Church and Choir

Folks, I want to talk about church and choir. I have a story to tell, but because it's so huge, I will have to relate it in segments. And as you might imagine (knowing me), it is part of the much bigger and continuous story of my life, but church takes precedence over all right now, so here goes.

I joined the choir at the Reseda United Methodist Church on Sunday, November 9, 2014. It wasn't intended on my part (I didn't ask to join), but I am grateful that it happened. My five-plus years of singing tenor with my friends is one of the absolute highlights of my life. I wish I could go back in a Time Machine to do it all again. My tenure with the choir came about because Pearl fell down onstage a week or two before the above mentioned date, and her daughter was given notice that she could not continue. Pearl was banned, prohibited or whatever you want to call it, from being onstage with her fellow singers because (as I was told by her daughter) the church couldn't be responsible for her safety. I had a fit about this (which is noted in "The Summer of Green Parrots"). Long story short, Pearl was one of the longest serving members of the RUMC congregation, since 1953. My response was, basically, "How dare they kick her out!" I offered to ensure her safety by sitting with her onstage (as her caregiver), and the choir director said, on that very first Sunday, "If you're going to sit with us, you shall sing." I protested (at first), but that's how I became a member of the choir, which turned out to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Fast forward to 2026. Because of what I know now, through the disciplined daily practice of meditative memory recovery, and because I am a dedicated criminal investigator, I question small or seemingly insignificant things, in this case, "Who determined that Pearl was banned from choir"?

And why was she banned, after one single fall on a carpeted stage, in which she was uninjured?

Concerning the first question, I thought about who could have made the determination that Pearl was banned. I thought it had to be the church hierarchy. Not being a church person at the time, I wasn't sure who that was. Was it a bishop? Did the RUMC have an administrative board? I also considered the pastor, but the truth was that I didn't know.

Now that I know much more about the RUMC, I know it was the pastor who made the decision that Pearl would be banned from the choir, at a church she had belonged to since before he was born.

This blog series is about that pastor, and I am wondering if I need an attorney, because I know much more about him now, and the way he inserted himself into my life. He blocked my memory of many significant incidents. He is a profoundly bad guy.

As I say, I can tell a long and detailed story about him, and situations involving the RUMC, which by the way, I love, and I despise those who corrupted it. 

Does anyone care to listen?

(to be continued)

Important Message For My Friends at the Reseda UMC

Hi everyone. This message is for my friends at the Reseda UMC, though I don't know if any of them are readers. I need to get in touch with a lady (intials JF) who used to work at the church but lost her job (or was transferred) in December 2014. She had (and maybe still has) a friend (initials MJ) whom I would like to contact, as well. The second lady and her father were friends of Pearl's. 

It is very important that I speak with these ladies, especially JF, as soon as possible. If anyone knows how to contact them, and could act as an intermediary, I would be grateful. Thanks.

P.S. I love you guys and will be seeing you before too long.     Adam

June 28, 2026 (It's A Gas!)

Hi folks. Let's talk natural gas. You've heard of the Aliso Canyon storage facility, notorious for the methane leak in 2015/16 - the worst in United States history. That facility is located in Porter Ranch on top of a mountain just west of Mission Point. At ground level, it would be just a few miles from Northridge. If you are a curious person, like me, you remember that leak, and you ask, "Where did all that methane come from?" Then you Google and find out it is stored, with other natural gas products, in huge underground caverns (up to two miles below ground!) which were once filled with crude oil that was extracted by refineries in the early 20th century. When the oil was all pumped out, in came The Southern California Gas Co. They started filling the enormous (now empty) caverns with natural gas (piped in from other locations) in the 1940s.

It was at this point that So Cal homes were built and converted for natural gas (stoves and heating). Citizens took it for granted. Then in 1994, there were huge explosions during the Northridge quake, that reminded everyone of the gigantic gas caverns underground.

Let us now bring in our late friends Pat and Friedman for further exploration.

In October 2010, they took me on the infamous Pat/Friedman Tour, which included many stops at notorious criminal locations in northeastern Northridge and Granada Hills. One of the things P and F wanted to (and did) show me were three Gas Company "stations", hidden behind landscaped rises in the residential neighborhood bordered by Lassen Street to the north and Marilla to the south, and laterally along Shoshone Avenue. You can Google Street View them or visit in person. The stations are not visible from the street. They are hidden by tall hedges, and situated next to houses. You'd never know they were there, if not for the signs, which warn of "high pressure gas lines", i.e the kind that blew a hole in Balboa Boogalord on January 17, 1994 and sent flames billowing skyward.

An interesting fact about the southernmost of these three Gas Co "sector stations" is that it's just up Shoshone Street (no more than 100 yards north), of the former, long-time home of a family well-known to all of us, the scion of which is the best friend of one of my relatives.

Since we are being curious, we might ask, "What's behind the walls of these stations?" Likely Gas Company equipment, right? Perhaps meters, pressure regulators, heck...I don't know. But just stuff like that. We might also ask "does anyone monitor these stations? Are there Gas Co. employees on site?"

Folks, I walk by there a lot. I've never seen so much as a truck or an unlocked gate.

Maybe these stations are mostly automated, then. Okay fine.

But what about the storage caverns underground? Does the Gas Co have access to those?

You'd think so. Obviously, to reach the mountaintop (where the Aliso facility is located), and then to be piped into homes across Los Angeles, the gas has to pumped from two miles below the ground. How does it travel? Through pipes, of course. So, what if there's a leak or some other problem in the underground pipe system? They'd need to have a human being, a Gas Co employee (or employees), go down there and fix it. Right?

How would those employees get down to the storage caverns? For comparison, we can ask how geologists or miners get deep underground. "By elevator" would seem to be the answer.

What would you folks say if I told you that there's such an elevator behind the high hedges and walls of one of these residentially-blended Gas Co stations? You might say, "Wow, how do you know that, Ad?"

And I'd reply, "Because I've ridden on it. All the way down to the bottom, where the storage tanks are."

Pat Forducci, who died three years ago today, seemed to have "special connections". I don't know if they involved DoD or an Alphabet Soup agency, but there were times when he had access to inaccessable places. One day, in 1988, with the help of other people (including Lys, who also had high-level connections), Pat took me behind the wall of the station on Marilla Street. I believe there was an escalator there, inside an enclosure, that went one or two levels underground and connected to the deep-range elevator. Now, I don't know if it was a single elevator, or if we had to switch (like you do in some skyscrapers). But we got all the way down to the bottom, which looked like "Journey to the Center of the Earth," with jagged rock walls. The difference was that there were catwalks and railings, and a pit emitting flames. I remember Pat telling me to walk to the railing to check it out. Was it some sort of pilot light?

I have no idea.

There were also high, steel control panels down there, with lights. Everything was built into solid rock.

Why were we down there? I don't know the entire reason. Part of it may have been just to show me the cavern. On a side note, before we rode back up, Pat asked me: "Guess how far down we are?" I was thinking in "stories", like a building. I may have said, "I dunno...ten stories?" Pat said, "No, much deeper than that." I said, "20 stories?" He said, "Think in feet, not stories." I said, "Man...I don't know. 500 feet?"

He said, "You aren't close. Try ten thousand feet. Two miles."

When this memory first came back (last Summer), I had a hard time believing that figure. Until I did some Googling on the Aliso facility. And Pat was right. We were two miles below ground.

Someone else was down there. A bad guy we all know. We encountered him on one of the catwalks. He was holding a lady hostage. That's actually why we went down there, I think; to free this lady from the bad guy in question.

I recall getting in the elevator to go back up to the surface, with Pat and Lys (and maybe others, perhaps even Friedman).

When we got back to the top, to the Gas Co station on Marilla Street at Shoshone Avenue, we took the escalator back up to the hidden enclosure, where a law enforcement officer (Sheriff's Dept? State police?) was waiting for the bad guy. 

This happened in the summer of 1988. On the Pat/Friedman Tour in October 2010, as we drove past these sites, Pat insinuated there had been, over the years, some sort of (literal?) power struggle between LADWP and Southern California Gas Co, and that's why some streets have brighter streetlights than others, in that neighborhood. Actually, there was much more to his explanation, and it involved the high pressure gas lines, but that's all I will say for tonight.

Thanks for reading.

June 14, 2026 (King's X)

Sigh. Yeah, folks, I not only missed all four Rush concerts, but I missed King's X, too, at The Whisky last night. Unlike the unaffordable (for me) Rush shows, KX was eminently doable except for one issue: the Metro Red Line Subway. King's X has played The Whisky on all of their recent tours (last fifteen years?), and for those shows, there has usually been one (maybe two) opening acts, with the boys going on at apprx 9pm (9:30 at the latest) and finishing their aweome set by 10:30 to 11pm. All of which gave me time, in years past, to catch the Sunset Boogalord bus back to Highland, hightail it on foot up to Hollywood Boog, and catch a late Red Line train to NoHo, where my car was parked (sorry, but I won't pay 10 to 20 bucks to park in a sketchy lot on Sunset Strip).

Have you ever ridden the Red Line (or any line in the LA Metro system)? Beyond the safety issues (it's mostly okay), the main problem is reliability. Sometimes, a station (or the entire line) is shut down, without warning, as I found out weeks ago after parking at the Red Line NoHo station to ride to Universal City for a birthday lunch with my sister at Bubba Gump.

Sorry, station closed.

I had to take a long-delayed shuttle bus instead.

The point is, a late night ride on the Metro subway system is a roll of the dice. If you get there on time, you'll (probably) catch one of the last trains. But there's also a chance that the late trains (on any given night) will be cancelled. And for this King's X show, there were three opening bands (instead of one...or two). KX would not go on until 10pm, and be done by 11:30. I checked the Metro schedule, and the last (guaranteed) Red Line train left Hollywood & Highland at 12:26am on Saturday night. After that, roll the dice. That gave me less than an hour to leave the show, catch the Sunset bus (what if it's late?), fast-walk the half mile from Sunset up to Hollywood Boog, and pray that I not only made it on time for the last train of the night, but that it hadn't been cancelled.

You know what? No can do. Wouldn't be prudent.

So I am now at the point where, if going to a concert involves anything more than the slightest amount of stress, I won't go. Sorry, but I've seen a lot of shows, for over 50 years, and I'm not gonna pay huge prices or worry about getting home. I already go to almost every show by myself (which sucks), and have done since 1997.

So yeah...it's a bummer, but my concert-going days are mostly over, unless there is no hassle involved.

I like Disneyland better. Yeah, it costs a lot. But you can stay all day (for 16 hours if you want), and you know its safe, with no sketchy transits back home.

God bless rock concerts, but I was born to go to Disneyland.

My life's biggest influences (besides Reseda and my parents): The Beatles, Disneyland, Gilligan's Island.

June 12, 2026 (Rush)

Hi folks. We have now passed through Night Three of the Rush concerts at The Forum. I won't ask you what you think, because we all know they are incredible in this strange new incarnation, and we've seen (even on YouTube if we weren't there) how phenomenal Anika Nilles has been in these shows. Alex and Geddy made the right choice, eh?

Unfortunately for me, this is the first Rush tour since 1997 ("Test for Echo") when I did not attend a show. The current Forum shows sold out on Ticketmaster before I even got in the online "queue" as it's now called, and the resale prices have been more than I can afford (or am willing to pay). Thus, I have not seen (and will not see) any Rush shows this tour, but I take solace in the fact that I first saw them at Long Beach in November 1978 (on the Hemispheres tour), and on 31 more stops along the way. I've seen Rush 32 times (more than I've seen any other band), and I was at their final concert with Neil on August 1, 2015.

So that will have to suffice, for now. I wish I had seen one of these current shows with Anika, who has instantly become the most famous drummer on Earth, but I cannot battle the economics of 2026.

Anyhow, if you went to any of the Forum shows, I'll bet you blew your mind.

As for me, I am blowing my mind in an altogether different way. I am primarily a Crime Investigator these days. I strive for and spend time every day to recover blocked memories from my past. My mission in life is to expose and defeat bad guys, by which I mean violent criminal predators who have gotten away with everything they've ever done. I am in a war against evil, from which bad people emerge.

It sucks to talk about this, and it sucks because no one cares or will listen.

As always in the modern age, the 24/7 Turnaround rules the day and year, daily distraction is the only constant, and the years pass by like months.

Anyhow, the saving grace for me is that I am learning many things each day about my life. I am recovering memories that were blocked by bad people, and I pray I will learn more, and I am grateful for the Lord's help in this battle. I also pray that the battle will soon be over, because I am profoundly tired. I don't trust good guys or bad guys. No one has the guts to step up and tell the truth. 

God Bless Rush.  

May 23, 2026 (Evil Must Be Exterminated)

Folks, things are very bad. In fact, they can't get much worse. Recent revelations have shown not only that bad guys knew where Pearl lived (as previously reported), but that they were in her house.

Folks, listen up, and listen good: Bad guys broke into Pearl's house when I was there. There were two of them. We all know who they are. This happened, by my researched estimate, in late November or December 2014, right after I began staying overnight as Pearl's caregiver. She was 90 years old at the time.

Folks...listen. Are you listening? I was her caregiver. She was 90 years old.

And these two pieces of garbage entered her house in some kind of "truth or dare" creepycrawl best understood by their fellow cult members - the bad guy "swingers" and coke dealers with whom they associate.

Their adventure was a joke to them. I can describe what they did in detail. I can describe most of the incident.

For some reason, they seem immune to arrest and prosecution. I've known them since the 1970s. I went to jr. high with one, met the other one at College Records. I've "hung out" with them, considered them my friends, gone to concerts with them. I repeat: we all know who they are.

YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE.

But in my case, I didn't know what they are until recently.

They are sexual predators, and may even be registered as such.

And in November 2014, they broke into Pearl's house, on one of my first nights as her overnight caregiver, and one of them intimidated her in a sexually abusive and horrific way in her bedroom.

I was there. I witnessed all of this and I am fucking horrified beyond belief.

These guys need their skulls crushed. But even that is too good for them, when you know the extent of what they have done, going back to at least the 1980s.

Goodnight. 

May 9, 2026 (David Friedman again)

Folks, we need to talk about David Friedman. We did so in an earlier blog (February 23, 2026), but we need to invoke him again because he is (or was) a font of information, even though I didn't know it when he was alive. Friedman visited me a lot during the time I was Pearl's caregiver, usually accompanying me on CSUN walks, often on a Saturday night. The poor man was woebegone, always worried about his job and his failing marriage. He didn't talk about much else; it was difficult being his sounding board on these occasions.

Nowdays, in this era of ridiculous infotainment life and outrageous prices, I extend my CSUN walk up to Ralphs market in Granada Hills. I do this to save gas money, and I get my nightly exercise at the same time. On my way up to Ralphs, I pass the giant CSUN parking lot at Lassen and Lindley. About six months ago (apprx. November 2025), something about that parking lot triggered a memory of a walk with David Friedman.

One night, perhaps ten or twelve years ago, he came over and instead of going southeast through the campus, as we usually did, he wanted to walk down Halsted toward Lindley, and when we got to that street, he asked if we could turn north toward Lassen. He seemed nervous about something - not his usual domestic angst but something that was happening in the moment. As we passed the Lindley dorms, I asked him what was up: "Why are we going this way?" He said, "Let's just cross the street first. I'll tell you when we get across."

I said, "Okay" and when we reached the big parking lot, he said, "We're being followed." I said, "What do you mean, 'we're being followed'", thinking it was just more Friedman paranoia. I should point out that he wasn't on drugs. He'd even quit smoking pot by this point. But he was on edge, and kept checking his phone. I repeated: "Whataya mean we're being followed?" He said, "Well...it's not 'we.' I'm being followed. But in a way, you're the one being followed because they're using me to follow you."

By now, I'd had enough. I said, "What is this about?" and he finally explained what was going on. A group of people - bad guys we all know - had being following Friedman in his car, all the way over to my building. He used to park about a block away, and I would meet him and we'd walk through CSUN, but on this night he had been followed, which was why he suggested an alternate route. He referred to this following practice as "tagging" and he seemed to think he was in trouble that night: "for some of the things I've told you".

I wasn't aware that he had "told me" anything.

"Tagging", according to Friedman, was a form of triangulation where a number of cars (two or more) follow a subject and triangulate his position by using electronic devices. An operation of this type was apparently underway on the night Friedman led me on this walk. After letting me in on what was happening, he tried to link me to his trouble by asserting that I was in trouble too, by association. "You're in trouble because you are with me". That is paraphrased, but close to verbatim, and Friedman was couching his terms. He didn't want me to know the extent of the trouble he was in.

When we crossed Lassen at Lindley and reached the huge CSUN parking lot, suddenly there was Pat Fordyce. He must've driven up in his car, but he may have parked somewhere (perhaps in the lot). I say this because I can't remember for certain if he was on foot or in his car when we encountered him. But he was definitely there, and he warned Friedman that his pursuers were nearby. Pat was also versed on this "tagging" business. On a side note, recalling the Pat/Friedman Tour of October 2010 (described in a recent blog), we again see Pat "assisting" Friedman on this occasion at Lassen/Lindley (perhaps in 2014), when in real time they didn't seem to know each other. Of course, we now know they were both cult members, involved in sex and cocaine, and they may have known each other a whole lot better than we realized.

Getting back to the incident, after Pat warned us about the automotive "taggers", Friedman suggested we should turn right at the top of the parking lot. In my memory, part of his reasoning was that we would be out of range of the bad guy's devices by being away from Lindley Avenue. Another part was that, according to Friedman, "they couldn't enter that section of the parking lot without chancing arrest" (perhaps because it was outside the bad guys' area of protection).

It is important to note that the bad guys (who we ALL KNOW) are protected, at least to an extent, by an Authoritative Entity, be it a police department, or a corrupt State system, or by links to Influencial Cocaine Suppliers. The point is that they are protected...to an extent Thus, they know they are not going to get arrested for merely "tagging" and following someone with their iPhones or electronic devices. Heck, they didn't get arrested for torturing my Mom in 1988 at the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 

So it's not unusual that the bad guys in this situation did not get arrested or detained.

What did happen, after Pat warned Friedman that the bad guys had triangulated our position, was that a car appeared and pulled into the parking lot. It rolled down the northern entryway we were on, the east-west strip just south of the hill.

This is the part of the story where you need to fasten your seatbelt, because in that car were Two People We All Know, and they were involved in a cocaine transaction that went bad.

(to be continued)

Meanwhile, Rolling Stone has released their All Time Top 100 Guitar Solos, of which maybe 20 are deserving, but of course that's Rolling Stone, a magazine so corporate and lacking in ideas that it named itself after a famous rock band. Let's do our own guitar solo list, every one deserving of its place, because unlike the clowns at RS (where the Hipster Factor figures in), we truly know us some guitar, and we are experts on guitar solos.

Here are the Top Fifteen: 

1) "Burn" Ritchie Blackmore

2) "Comfortably Numb" David Gilmour

3) "Rock Bottom" Michael Schenker 

4) "Still So Many Lives Away" Uli Jon Roth

5) "Desert Rose" Eric Johnson

6) "La Villa Strangiato" Alex Lifeson

7) "Starship Trooper" Steve Howe

8) "Crying to the Sky" Bill Nelson

9) "Something" George Harrison

10) "Riding on the Wind" Tipton/Downing

11) "Blue Sky" Dickie Betts

12) "White Room" Eric Clapton

13) "Just One Victory" Todd Rundgren

14) "Lady Fantasy" Andy Latimer

15) "Phoenix" Powell/Turner 

Of course, there are the legendary FM radio solos: "Stairway", "Watchtower", and "Freebird", which I saw the original Lynyrd Skynyrd perform in 1976 in San Bernardino on a bill with Black Sabbath and Peter Frampton...who himself was about to chart the biggest selling live album of that era, "Frampton Comes Alive".

Rock lives. So does truth.

God bless and tons of love.