Today was a little bit different. For one thing, it was 87 degrees, which I suppose isn't all that different because we often get warm Christmas seasons, but it just felt like a Summer day. So, I got Pearl out of the house and pushed her all over The 'Hood in her wheelchair. It was good for her to get some Sun (and vitamin D), and it was fun to look at the Fickett houses in the area that are being restored. I think I've mentioned Edward Fickett before. He was an architect who designed homes in the 1950s that are part of what is now referred to as Mid-Century Modern. When I was born, we lived in a Fickett house on Hatton Street, right around the corner from Pearl and Roy, who was her husband. Anyway, we had a nice push around the neighborhood on a Summery day, and then I got an idea.
"Hey Pearl, let's go for a drive". She wasn't up for it at first, but I guaranteed it would be fun, and that we'd be back at the house in less than an hour. I had been meaning to make this drive myself, and very soon too, and suddenly, with the nice weather, today seemed the perfect day.
So I drove us out to Buster Keaton's old house in Woodland Hills. I thought it was a great day to go, because our Keaton retrospective at CSUN will come to an end tomorrow night, and I thought it was a good opportunity to pay homage. I knew, from documentary footage, that he had lived in Woodland Hills for the last twenty or so years of his life. Once, in the 20s and early 30s, he'd had a Beverly Hills Estate to rival the biggest mansions of Hollywood, but by the mid-40s his ex-wife Natalie Talmadge had cleaned him out, and Buster relocated to more modest digs in the Valley.
And it's a cool house. It's on a regular old residential street near Victory and Fallbrook, but it looks like a little castle or maybe a chalet. It appears to be made of stone or brick, or at least has a facade of such, and is a fairly sizable ranch property but nothing huge. Maybe a little bigger than our property was when we lived at 18050 Osborne St. in Northridge.
But by all accounts, Buster was happy there. He lived in that house with his second wife for about twenty years, and he actually passed away in the house itself, in 1966. So that was my little pilgrimage to the home of Buster Keaton, with Pearl in tow, on the day before we finish his film series at CSUN.
Then this evening, when I was returning home from Pearl's at 6:30, there was a major traffic jam as I approached our main Northridge intersection of Reseda Boulevard and Nordhoff Street. Traffic was being rerouted, and lines of cars were backtracking through side streets. I made it back to my building via shortcuts, and on my little street traffic was backed up all the way down the block. So instead of going up to my apartment, I walked around the corner to see if I could find out what was up.
One block up Reseda, there were Fire Trucks and Cop Cars everywhere. Yellow police tape had Reseda blocked off for a quarter mile, from Superior to Lassen. At first I thought there had been a fire, but as I got closer to the scene, I saw a spotlight shining on the window of a second floor apartment in a building about two blocks north of mine. The cops were standing under the window, talking in loud voices to someone inside the unit.
There were a few bystanders besides me. No one knew what was going on. After a few minutes, a woman walked by and said it was a hostage situation. After she left, though, a young man astutely pointed out that, had it been a hostage situation, there would have been a much more aggressive police presence. As it was, there were maybe four police cars there, with twice as many fire trucks and paramedics.
We could hear the police officers shouting to someone upstairs, in the apartment behind the spotlit window, and it was pretty clear by that point that it was not a hostage situation, but a woman threatening to commit suicide.
I've gotta hand it to LAPD tonight, and to the Firefighters. The cops were cool, calm and collected - they were patient with this woman, and the story had a happy ending because after about an hour, the paramedics went inside the building and came out with the woman on a stretcher, sitting upright. She was okay, and they put her in the ambulance, likely to the psych ward for a 72 hour observation.
Life isn't easy, as we know, and for some it is much tougher than for others. Especially at Holiday times, things can be very difficult for people who are already feeling depressed. Someone else pointed out that Finals are going on at CSUN. The building is close to campus, maybe the woman was a student. Finals bring a lot of pressure, so there is that possibility too.
I don't know what the case was. I was just glad to see the paramedics bring the woman out in one piece, so to speak. There is a lot of pressure in the world today, and it was a relief to see it defused in this situation.
The whole thing took about an hour. I walked back home after that and watched a movie. I'd picked up a few from The Libe earlier this afternoon, and I decided on a film from 1958 called "Torpedo Run". I needed a Submarine movie after the night's proceedings. Glenn Ford starred as a Sub Captain bent on revenge against a Japanese carrier, after his wife and child are killed along with 1400 other hostages in a Japanese naval decoy operation in Tokyo Bay in WW2.
That's all the review I've got tonight because of the long day. It was a really good Submarine Movie - and I recommend that you watch an occasional Sub Movie as part of your own viewing schedule - but I didn't quite buy the one dramatic subplot about the loss of Ford's wife and kid. It seemed a bit cut-and-dried to me, too unrealistic.
I can't tell you what I am referring to, on the 4% chance that you will see "Torpedo Run", but I can tell you that - despite this one thematic flaw - it is still ranks up there with the best of the Submarine Movies That You Need To See.
And that is all I know for today.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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