On Saturday the 28th, three days into the large wildfire "just west of Palm Springs," the 19th annual Desert AIDS Walk took place in the morning down the sidewalks of Palm Canyon Drive...
...with a loop around the "Historic Tennis District" before returning back to home base at Frances Stevens Park.
I have been using the phrase "evil AIDS charities" for years, after watching outrageous sums of money going through the hands of nonprofits and into the pockets of overcompensated bureaucracies, all on the backs of armies of volunteer labor and the generosity of people moved by others' misfortune.
It's probably best not to trust any group that has the word "Project" in their name because it's usually a tipoff that one of its founders is a graduate of Werner Erhard's EST movement, which in its last, decadent phase started "The Hunger Project," a horrific bit of marketing genius that promised to end world hunger through consciousness raising.
Young white men and children of many colors dying young of a fatal disease turned out to be an even better fundraiser, so hunger was swiftly abandoned and instead we got outfits like The Stop AIDS Project.
My cynicism about the Desert AIDS Walk melted, though, on actually seeing the sweet crowd, which included many more Mexican-Americans than anticipated...
...including a large contingent "Walking for Nino."
All weekend long, people called to make sure we were okay from the fire that had already taken the lives of four firefighters on Thursday morning when the Santa Ana winds were at their worst, but as you can see, there was a 10,000 foot mountain range between Palm Springs and the fire and the winds were blowing westward towards Los Angeles.
Senator Barbara Boxer, who no longer lives in Marin County but who has recently moved to a rich community in the Coachella Valley, was among the voices clamoring for a federal investigation and revenge on the supposed arsonist who set the fire.
The fever with which this vendetta theme was carried out everywhere in the press was rather gruesome and didn't seem a very fitting memorial for the young dead firemen. Mexicans seem to do death better than U.S. culture, which may explain why Dia de los Muertos is rapidly becoming a new American holiday.
On Wednesday evening, after traffic had resumed on Palm Canyon Drive, the Peppertree Bookstore hosted one of their many book signings.
Arianna Huffington was flogging her latest, clumsily titled book, "On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work, and Life" which is sort of a Gail Sheehy like inspirational tome on how women can become, well, "fearless."
Arianna is a fascinating character who has reinvented herself more times than Madonna while somehow staying true to herself.
While Arianna composed herself in the back of the store, the manager of the place addressed the crowd in front with upcoming events, including the news that the previously announced Peter Falk signing would be at the La Quinta store instead of the Palm Springs location.
When the crowd groaned, he added, "But Cloris Leachman is here tonight to see Arianna," and Cloris gamely stood up and waved while the crowd applauded.
The manager continued with his introduction of Arianna, giving a quick bio of her birth in Greece, her teen years at Cambridge on the debating society, and her young adulthood in London where she was the much younger lover of Bernard Levin, a famous British journalist who she met on a classical music BBC game show called "Face the Music" (click here for an interesting Wikipedia article). When Bernard wouldn't marry her, she moved to New York in 1980 where she wrote a couple of bestselling books about Maria Callas and Pablo Picasso.
In 1985, at the Getty's mansion in San Francisco of all places, she met her (closeted) bisexual, multimillionare husband Michael Huffington and proceeded to guide him through the thickets of politics where he became a Republican congressman from Santa Barbara before losing a close race for U.S. Senator against the odious Dianne Feinstein in 1994. Arianna got to know all the players in the Newt Gingrich Republican revolution, and she tried to play the game of being a right-wing spokeswoman, but you could tell her heart was never really in it, particularly after pairing up with/against Al Franken for a Comedy Central look at political conventions.
Her recent apostasy and current revulsion towards the right-wing scum that have been leading our country for some time is genuine and deeply informed. The fact that she's the only famous person of her generation who actually understands how to use the internet for self-publishing (click here for the Huffington Post) also makes her very powerful.
She started the evening with a speech about "fearlessness" which was boilerplate, with a few well-used anecdotes, but like all really great speakers she refused to be bored herself so she improvised and made it interesting. Most of the audience was there to hear her because they were admirers of her political writing, so the self-help spiel was rather absurd, especially since most of the "fearlessness" anecdotes seemed to revolve around female self-image issues. This seemed rather a cheat since Miss Arianna was looking ridiculously fabulous at age 56.
When she spoke out against routine plastic surgery, it was an uncomfortable moment because many in the audience had obviously had extensive work done. Still, Arianna confessed at one point that her Greek mother had moved into the house after Arianna's divorce from Huffington, "and she's decided she doesn't care anymore so she's going the kaftan route," while one of Arianna's daughters had battled anorexia. "Nobody knows the answers." It made her human.
So did her sense of humor. She started the evening telling of a rumor somebody had heard that she was actually born in Fresno, and that the whole Greek accent thing was a complete ruse to make her seem more exotic.
Things got more interesting when she took questions, where she gave smart, thoughtful answers to people. When asked about Hilary, she went back to the "fearless" theme and said, "Look, Hilary Clinton should not be co-sponsoring a flag burning bill. It's inauthentic and doesn't fool anyone. I don't honestly think Hilary really thinks flag burning is a major issue in this country and I doubt if anyone else believes her either. It's nothing but triangulation, and it's fearful and stupid. People are desperately looking for leadership right now that is NOT fearful."
The Huffington Post has way too many mediocre writers churning out boring opinions but Arianna herself has come into her own as a political polemicist. She's easily the best writer on her own omnibus blog. As she stated during the evening, "The Iraq invasion was simply wrong and immoral, and everything else stems from that." She's been clear on that issue years before everyone else, and she deserves all the credit in the world.
When somebody asked her about a female president, and possible impeachment, and a possible President Pelosi, she paused and thought about it. "Well, I guess that would be one way to have a female president. But in truth it doesn't matter what gender the president is right now, we just need a GOOD one. And if it is a President Pelosi, we have to hold her feet to the fire. Our presence in Iraq is wrong and we need to be out of there."
On Wednesday afternoon, Palm Canyon Drive was closed...
...for Palm Springs High School's Homecoming Parade.
For an auto-centric Southern California town, Palm Springs has an admirable tendency to shut down its main street to traffic for any number of occasions...
... including a weekly farmer's market cum street fair every Thursday evening.
The only person who seems to be able to get a street closure to happen in San Francisco, on the other hand, is Larry Ellison, the gangster who owns Oracle.
Since we didn't have the foresight to bring lawn chairs for parade watching...
...we joined a group of tourists from a small town in Washington at a fancy tapas joint called Azul that had a perfect viewing spot along with margarita specials.
The Washington tourists were quite naughty as they yelled out phrases like "Good job, Justin" to the local politicos...
...or "You go, drill team!"...
...which caused the parade participants to look over at us, with the sun streaming in their eyes...
...wondering which of their friends or constituents might be cheering them on.
Though Palm Springs is a resort destination for an eclectic range of folk from retired Chicago mobsters to ancient Los Angeles show biz folk to middle-aged gays from across the country...
...it's also a genuine small city of 40,000 people...
...with an obviously beloved high school sprawled in the middle of town.
The Homecoming Princesses were certainly a multicultural group...
...and it was heartening to see that anorexia wasn't being encouraged in order to become a Princess.
With all the tiaras flashing in the sun, I thought of Beth Spotswood who recently wrote about her worship of same on her brilliant blog (click here for the link).
The Homecoming Theme this year was "Fairytales"...
...and I wonder which high school thespians came up with that one.
Still, it allowed for lots of tiaras and fairy wings, which is always a good thing.
The best performers were the sensitive characters from the high school choir...
...and the girls from the Dance Club who were doing outrageous choreographed routines all the way down Palm Canyon.
The 30-minute parade couldn't have been more charming, and the absence of automobiiles was genuinely delightful.
