ — it’s been chat, chat, chat. Relatively speaking, of course. I don’t plan to let things go too far.

And my cable went out while all of Thursday’s media ramp-up was building. Internet, too. This forced me to deal with it in a very old-school way. There were not carrier pigeons or even newspapers in my mix. However, I did shun talking to folks about it on the cellie, beyond a quick text to my sister. And, the following morning, I discovered that a Facebook conversation that I’d started about Michael Jackson had gone too far, too real. I de-friended my son and all of his teenage friends.

The traffic’s been bizarre. People seem extreme one way or another, either friendly as if to say you are not alone or testy, perhaps because they’ve not gotten over hating a person the world is celebrating that one’s got too hurt.

I’ve done my best to steer clear of news media converage, in large part because I agree with Al Sharpton that opinion makers have conveniently changed their take on Michael Jackson. The mediated moment that’s stayed with me most was Dodger Matt Kemp’s  performance on Friday night. Andre Ethier’s career-high three home runs and six R.B.I. are famous, but for me, personally, it’s the young Sooner Kemp whose performance resonates. He changed his plate appearance to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and had three hits, including an unusual triple. He stopped just beyond second base and raced to third when he spotted hesitation in the outfielder. Matt Kemp literally didn’t stop until he’d gotten enough. The sight of it was amazingly tangible inspiration.
The subject of our town’s present upheaval came up when my friend Dave stopped by yesterday. From the, let’s just say it, king’s randsom that AEG lost on the London concerts to small, inter-personal oddities, the craziness is everwhere. (Traffic has been just horrible, even for summer in Los Angeles.) And I just had to say something that was increasingly on my mind.

“L.A. being so hung up on fame, built on it, actually, maybe this really is what it feels like when royalty dies. I can’t believe this is coming out of my mouth, actually.

‘Cuz I don’t really believe in royalty. Even Diana was dirty, to my way of thinking. Everybody is a star, you know?

What I think is of little consequence here. When one man gets the world on the same page with a life’s work, that shit’s mad kingly. No one can deny it. And I’ve found myself asking, what if he’s only told the truth? About his virginity. About his skin condition. About the kids, just everything. And what if his increased weirdness was a kind of indictment of human nature? Wouldn’t that be something?

It would undercut a lot of what I’ve come to believe. Which is interesting and weird. Just as weird as the fact that he’s out of our lives.

I’ve stuck with the Cubs catcher through his early season slump, and for reason his stats don’t give away. Soto is in the club.

Soto’s coach had an interesting take:
“Look, I have smoked dope one time in my life,” Piniella said before the Cubs faced the Chicago White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field. “And it didn’t do a damn thing for me, and I never tried it again. I’m fortunate because of that. A lot of people do. You can even buy it in California from a pharmacy.”

Sweet Lou is an overrated manager and a piss-poor pot smoker.

The players have changed since this piece was published in The View at the late, lamented MOLI.com in 2007. Now the Spaniard in question and his wife Pamela are preparing to move to Brooklyn. I thought it might be nice to re-visit the piece as both have become ardent fans of the Dodgers.

When the following was first published, it wasn’t even clear that they’d be regular baseball fans —

Miguel the Cranky Spaniard has a genuine interest in American culture. His serious, almost clinical approach to learning about sport in this country knocked aside all reservations I might have about explaining the game in brass-tacks terms. Hand-holding with baseball isn’t something I do, even with my children. The Cranky Spaniard is exceptional. He was sure to develop a take, so I was game.

But then my cell phone rang while Nil and I waited outside the loge at Dodger Stadium and we learned the Spaniard and his wife would be a while. He’d parked down the hill to avoid paying parking.

This was gonna be a tough one.

“Fifteen dollars?” his wife asked.

“Dude,” I replied, “In SF it costs $30 to park.”

If he didn’t get over the exorbitant costs we were bound to face throughout the Dodgers-Diamondbacks match — big Michelobs are $11 up at Chavez Ravine — we would never get to the guts of dissecting baseball. So, I dug in on the walk to our seats. Macro to micro. Innings to outs. Outs to strikes. I broke it down, swiftly, for this smart, inquisitive man.

Once we’d found our seats, we were ready to rock. An awful, senior-citizen-oriented trip through Arizona had bred in the Cranky Spaniard a deep hatred of Phoenix. So I had that workin’ for me. He asked if the starting home pitcher was good.

Derek Lowe isn’t what I’d call good, not at this point in his career, I explained, but he’s one of my favorite pitchers in the National League. He’s a gamer, a guy who gets by on guts and creativity more than pure arm strength. He put Boston on his back and led the Red Sox to an elusive championship in 2004. Then he took a big payday with L.A. I outlined the pitcher’s scandalous affair with a Fox Sports Reporter from a previous season, just to provide the backstory that allows newcomers entry into the sometime arcane world of baseball.

We quietly surmised that screwing the press seems to be a right of passage for new stars in this town.

Lowe walked the second batter he faced and I informed Miguel that the Dodgers’ starter tends to have trouble early in the game. As if to punctuate the remark, Arizona leftfielder Eric Byrnes slam a home run. Two-zip. Diamondbacks. Lowe’s sinkin fastball works best when slightly tired and I told Miguel he just had a bit too much pep.

Turns out that a hip-injury was hobbling Lowe and he’d eventually leave after giving up four runs.

A round of boos oozed across the stadium. We looked around to see what play had sparked this. But the impetus was instead a jumbotron new report. Barry Bonds, whom people in LA hate for a wide array of reasons, had just tied the all-time American home run record. The Giants hate the Dodgers, for reasons that go back to New York. It is one of the all-time rivalries in our nation’s sports milieu.

“Are the Giants good?” Miguel asked.

I explained that they’re actually horrible. Since before the Giants’ 2002 World Series appearance, the team has been leveraged toward Bonds heavy playing contract. Until he’s gone, they’ll only stink, as the team can only afford one or two other decent players. For a while, banking on Bonds had worked. Now that he was old and mediocre, San Francisco sucked. Their fans would just have to live with this.

Here is where I learned about The Cranky Spaniard’s nickname.

It infuriated him that American players cannot move with greater freedom. Why should they be tied to these owners, he asked. If a soccer player wanted to move from say, Real Madrid to an American soccer franchise, the original team would have no say. All talk would be between the player and his suitor franchise.

In the fourth inning, I explained a balk, which is not so simple. The Spaniard and his wife went trekking off for the $8 beers they’d been hearing about. Arizona went up 8-1. Our intermittent conversation sprawled wildly. Inevitably it came back to Beckham. “I think he’ll get bored. A lot of people say that he did it for his wife. She wanted to be here,” he said, somewhat conspiratorially. “Why else would he play for a shitty-ass team in a shitty-ass league?”

Delwyn Young pitch-hit for D.J. Houlton in the fifth. Young, just called to the team from its minor league franchise in Las Vegas, hadn’t gotten a major-league hit yet. Here was a Reggie Bush situation.

“Okay, I said, after a quick sum of pinch-hitting. “If he gets a one, you are officially good luck.”

Young slammed a single to left-field. Then the Dodgers scored six runs in the four innings. With Arizona up 8 to 7, We had a game on our hands. The crowd was bonkers. Beachballs circulated. The wave went away. Throught, the play onfield remained fairly crisp.

Then, in the ninth — and final, I explained to my friend — inning, the crowd rose to its feet. Nomar Garciaparra, the team’s borderline-washed-up East LA mascot — he of the three-run homer that closed the margin a couple of innings back —came to the plate. Two outs. Two strikes. Arizona closer Jose Velarde rears back and fires one right across the plate.

Garciaparra strikes out. And all of the air goes out of this stadium that holds 55,0000. The deflation alone isn’t something you can feel very many places in these United States.

And the Cranky Spaniard gets this. He only wishes he hadn’t spent $90 to learn this. Ninety bucks, and still ahead a Herculean walk down the hill to mount that scooter that would have made this a three-digit night.