Ryan's posterous

09: Psychic Visit pt. 3

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Sunday. Superbowl Sunday.

Would all the psychics in LA be busy booking bets? We were about to find out.

If you remember, there was a late night discovery the evening prior of a psychic in Anthony's very own neighborhood operating out of a small booth in the parking lot of 7-Eleven, next to the Wendy's, across from the Chevron.

Determined, we skipped breakfast and went right for our next fortuneteller. After piling in the car, I put in one of the 17 Elvis Costello cd's I had bought the previous day (I left that tidbit out of the last installment... we had stopped into the Hollywood Amoeba Records...I may have a problem), and we were off on our 45 second drive.

From the intersection, we could see the psychic shack's "Card Reader" neon a-glow. This seemed like a good sign. We pulled into the mini-mall parking lot, took the empty space marked with a white placard reading "PSYCHIC READER PARKING ONLY" and then in smaller type "VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNERS EXPENSE". The bold red warning matched the bold red paint of the establishment and I wondered to myself before getting out of the car, "How could anyone prove that I am not a psychic reader?"

The curtains of the tiny building (had it been a 1-hour photo stand in previous life???) were closed, but an open sign was displayed in the window and our hopes were high. Anthony knocked confidently on the door. A moment passed, but there was no answer. It's not like someone inside wouldn't have heard us... the place is about the same size as Anthony's SUV (it's a hybrid, so don't hate).

We walked around the joint a few times, peaking in, so disappointed. It was then we noticed the posting above the door: "SORRY I MISSED YOU. FOR AFTER HOURS APPOINTMENTS PLEASE CALL (XXX) XXX-XXXX".

So call we did. Anthony was on the line with Mrs. Lin,  whom, judging by the Chinese characters on the side of her building, the liberal use of red, her phone number ending in three 8's, and my racial prejudice, was certain to be an all knowing Eastern mystic. Her house was nearby and she could see us now if we hurry.

We got though one more third of an Elvis Costello song before pulling into Mrs. Lin's driveway. (We knew it was her driveway, because there was another red and white sign reading Mrs. LIN.)

It was a substantially fancier house than that of our last psychic. It seems as though all those 8's (not to mention her clairvoyance) brought her great fortune. We continued on the driveway to the back of the house and parked near the luxury cars and golf equipment in the carport. 

When we came to the door we were greeted by a middle aged white woman with elegant grey hair wearing a navy blue salwar kameez. Was this perhaps the great mystic's house servant? Private yoga teacher?

No, this was Anthony's psychic.

We entered the house and Anthony was scooted into a room next to the entrance. "Mrs. Lin" mumbled something about if we can do this quickly then everybody gets to watch the Superbowl. (It should be said that I'm doubtful this is the real Mrs. Lin. More sinister plots can be imagined, but my suspicion is that when Mrs. Lin decided to retire she ceremoniously to bequeathed her business to her #1 costumer, this mysterious rich white lady.) 

Erika and I took to the couch in the adjacent living room. Common threads emerge from our last psychic's house. Plastic covered furniture. A mostly white but still entirely tacky interior decorating. Erika points out the gaudy clear plastic lamp that serves as the centerpiece of the room. I snap a photo of it and my camera phone makes a loud noise. Erika silently yells "Shaddup!!"

My compatriot and I are dying to hear what the psychic is saying through those walls. And we almost can, but the damn front door is open and the noise from the busy suburban boulevard wins the battle of decimals.

Erika crept up to slowly shut the front door, but a full close seems too loud and risky. The remaining sounds slipping past the frame still managed to drown out 90% of what is said in the other room.

The suspense didn't last long. Anthony's palm reading couldn't have taken more than 10 or 15 minutes. "Mrs. Lin" seemed in a genuine hurry. I mean, she was nice and all, but I got the distinct feeling that her heart wasn't really in this. I wasn't the one who got the reading, but, if you ask me, she also didn't come off as particularly gifted in the psychic arts, or, at least not focused.

She let us out through the back door. A nicely dressed man, probably her husband (and not Chinese!), was awkwardly pacing on the other side of the house desperately avoiding eye contact with us. 

On our way out, Anthony noticed a golf match playing on the big screen tv and small talked, "Oh, are you fans of golf?"

And with a strained politeness the psychic simply answered, "No."

On that flat note we exited the house. Unexpectedly, "Mrs. Lin" stood at the door and for the first time in our encounter spoke with the a knowing confidence, "When you back up your car, turn around so you're facing towards the street. I've lived here many years and that is the way it will work."

In the car Erika and I pried about Anthony's reading. "So, spill it! What about your love life?"

"I wanted to talk about that, but we never got around to it. We mostly talked about work. How it makes me anxious, but I will one day be happy and creatively fulfilled."

"She knew you were an artist?"

"Yeah, I think it was the glasses."

"What else?"

"She said that was about all she could read out of one palm. The other palm would've cost another $20..."

 

08: Psychic Visit pt. 2

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(Above, Anthony looks into a sublimely tacky LV/LA car.)

So Anthony didn't get to go to a psychic that day.

He, Erika, and I were led on a wild goose chase of closed shops, including the Hollywood Psychic Gallery, which was a particularly stinging defeat. We did make it to the locked and gated door though and the purple sparkly – yet remarkably dusty – interior looked quite promising. The establishment was also on an interesting block sitting between a construction site and the Sunset Pawn Shop, and the across the street from the start (?) of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hopefully we make it there one day. Until then, I will have to settle for the soothing woodwinds of its website: http://hollywoodpsychicgallery.com/

Short on time, we used our smart phones to conjure other psychics nearby. "Gina the psychic" was our next attempt. For what it's worth, her website, http://www.freewebs.com/ginathepsychic/, was no less stellar (and by that, I mean also full of stars).  And, while there is no music,  the site does feature some intriguing, mystical-ish animation and the tall promise to:

"Help Recover Your Passion And Destiny And Can Help Restore Your Own Energy And Reduce Stress And Worry I Open Your Spiritual Mind And Discover Your Chakra Center's To Release Your Emotional And Physical Blocks With A Psychic And Tarot Card Reading"

Anyhow, when we showed up at the listed address there was no sign or indication of a psychic establishment. In fact, it was just a normal apartment building. We got out and walked around the building but saw nothing, though one ground floor apartment door was open. 

Erika called the number from the website and no human answered, but a sound did greet her on the other end of the line. She switched over to speaker phone so we could hear. The commotion pouring out could accurately be described as a connecting  dial-up modem,  except instead of kilobytes – and this is going to sound hard to believe, but it's true! –the digitize stutters,  stops, whoops sounded like a haunted computer downloading souls.  There was a brief moment we all feared that the ghost in the machine would haunt and destroy us all, but, alas I've lived to tell about it.

Since Erika's phone was potentially already contaminated by the devil, she was the designated person to call our next hope, "A True Psychic Mrs. Tracy". She graciously took our call, but was unavailable due to poor health. Her daughter was available though, but we passed on since it was unclear to us if true psychic ability is hereditary. 

A few minutes later, Mrs. Tracy called back and said another friend could take our referral, but by then we had to be on our way to the Pee-Wee Herman stage show downtown, which was the original reason we drove down to LA in the first place.

So, try as we might, we failed to see another psychic that day. Good news arrived however when on the way home from an after-show dinner with friends , Anthony spotted a heretofore unseen psychic booth in the strip mall next to the Wendy's and across the Chevron in Alhambra. 

So, in one sense a failure, but we had a destination for tomorrow.

07: Psychic Visit pt. 1

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During my stay in Los Angeles Anthony, Erika, and I decided we would each go see a psychic We wanted the answers to our deepest quandaries of love and work and paying $20-40 for that seemed about right.

In LA, there's a clairvoyant in every second strip mall and third residential block, so to sort the wheat from the chaff, we turned to the internet, more specifically, Yelp.  As a team we agreed that we should begin our search where the legitimate psychics were sure to be found: Hollywood.

After a minute or two on a laptop, several promising candidates surfaced (though surprisingly few had reviews – are Yelp users embarrassed to expose their mystic inclinations? Is there an inversely proportional relationship between those that rant to the spirits and those that rant on the Internet?). The forerunner, by sheer number of typos was "Hollywood Psychic Gallery". The description reads as follows: 

"psychic Marla  Natural Born And very  Accurate[y Gifted Clairvoyant Psychic.   Studdyed at the Universal Temple of Light  Northridgf ca ,The American Astrology Ass.  Certifed masters degree in psychic divations" 

It should be noted that we agreed to see a different psychic and Maria's establishment seemed like a fine place to start. (After all, she studdyed in Northridgf and at the The American Astrology Ass.) We programmed the address into Antony's gps and were off.

The car is filled with chatter. Who's scared? Who's excited? I'm not scared! What are you going to ask? What will you tell them? Nothing! They should know all about me already. They're psychic!

We exit the highway and follow the gps through the local, endearingly disheveled Hollywood streets. Erika points out a familiar building from the back seat. "We saw that place online! That's the place voted #1!" [Ed. note: it's self-given title in Yelp is "#1 Los Angeles Voted Psychic Reader & Love Specialist Angela"]

Sure enough, a few houses of down the block is red and white Psychic sign from a photograph we saw on the internet. Anthony makes a strong, abrubt turn, we circle around the block and park.

Erika having had the "vision" of spotting this place, it was obvious that this should be her psychic. We enter the gate of the home, ascend the stoop to an astroturfed porch and are greeted by woman wearing a nightgown and holding a baby. There's some shuffling. A man on the phone appears and takes the kid with one hand.

Our physic and nonchalantly asks, "Which of you will be having a reading?" Erika is brave and steps up.

Much to our dismay, Anthony and I are not allowed to sit in. I suppose the implied privacy of mystic divinations should be obvious, but I would have liked the option to watch. I would have even paid.

Instead, Anthony and I are swept into a sparse, darkly lit front room. Almost everything is white, from the walls to the lamps, to the carpet. Plastic covered furniture bounces the light from a 52" flatscreen television. We've learned it's exact dimensions in the subsequent small talk with the psychic's husband. We also learned that he's owned the house for 17 years, doesn't ask his wife for psychic advice, and that he's had a drink with Nicholas Cage. "He bought us a round, we bought him a round. Really nice guy. Crazy though."

The oddest thing about the fellow is a the number of phone calls he got in the 15-20 minutes we were trying to overhear Erika's reading. The Making-of Ghost Rider special blearing on TV was hard enough to hear over, but this man's phone would ring every two minutes. As soon as he hung up his cordless phone, his cell phone would ring from across the house. When his cell phone conversation was over, his house phone would ring again. It was enough to make you think that the man was calling himself.

Erika emerged before we find out exactly how movie magic made it appear that Nicholas Cage jumped over 6 helicopters in a motorcycle. She looks stunned.

We say our thank yous and goodbyes and walk towards the car dying to hear what the psychic told her.

Erika wasn't at liberty to share all of the psychics mystic wisdom with us in the car, but, suffice to say, the seer focused on her past romances and was "spot on." The psychic also helpfully offered to unblock Erika's love life for $200. Erika passed on this though on hearing that fasting for nine days and burning a white candle ought to do the trick.

Back on the road. Up next was Anthony...

03: Elvis Costello

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I listened to early Elvis Costello more than anything else in the last year (at a ratio of about 50:1). Eager to spread how great his music is, I made this drawing today to serve as a cover for an E.C. mixed cd. Haven't finalized the tracklist yet, but the slow, alternate version of  "Kid About It" will lead of the mix for sure.