“Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg”: https://tinyurl.com/2dwp2duv

1

It’s on Hulu. And if you’re a dedicated Stones fan it’s a must-see. But if you’re just looking for a film to watch, and not interested in how all the pieces fit together, you can skip it.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to write about the fires.

I get it. And I respect those who’ve lost their houses. And if the wind kicks back up tonight the way they say it’s going to, that puts us back in harm’s way.

However, life goes on.

That sounds terrible, I know. But it’s the truth. We’re human beings, and if we don’t march forward…

Having said that, if you live in L.A. you’re in shock. Kind of like when a parent dies. I don’t really think the true effect will be felt for a month, when the reality truly sinks in, when we realize those houses are truly gone and people are displaced and the Palisades will never come back…

Oh, it will. I can’t tell you in how long, but it will. That’s the nature of America, we rebuild, even when we shouldn’t. Like all those seashore houses in the east.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that all this California bashing bugs me.

Forget all the lies. No, the fire department budget was not cut, in fact it went up. As for North Carolina…do you know the Republicans in that state changed the law so they could build houses on floodplains and then…it flooded?

The funny thing is we in California are getting the last laugh, because we know how good life is here. We get the benefit, like in that old 10cc song. You don’t know how great life is out here. Move back if you want to. But there’s nowhere I’d rather live than Los Angeles. I can complain about the traffic, but I’ve been around the world and this is my favorite place. You don’t have to agree. But that column that stated if California falls the rest of the country is screwed had it right. Bitch about us all you want, but the country depends upon us. This is where innovation is fostered and dreams come true.

We could go all the way back to the beginning, there wouldn’t even be much of a Los Angeles if it weren’t for Mulholland and his waterway. Then again, we’re not the only western state that depends upon diverted waters. The entire nation is jerry-rigged. And long in the tooth to boot. We need to rebuild our infrastructure, we should have done it when interest rates were low, but we’re so busy bitching at each other, fearful of being taxed and ripped-off, that we can’t get anything done. If you were alive in the fifties and sixties, when the U.S. was still a can-do country, you don’t recognize our nation anymore.

But this is where we live.

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I was talking to David Gray today, he’s got a new album, and he was saying that music means something different to his two daughters, ages 20 and 22. Oh, they’re fans, but back in his day it was EVERYTHING!

And it all started with the Beatles, and the Stones were not far behind.

Now in truth Brian Jones and John Lennon had it good, because they died with their images intact. Because if you live long enough…it turns out you’re just like the rest of us. Maybe with a few more bucks, vacationing in more exclusive places, but the truth is we can all screw and eat and laugh and…

The internet has leveled the playing field. It’s shown we truly live in a global village. That no one is above anybody else. Try raising your head and thinking otherwise. Elon Musk is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

But in the sixties…

We knew Cynthia Lennon, and ultimately Jane Asher.

And eventually we knew Anita Pallenberg. And just from looking at her, we knew she played by her own rules. And had her own fame, she didn’t need to trade on that of the Stones. But in the sixties music drove the culture, even a movie star wanted to get closer to the musicians. And Anita Pallenberg did. She zoomed in on Brian Jones.

Who is viewed as a sad story today, but he was the coolest Stone before he fell off the edge. And Anita made him cooler. Everybody wanted to hang at their apartment, despite it being a mess, because that’s where the action was.

The film goes into Anita’s transition from Brian to Keith. Makes the case that Brian cooked his own goose, that Anita wasn’t just an opportunist. But you get insight into how those songs from “Let It Bleed” were written.

Mick Jagger couldn’t always get what he wanted, Anita wouldn’t fall for him. One of the great tossed off lines in the movie is when Pallenberg says something happened before Mick danced. I love that! Since Mick’s dancing is so jive and so not rock and roll. Back then he was just shaking his maracas and singing and…

You get today’s laid back pirate Keith Richards in this movie, but in the sixties, he appears to be a caught in the spotlight suburbanite. Unsophisticated. Anita affected the musicians’ clothes and look and…

Keith wrote “You Got the Silver” spontaneously for Anita.

As for “Sister Morphine”… That was written about Anita.

And they go to South America to avoid the spotlight, when the average American couldn’t even find Peru on a map (maybe they still can’t find Peru on a map…)

And you get Marlon and his rarely viewed sister Angela, who was raised by her grandparents. I’m always fascinated by the progeny of rock stars, especially when they’re superseded by a second family. We hear about Keith’s kids with Patti Hansen… I remember the Osbournes’ TV show, when Ozzy’s older kid Louis showed up, he was so out of place.

And then there’s the escapade in the Catskills where Anita’s young lover plays Russian Roulette inspired by the scene in “The Deer Hunter” and kills himself,

Anita’s living on the edge. And some of those in her orbit fall off it.

But she survives.

And it’s hard being a has-been movie star/rock star significant other. She’s living in New York where everybody knows her name (at least the in crowd), but she’s got no money, and very little portfolio.

But she carries on…acts, walks the fashion runway and gets no plastic surgery.

You’re gonna watch this movie and say to yourself…THAT’S A STAR!

Anita lived her life unconstricted. She was always testing limits. Sure, she was beautiful and that greased the rails, but it was her personality, her feminine wiles that had men glued to her, women paying attention to her.

And they go into what was going down during the making of “Exile on Main Street” in France and living in Switzerland to avoid the law…

And the rich hangers-on. One who is their dope dealer in the South of France. And another who is just a friend who is there when Tara Jo dies of SIDS.

That’s one thing the average person doesn’t know, but in the world of celebrities, of star musicians, there’s this whole coterie of rich hangers-on, who in exchange for access provide money, housing, a shoulder to cry on…

And all that is in “Catching Fire.” Which is based on the writings of Anita herself. And in truth, I was skeptical. Too often these documentaries of those from half a century ago depend upon very little archival material and are made on a shoestring budget and are pure hagiography. This film deserved to be made. It illuminates so much about the Stones.

Like I said, if you’re a fan, if you know those albums by heart…

You’ve gotta see it.

Assuming we don’t have to evacuate, which is suddenly a real possibility, we will be talking about what streaming services you subscribe to and how you decide what to pay for.

Tune in Saturday January 11th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter/X: @lefsetz

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

“Earth to Moon”: https://shorturl.at/8Fvqk

I spent all afternoon finishing this book.

I hadn’t planned to, I hadn’t planned on finishing it all. I tried a couple of pages a few weeks back and the style…let’s just say the writing did have a style, and it was interior dialogue, somewhat choppy, and this was not the exposé of Frank and Gail Zappa I had expected it to be.

That’s what all the press said over the summer. And I’m a big Zappa fan. And you do learn about Frank, but really this book is about Moon and her mother.

Yes, another book about a daughter and her mother. That’s what some might think. But I got e-mail from Gail… Out of the blue. And she was the exact person Moon depicts in this book. Running at 100 miles an hour spitting fire and…

If I write about you and you’re this angry, go for it. But if I haven’t said anything negative about you, even worse, if I’ve complimented you, this has always flummoxed me. Then again, some people can’t help themselves. Interestingly, my worst experiences have been with the wives of legendary musicians…and they haven’t been defending their spouses so much as lashing out from their own perspective and…

I grew up always wanting to move to Hollywood, be on television.

Reading this book you’d never want to grow up in Hollywood.

Moon is a seeker. If you grew up in the east, you’ll be rolling your eyes, with all the touchy-feely crap, the gurus, the mantras… People do what they need to do to cope, but knowing the progeny of famous entertainers, this is not uncommon, this search for answers.

And so many of these famous musicians didn’t go to college themselves, in many cases they were poor students, music was all they could do, not by choice but by gene. So you have Moon getting her GED three years before she was scheduled to graduate from high school.

On one hand she’s free of constraint, on another she’s under the thumb of her mother.

All Frank does is work and screw. Ahmet told me his father was a swordsman. And it’s all documented here. Frank keeps threatening to leave Gail for Gerda in Germany. And there’s the groupie from New Zealand who actually lived in their house for a while who contacts Gail when Frank is dying and asks for some sperm so she can have his baby…

You’ve never experienced the weirdness that famous musicians endure. It’s not just fame, it’s not movie stars, you see musicians speak through their music, they are that person, and fans want to get closer and will…

Meanwhile, Moon has a crush on Jon Bon Jovi.

Moon is famous. With a hit record and TV appearances but she can’t get a date, she’s self-conscious over her looks, especially her acne. If you want to get into the mind of an adolescent and then teenage girl/woman…Moon does an excellent job here.

But mostly the family is living in isolation, up on Woodrow Wilson. Everybody knew that was Frank’s house, with a studio in the basement, it was legendary.

But the kids might as well have not been living in regular society. It’s only when Moon goes to high school that she truly learns how the other half lives. Everybody in the family has dinner at the same time, eating the same thing, and no one can get up until everybody’s finished? UNHEARD OF IN THE ZAPPA HOME!

And Gail herself is street smart, but that’s about it. She’s got all these crazy theories about witches and…

She just doesn’t know how to come through. Moon keeps waiting for her to deliver and she doesn’t, no matter how many times she is given a chance.

And then there is the money… They tool around in a Rolls, which ultimately doesn’t run yet is bequeathed to Ahmet, but cash is always an issue. When Frank gets sick he’s got no health insurance and they make Moon sell her house to pay the bills.

So when Moon finally leaves the house she has the adventures the hoi polloi do not. She hangs with famous actors, even dates Woody Harrelson, but when you read the stories you don’t feel like you’re missing out.

And when a married musician asks her to come visit him on the road, Moon asks her parents and they say to go. You can imagine how that plays out.

And then there’s the legal issues. Gail f*cks with Moon and Dweezil from the grave.

And I’ve heard Ahmet’s version of this, but all I’ll tell you is you’ve got to split up your estate equally, leave every child the same amount, or…

A sibling kept on asking my ever more frail mother to carve out money for her challenged child. My mother couldn’t believe I wouldn’t agree to this. This was after she wanted to split family money seven ways, so I got the same amount as my four nephews, and their mothers.

I told her I could never catch up financially with all the money she’d given to my sisters and their kids, for real estate, education…that I had written off that money, but now she was going to F*CK ME IN THE ASS?

She couldn’t understand that this wasn’t fair.

And this sibling kept on leaning on my mother, and finally I told my mother that if she didn’t split up the money equally, I’d never speak to my sisters again.

And then one day I got a letter from the lawyer saying to sign something. What was this? This same sibling had gone behind my back and made it so all three kids were executors of the estate. Just before he died my father told me he made me the executor because I was the only one who had any business sense.

But when it comes to money…

As a friend of mine once told me, you never really know your family until you share an inheritance.

And I’ll tell you I was positively stunned when I read my mother’s will and I got a third, after a de minimis payment to my nephews. And I ended up being the executor of the estate anyway…and unlike the fears of an in-law…OF COURSE I WASN’T GOING TO CHARGE TO DO IT!

And there’s a great segment in the book about Moon’s ill child and…

If you’re looking for Zappa gossip, just read a review. If you want to know the travails of the child of a musical icon and his unpredictable, self-centered, tempestuous wife…

THIS BOOK IS THE PLACE!

“Nobody on the road

Nobody on the beach

I feel it in the air…”

One thing you can be sure of is the boys of summer will return. Human beings are incredibly resilient.

As for Pacific Palisades?

That’s another matter.

So it’s akin to lockdown, but instead of arguments over vaccines, it’s over California. Was the dreaded left coast bastion of liberal excess asleep at the wheel, or was this an act of God, or maybe more accurately man, as in climate change.

That was my first reaction, that’s what my instincts tell me, but it doesn’t matter, America doesn’t have the political will to address the problem head-on. Either it doesn’t exist, or like a teenager the finger is pointed at other countries not doing their part. Ain’t that America, all people can do is complain and nothing gets done. Best to demonize someone rather than look at the root causes of the problem and try to fix it.

So we’re living in suspended animation. We don’t know where it’s going to light up next. As the reality of Tuesday night was being metabolized on Wednesday, just when so many felt lucky, it started to blaze in Runyon Canyon. And although all the press was about the fire crawling down from the hills and invading Hollywood, the true fear was the wind would blow the embers west, and burn everything from Hollywood to Beverly Hills to Bel Air and down the other side of Mulholland all the way to Ventura Boulevard, taking everything from Studio City to Sherman Oaks. And then would the embers cross the 405 and burn up Encino and then Tarzana and…

It’s hard to believe that fire wasn’t set. In the middle of nowhere, a park. Then again, I thought Richard Jewell was guilty and he turned out to be innocent.

But they think the Kenneth fire just over the border in Ventura County was arson…

As for those few houses that burned up in Studio City… Even the assistant fire chief on TV doubted whether the embers could fly all the way from Runyon. Then again, fires do happen everywhere on a regular basis, isn’t that why we’ve got the fire department to begin with?

And you wouldn’t catch me doing that job, putting myself in harm’s way. I’m not saying I wouldn’t volunteer, do my part if called upon, but it’s a special breed of people who join the fire department. And it’s not quite like crabbing in the waters off Alaska, but it’s pretty damn dangerous.

But humanity cannot always triumph over nature. What do they keep telling us, Silicon Valley will solve the climate change problem? What, when they can’t even put out fires?

So people have been contacting me from all over the world. How am I?

Well, I’d be lying if I told you Wednesday night I wasn’t shook up when it started to burn in Runyon.

And then last night there was that notice to evacuate, which made no sense and then turned out to be false.

And if the Runyon fire had spread as per above, it would have truly wiped out Los Angeles. A city decimated, period. Because most of the power in Los Angeles lives in these hills.

Then again, living in the flats is no longer an insurance policy protecting you from devastation. South of Sunset was wiped out. Taking the houses of…

Very close friends.

This is when relationships count, they already got a new apartment in Westwood. Is everybody else this networked?

And my shrink’s house was wiped out. I thought he’d want to cancel our virtual session on Thursday, but he said it was business as usual. He’s out in his house in the desert, he’s got his laptop and…it’s just stuff.

But what he really lamented was the loss of community. He and his wife had become best friends with their next door neighbors, that’s toast. I mean it’s one thing to be connected via the smartphone, quite another to be just twenty feet away in real life.

Some of these people have second homes.

A lot of them don’t.

Where are they going to go?

Where did all the evacuated go?

No one is untouched by this disaster, everybody knows someone who lost their home.

And not everybody was rich.

So now what… You’ve got NOTHING! You’re starting all over, from your toothbrush on up.

And then this morning Felice started to remark about the housekeepers and the gardeners and…their business has been wiped out.

And yes, a lot of those workers are undocumented. Because you can’t find citizens to do this work. Meaning the government safety net might elude them.

And it’s going to start blowing again.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been excoriating the state. This guy doesn’t realize people are turning against him. But he’s addicted to the attention, if not the power.

And it’s interesting to see the media’s response…

The “Los Angeles Times” has been stripped to the point that its coverage is no better than the “New York Times,” which today published a picture of exactly which houses have been lost:

“Mapping the Damage So Far From the Palisades Fire”

Free link: https://shorturl.at/0OxHZ

When it comes to natural disasters, it’s about boots on the ground. And if you’re running a lean operation… It’s like the public living paycheck to paycheck, you’re not prepared for a disaster.

And then I’m getting e-mails telling me I can’t go on with my regular life, I can’t write about anything but this disaster. Then again, maybe regular life is paused, I had a pneumonia vaccine canceled at the last minute by CVS this afternoon, that’s a first.

And my exercise of choice was hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains, exactly where Palisades fire was. But the air is too bad to exercise outside anyway.

Ergo, the feeling of lockdown.

And you can donate all the money you’ve got and it still won’t solve the problem. The losses are in the billions.

I can’t wrap my head around it, if you don’t live here…

You see the view from 30,000 feet.

But on the ground the whole city is in shock.