Claims Department 04.pdf

welcome to claims department

issue #4

Well, This one was delayed a while so I would have time to take the crappy version and make it craptacular

with my new software. This is actually much better than the earlier one. This issue features a few pieces

by the favourite artist of Miss M Lloyd, a young Australian who goes by Mooniichan. It also takes us to the

largest city West of New York, Los Angeles, as M and I hit the road.

Art by Kate Kelton

The City

Los Angeles. The City of the Angels. Oh how I love/hate thee. I’ve lived there, done some time in the

city trying to make it, and have played in and out of town at least once every few months. In the 1990s, there

was a girl I had a majour thing for. Her name was M Heil, who is better known now to readers of The Drink

Tank as M Lloyd. We had gone out a couple of times and when we both came out to the West Coast for summer

of the glorious year 1997, but we pretty much i gured to keep it friendly, especially since she had forgotten to

tell her boyfriend that she had dumped him. This was long before I had the idea for Claims Department, but I

still had a tradition of celebration for paydays. I always went shopping, and since I got my last pay packet on

the last day of my job, I i gured I should celebrate. And how better to celebrate than to take a little trip with a

lovely lady?

Now, the most important thing about a payday treat is that you can’t plan it too much. You can psyche

yourself up about it, plan to give yourself something, but you can’t make all the plans or you just ruin it. Lucky

for me, I’m not the only freak who does stuff like this, as M has been known to be a little crazy (If you ever buy

me a drink, I’ll tell you the story of how she ended up in Vietnam on a whim). The phone call pitching this idea

went something like this:

M: Hello?

Chris: Hey, it’s Chris.

M: It’s nearly midnight.

Chris: I know. We can still make it to LA in time for breakfast.

M: What?

Chris: I know this great place. Brilliant pancakes.

M: You’re serious.

Chris: Yeah, I can be there in twenty minutes.

M: Make it thirty. I need to get dressed.

M’s Response: March 2005

Chris is nuts. He called late at night

(as I remember it, nearly 2am) and was

bursting to head down to Los Angeles.

Honestly, I’d rather have stayed in town, but

he wanted LA. And I had broken up with my

last boyfriend, though we ended up getting

back together and eventually getting married.

And if Chris ever tells that Vietnam story, I’ll

kill him.

The City

Los Angeles. The City of the Angels. Oh how I love/hate thee. I’ve lived there, done some time in the

That was what started the adventure to

Los Angeles.

The Drive Down

I showed up at M’s place (which she

called The Joint) about forty minutes later. She

hadn’t gotten dressed yet, so she was running

around, half-naked, throwing things into a

backpack. I’d packed a small bag, just enough

for a day or two, while M seemed to think we’d

be doing survival course work in the desert. The

pack was just about the size of a i ve year old

when she came out of her bedroom wearing what

looked to be a i ve year old’s t-shirt, probably

specii cally worn for my ogling pleasure. We

hopped in the car and headed out for 101.

I had decided on 101 since it’s a much

prettier ride than I-5. It took a lot longer, but

we had lovely views the entire way. M is a

conversationalist. She’ll chat your ear off about just about anything.

Her specialty is music and art. I’m a huge fan of both, so we mostly

discussed Pop art and Alternative music. This was back in the day when

Alternative music was still somewhat alternative and not played on every

radio station. We had a bunch of old tapes, mostly local acts like Statue

Man and Clubberlang and a few ska CDs that M used her adaptor to play

through the tape deck. We were rocking out to King Diamond on a mix

tape when we arrived in the city of Los Angeles.

Driving around a bit, I found all sorts of little places that I knew

we would have to try when we got the chance. I had told folks that I’d

be back by Wednesday, so we had a tonne of time. On the way down,

M’s reaction: March 2005

I admit it: I wore that shirt to drive

Chris nuts. Part of my plan for the

whole trip was to do just that, which

I know makes me evil, but still, I

was plannin gon having a fun trip

and playing with Chris’ mind is

always a good game. He got me

back though: the room was 250.00 a

night.

M had said that she would pay

for the hotel no matter how long

we stayed. Since she’s the one

with the Trust fund (and by that

point, she was also pulling in 30

Grand a year), I had no problem

with her providing the shelter. I

am a modern man, after all. I said

I knew the perfect place and we

headed into Hollywood.

The Hotel

There is only one hotel in

Hollywood that I deem appropriate

for me. It’s the Hollywood

Roosevelt, right across the street

from the Chinese Theatre. It’s

where the i rst Oscar ceremony

The Lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and site of i rst Oscars

took place. It’s also supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. I stayed at the Roosevelt as a kid

and I am a huge fan. So, I pulled us in and M ordered us up a nice sized room. Two queen-sized beds and a

HUGE bathroom. Perfect. We dropped off our stuff, just long enough to marvel at how perfect the room was

and how Hollywood High School seemed like a sprawling mega-opolis beneath our i fteenth story gaze. We ran

out the door and out onto Hollywood Blvd.

Hollywood

There’s nothing like Hollywood anywhere. It’s a tourist trap AND a lifestyle trap. More than one

well-meaning Mid-westerner has come in search of a dream and either found it and became every stereotype

that Tom Petty sang about, or missed it and became every stereotype that Guns ‘n Roses sang about. Either

way, it is a vortex. I had done a little time in LA back in the day, but broke out with the help of the fact that I

couldn’t even get the crap jobs that actors and writers fall back on when things get lean. Walking up and down

Hollywood, you see crime, poverty and depravity brushing up against luxury, comfort and notoriety. It was no

surprise to me that M had an LA network of friends, including a couple of directors who were starting to make a

name for themselves.

The Movieland Wax Museum is a great little place and a piece of history. I hadn’t been there in years,

so I gladly took M in and

we walked around, mocking

whatever we came across. M

is one of the original Snark

lasses, those uber-hip chicks

with an acid tongue and a

silver-lined brutality stick they

wield liberally. She entertains

when she is given something

to attack. Her references were

often as obscure and perfectly

timed as mine, though she

tended to go harder on things. I

nearly plotzed in the Chamber

of Horrors as she went off on a

Denis Leary-esque tirade. Sweet

Jesus, she was on that day.

After enjoying the

museum, we walked around

the shops on Hollywood. She

bought us expensive cigars, I got

us both hot dogs (and realised I

had completely forgotten about

getting us breakfast) and I i lled

our l asks with decent scotch.

That is the beauty of Hollywood

Blvd, you can get whatever it

is you need and still surround

yourself with the trappings of a

Dream City.

We walked back to the

hotel and M said she wanted to

do some shopping. I knew this

Hollywood

little shopping area where you could ind used

books for dirt cheap. We hit the room for a bit

and then hopped in the car and headed up Sunset

Blvd. into West Hollywood.

There are a lot of jokes about West

Hollywood, mostly centering around the fact that

it has long been considered a gay community,

which is apparent by all the rainbow lags one

sees on the drive. The bookstore I knew was

tucked away, almost hidden as if they didn’t

want people to ind the horde of books they kept.

This would also explain why the joint went out

of business about a year later. You had to go

through an alley between a Hair Salon and a

restaurant to get to the small courtyard where the

bookstore lived. It was a lovely courtyard with

benches and a few all-weather couches to sit and have a read on. The place was called, as best I remember it,

Courtly Books.

M’s Reaction: March 2005

This place was a dump. A great dump for inding the jewels of fantasy. I saw copies of books that I had only

heard of. They even mixed in fantasy criticism in with the lit. There were copies of PHILLIP JOSE FARMER

CONQUIERT L’UNIVERS by Francois Mottier and a few other foreign titles that I had heard of and knew had

never been translated. I spent all my time looking for nineteenth century fantasy while Chris roamed the entire

store for some nugget or another.

I’ve talked about my theories of bookstores: the harder it is to get to the Science Fiction, the better

the place is. Courtly was slightly different, as it was an entire store of fantasy with a splash of science iction

hiding among the Arthuria. The hard part was that everything was in alphabetical order by author in one

single train that circled the bookstore. While not as dificult to use as the thrift store around Carlsbad, this

place wasn’t easy.

I found so many books that I couldn’t easily choose. There were science iction novels from around

the world, including Lem in Polish, Russian, French and English. I searched a bit and found the one that I

M’s Reaction: March 2005

Why the hell would anyone buyStardance when

there were treasures to be found on every shelf?

He could have gotten works only published

in very small runs for almost nothing (OK, a

nominal fee) but instead he chooses a book that

has a dozen editions and is available anywhere?

Moron…

wanted, a book that I had been hearing about for years and

years. Spider and Jeane Robinson’s Stardance. I had always

liked Robinson’s prose stylings, though the irst things of his

I read reminded me quite a bit too heavily of Bobby Aspirin.

I igured that buying it here was a itting way to go about it,

since I thought I’d get a chance to read it on the way back

when M was driving.

M bought a lot of stuff. Nearly Two Large worth, if I

remember correctly. She got several of the original OZ books, which set her back quite a bit, not to mention

some expensive German books. I just bought the Robinson’s affair and a copy of Serving in Time by Gordo

Eklund, yet another Laser Book I had yet to ind. Even after we made our purchases, we milled about,

searching for the hardest to ind books that we knew about. I even found the tiny dog that wandered the shelves.

I only wish the place had survived, as I went back a couple of years later and found that the store had become a

Coffee Bean. Nicest Coffee Bean I’ve ever been to as well.

We headed back to the hotel, mostly due to the weight of our purchases and the fact that we were

operating on less sleep than coffee. We got to the room and M headed to take a shower while I started in on the

book.

M’s Reaction

Chris missed part of my evil ploy. I actually left the bathroom door open and the shower curtain drawn,

so in the mirror of the bathroom, Chris should have been able to see me, therefore annoying him further,

but Chris buried himself in that damn book. Such is the power of Science Fiction over Chris. He’s such a

stereotype sometimes…

Stardance is one of those books that’s less about science iction and more about the subjects it throws

itself to. At times, Stardance is an excellent look at the politics and prosperity of modern dance and a pretty

stern dressing down of the requisite body type of those who practice said forms. At other times, it’s a treatise on

the power of the media to create gods and monsters, often of the same people at the same time. Other times, it’s

a lifestyle novel, showing how tearing down the

standing constructs of our predominant society

would lead to freedom and a more positive

power. And inally, it is a story of metaphysics

and faith. It’s deeply complex, rich and

beautiful, as the story wraps around us joyfully.

The story is a brilliant one: Charlie

Armstead is a former dancer who had to

give it up because of destroyed knees. Shara

Drummond is a dancer whose body type isn’t

what the dance companies want to see. Frankly,

from the Robinson’s description, she’s a smokin’

hotty. She has decided that she wants to dance

in Zero G and she wants Charlie to video tape

and edit her dances. This is the meat of the

story, though there’s much more once they get

to space and start their work. You see, you can

only stay in Zero or even Low G for so long

before your body will be unable to adapt to live

back on Earth (a theory which has been proven

false, but I won’t take issue with that). Shara’s

sister Nora is along too, though she’s the one

that has the dancer’s body.

The descriptions of the three majour

important dances are wonderful and it’s hard

to igure out whether Jeanne, the dancer, wrote

them using her muscle memory to invoke

emotion in the prose or if Spider wrote his

observations of Jeanne dancing. It’s hard to

tell who is responsible, but no matter, it’s the

best written part of the story. The power of

Stardance is the ability to bring us into the dance through words. It’s hard to get that response. I barely noticed

the two and a half hours that passed between the time that I started the reading and the moment I realised it was

after 8, we hadn’t had dinner and we were in LA for Christ’s sake! M, who had been reading ever since she got

out of the shower, said she knew somewhere that would make me a happy, happy boy.

M’s Reaction: March 2005

After failing to capture his attention, I igured Chris would enjoy an evening of Poker against me and a few

friends. The thing I love about LA is that there are more card games than you could imagine, and one regular

game was called the Hipsters Holdings in Beverly Hills.

Hipsters Holdings is an house, an old house that used to belong to one of the friends of the Rat Pack. The legend

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