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Newest Episode: Tue May 04, 2010. 01:44 AM
Every week 'The Urban Man' sets out to fathom Los Angeles: its mystery its poetry and its beautiful conundrums. Along the way Marc Porter Zasada often gets personally involved with his subject and fraternizes with the natives.
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Tue May 04, 2010. 01:44 AM
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Tue April 27, 2010. 01:44 AM
Once a Hollywood producer said to me, "You know, it only takes a little uranium to power a submarine. You can't run the sub without it, but it only takes a teeny tiny bit." He was a guy who creates large-scale fantasy films ? the submarines of his metaphor, and by the uranium, he meant that little spark of creativity, the small poetic impulse in the mind of the original writer...
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Tue April 20, 2010. 01:44 AM
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Tue April 13, 2010. 01:44 AM
Like most people in L.A., the urban man and his beautiful mate often go looking for sincerity. Sometimes we find it in our relationship, sometimes among friends, and sometimes out on the town. Tonight we're celebrating our anniversary, so of course, we kick off the evening with an hour trying to agree on a sincere restaurant. It would be easy if our goal were elegance or romance?but sincerity, well, that's a little harder to find...
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Tue April 06, 2010. 04:00 AM
The L.A. Ring Festival begins next week: but this is no sidewalk jewelry sale on Venice beach. No, this is "Ring" as in "Ring of the Nibelungen," Richard Wagner's epic operatic cycle celebrating the destruction of the pagan gods and the birth of human love and freedom in a mysterious, but purifying apocalypse...
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Tue March 30, 2010. 01:44 AM
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Tue March 23, 2010. 01:44 AM
Here in L.A., many people sacrifice to pursue art. Others sacrifice to pursue money. Then of course, lots of folks swing back and forth: Tick Tock, Tick Tock. It's the pendulum that drives plenty of clocks in this town: Art/Money. Money/Art. If we ever truly gave up one for the other, we wouldn't be happy. Except, apparently, for my friend Jack...
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Tue March 16, 2010. 01:44 AM
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Tue March 09, 2010. 01:44 AM
Yesterday, I missed most of the Oscar telecast. Yes, it's true. I didn't tune in until they got to Best Actor. I tried hard, but I was delayed by traffic, and right around the time Mo'nique was giving her potent speech, I was transitioning anxiously from the 15 to the 10, caught up in a massive 3D experience of taillights and Taco Bells...
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Tue March 02, 2010. 01:44 AM
The other night, my friend John explained why America is not ready for
health reform. I've quoted John before. He's an unsung philosopher who
works as a carpenter out in the Valley. Like carpenters of old, he
often speaks in an oracular fashion....
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Tue November 10, 2009. 02:44 AM
Last week, I found myself at a 35th anniversary celebration for Hello Kitty. No kidding, Hello Kitty: that unspeakably cute Japanese cartoon figure with the round eyes, button nose, red bow, and three whiskers each side. In Japan, Hello Kitty is a national obsession, and more than 25,000 different products feature that face: purses, clocks, radios, towels, toasters, tea sets, you name it. I hear it?s socially acceptable for a Tokyo executive to have a Hello Kitty startup screen on his cell phone. The licensing company makes billions...
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Tue November 03, 2009. 02:44 AM
Like everyone in L.A., I try never to be content. I know it's crucial never to succumb to job satisfaction or a general sense of happiness. That would be a crime against ambition. Worse, to be content would be to agree to type-casting: you know, where an actor has to play the same character over and over again...
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Tue October 27, 2009. 02:44 AM
I don't know about you, but I have never actually won a political argument. No one has ever said to me, "You know what? Now that you put it so clearly, I see I was wrong." Not once. Not ever. Not when I marshal facts, not when I quote Jefferson, not by Socratic inquiry or blunt force of will. Even though, you know, I am often right...
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Tue October 20, 2009. 02:44 AM
Here in L.A., everyone thinks they understand the mathematics of
beauty. You know, Clothes. Faces. Legs. Our eyes expertly rove an
afternoon mall or a midnight bar, evaluating the smooth, the tight...or
at least, the fashionable Tonight the Urban Man finds himself standing in line outside a dance
club just off Hollywood Boulevard. It's about 11:30, and the line is
composed mostly of women 22 to 26, all trying hard to look beautiful...
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Tue October 13, 2009. 02:44 AM
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Tue October 06, 2009. 02:44 AM
The other morning, as I sat in Starbucks with a friend, the Urban Man suddenly became unduly optimistic. It happened as I was surveying a large throng of latte-drinkers bent over their glowing laptops. "Remember The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," I asked my friend, "where that woman is sitting by herself in a café, and she comes up with the answer '42,' just before the earth is wiped out?"
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Tue September 22, 2009. 01:44 AM
I don't know about you, but the Urban Man tries hard to take
responsibility for his mistakes. You know, like all the therapists and
self-help books say, "Don't blame fate, don't blame your mother. Don't
lay your problems on mysterious forces beyond your control...not even
on your friend Pete..."
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Tue September 15, 2009. 01:44 AM
I don't know about you, but even after living several decades in L.A.,
I wonder if I'm really, you know, home. I'll be driving down a
particularly random boulevard or crossing a beat patch of desert, and
I'll think: "No way. Stop kidding around. This can't really be my
home..."
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Tue September 08, 2009. 01:44 AM
Special for Labor Day, 2009
Today is Labor Day, intended as a holiday of rest for working folks, and a celebration of labor itself. It's a quaint relic from a crazy time when Americans thought of work as a good thing. No kidding, they really did. For a while, they thought there was some kind of human dignity and even spiritual reward to be derived from road building, tractor driving, or pipe fitting. You can read about this brief romantic period in a history book...some people claim it accounts for our early success...
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Tue September 01, 2009. 01:44 AM
Don't tell anyone, but the Urban Man often tries to organize real life
into a music video. It's a bad habit, I know ? but I'll be sitting,
say, in a vegan Asian fusion restaurant, listening with apparent close
attention to the important conversation of a lunchtime companion, when
the background track on the sound system, barely audible above the
general hubbub, suddenly catches my ear...
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