The Sign of Liotta · 12 November 2007

A star is like an omen. Like an albino cow trundling through the herd, it marks a moment. Gives you an excuse to stop and say: what does it mean?

Usually, nothing. Sissy Spacek in Axe, Sally Field in the lobby of a Beverly Hills oral surgeon, Adrien Grenier driving west on Santa Monica Boulevard in a Prius. You’re tasteful about it, let them be as much at home in this town as you, let it lend an extra touch of the surreal to your life here.

Sometimes I’ll make something of it, though. Like when Yancy and I passed James Brown standing outside the Petit Four on Sunset. I’d just visited the grad department it UCLA to check things out, even though I’d sworn I’d never live here. James Brown was wearing an iridescent green suit so intense that Yancy picked him out a block away. Green means yes.

What does it mean when you brush past Ray Liotta as you secret your first salmon steak in five years away from the meat counter at the Westwood Whole Foods? I instantly had images of mobsters and ruthless slaughter. Of reducing your friends to ground chuck on account of a foul mood.

And of meat hooks, yes. We had a meat hook for some reason suspended above the factory floor at the Bristol Bay fishhouse where I drove forklift and tweaked the roe from piles of dead salmon throughout the summer of 1997. The only two times I ate salmon that summer, and maybe the first times ever, were when the cocky Japanese owner brought a prize king steak over for the factory foreman. Who I was seeing. Each time, he took me up to the office with a batch of fresh wasabi and we ate the king raw. The second time he said, “I’d like to hang you up by that meat hook out on the floor and skin you.”

What? I have fallen for a horrible psycho killer?

But I guess that is something Ray Liotta – Mister “It would be nice to do a movie where I didn't have to choke the girl to get her”—would say too.

Me and my salmon exited stage right, me wondering if this meant I was about to get a big testosterone infusion or turn into a mobster or start seeing people as sides of beef.

As it turned out, none of the above. Dinner was quiet, simple, and nice. It tasted good and I experienced no cognitive dissonance at all. The next morning, the strangely intense dairy cravings that had been with me for a week were gone. In their place was a rock in my gut.

My body just did not know what to do with it. Saturday was heavy and fatigued, and if you must know I finally went and rested (what one does in the rest room) around three. Sort of. Practice on Sunday was heavy. I weaseled through a bad nakrasana (always the bellweather) when nobody was looking. Oh well. Salmon experiment inconclusive.

Then just now I googled Ray Liotta to check on his size, which the other night I noticed was hilariously small (not that being small is funny or anything). Either he’s bribed the IMDB or he really is six foot and has a shorter, fake Ray—the one I saw at the meat counter—impersonating him out and about in Los Angeles. (The guy at the checkout saw him too: it’s not just that I was protein-deprived.)

Was it a faux celebrity sighting?

Well, what does that mean?

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: evolution , having a body

Comment

1. and, did i miss it, did you cook him, your salmon?

   Posted by: eor · Nov 12, 02:11 PM · #

2. Yes, I cooked him up. Re-reading the above, I see this sad point in the narrative where the fish goes from being a companion (“Me and my salmon exited stage right”) to a thing (“It tasted nice”).

   In between those points, the cooking took place.

   There was a fish-guillotine up at the salmon cannery. We called it the de-soul-er. I guess I used the oven as the de-soul-er without even realizing it.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 12, 02:20 PM · #

3. I think the meat hook, and skin you comment is FREAKY. And I’m very open minded. Definitely a serial killer….

   Hey! and I read a post and I don’t feel under-smart.

   Posted by: Susan · Nov 12, 05:08 PM · #

4. Too late to be blogging, maybe its all the backbending. Imo celebrity means nothing. It means what one projects onto ‘it’ since the celebrity ultimately becomes an object of the others projection and fantasy. But in this time of hypnotic technologies people do not draw distinction between vicarious living and reality. They live thru these sad,motley figures much like the ancients worshipped the lifestyles of their gods and goddesses’. John Lenon said it most appropriately when he commented once that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. It was a slip and he tried to retract it but it was a profound observation. Pop stars as ritual icons who are the literal medium thru which people express rage,love,murder,joy – the whole gamut of stuff considered inappropriate,unacceptable or anathema to proper community. We get off watching Liotta tie off some hood because we imagine ourselves in the scene whatever our reaction might be. But its the power of our own imaginations and our own humanity that we should champion, not Liotta. We are the stars in all of these dramas if only we knew how special we truly are and would learn to take responsibility for our feelings and our own humanity. Sometimes of course we do but often that wall of separation between self and object-other feels very solid.

   Posted by: tristan · Nov 12, 11:42 PM · #

5. you wanna hear weird? so yesterday as you were composing this post I took the kids to see “Bee Movie” (it sucked btw) and who has a cameo role in it? RAY LIOTTA! Weird.

   I prefer spotting celebrity look-a-likes amongst regular folks. Then if you see them regularly on the T or wherever you can say, “I saw fake Ray Liotta again today.” Good times.

   Posted by: cody · Nov 13, 07:36 AM · #

6. especially nikki hilton, whose sunglasses are SO BIG she could be anybody in la.

   Posted by: eor · Nov 13, 07:43 PM · #

7. oops,

   Posted by: eor · Nov 13, 07:45 PM · #

8. :)

   Looks like it’s possible to be playful about celebrity. Andy Warhol is finally catching up with us. Notoriety is something that comes and goes, for each of us albeit on different scales. I guess modern technology has drawn even more people into thrall with the Hollywood star system than ever before, but for the more playful among us, I sense celebrity and our responses to different personae are more an amusing interpretive device than a royalty system. A big vulgar set of trump cards.

   And I’m interested in all the roles… not just hero but hierophant, high priestess, and the hanged man. I make a good hanged man, but so’s Vincent D’Onofrio.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 14, 11:45 AM · #

9. I agree to the extent that you can remain playful with all this nonsense. Most Americans however are dumber than sheep and just as obsequious. This makes them easily distracted from the real events of the day. Some celebrity farts somewhere in a shopping mall and its news. Meanwhile our Airforce is flying loose nukes across the country and the herd is completely oblivious like a general mass of cud-chewing domesticated farm product.

   I was out in Brentwood on Halloween and saw this chubby guy with orange hair plugs walking his miniature pony down the street and trailing a crowd. Sure enough Arnold was loose amongst the minions. No symbolism there just another sad reminder of how readily an ignorant and incurious public will give away its power to an imbecilic conman.

   Now for those yogis who yearn for the real deal how about those Russian Ashtangis? www.yoga108.com. Check out how strong these Slavic warriors are. Many have studied with the great and inimitable Andre Lappa perhaps the worlds most skilled semi-fat yogi, a true force of nature. He mixes weight-lifting in with his training as essential and in his ‘Universal Partner Yoga’ his adjustments for 3rd and 4th series asanas are bordering on the Torquemadan.this guy and this school of wild ass Russians are a welcome jolt of fresh air into a stuffy room of U.S. yoga mercantilism.

   Posted by: tristan · Nov 15, 10:57 AM · #

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