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1 " That's how life works. You know it when you know it.They're nineteen and in love. Alone except for each other. Jobless and homeless, looking for something, somewhere, anywhere here.They're on a sixteen-line highway.Driving west. "
― James Frey , Bright Shiny Morning
2 " To live with angels and chase their dreams. "
3 " They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true. "
4 " He pulled out turned west and started driving towards the glow it was thousands of miles away, he started driving towards the glow. "
5 " But all good things come to an end, often a sad angry miserable end. The cause for such an end can usually be whittled down to one of three things: money, sickness, love lost. "
6 " Joe asks how long they've been there one of them says fuck off another says a week a third calls him a drunk homeless fuck and tells him to go away. Joe asks how long they will wait the singular answer is as long as it takes and somewhere inside the house five-day-old children sleep under siege because their mother has a nice smile and beautiful hair and can recite lines on camera. "
7 " Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains. "
8 " A contest was held in 1994 to rename the Los Angeles Convention and Exhibition Center after an extensive renovation and expansion. The winning name, chosen from over ten thousand entries, was the Los Angeles Convention Center. "
9 " The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses. "
10 " In 1970, a superior Court judge issues an order forcing the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. The judge survives an assassination attempt and loses his job in the next election. "
11 " 1954. Smog prevents airplanes from landing and ships from docking for three days. "
12 " We fell in love. We pursued that love sexually and emotionally. I don't think he's as comfortable or as open with his sexuality as I am with mine, so he ended the relationship. It was a beautiful thing, like the most perfect healthy colorful blooming flower, while it lasted, it was like a flower from heaven. Now it's like a bomb went off in my heart. I'll probably never be the same. "
13 " he sits and waits and hopes that at some "
14 " The sun rises in a clear sky that moves from black to gray to white to deep, pure crystal blue. One in Georgia packs his things he’s going to take a bus. Four in Mexico walk across scorched earth water in packs on their back. Two in Indiana best friends coming together they pack their best clothes while their parents wait to take them to the airport. One in Canada drives south. Sixty from China in a cargo container sail east. Four in New York pool their cash and buy a car and drop out of school and drive west. Sixteen cars of a passenger train crossing the Mojave only one stop left. One in Miami doesn’t know how she’s going to get there. Three in Montana have a truck none of them have any idea what they’re going to do once they arrive. A plane from Brazil sold out landing at LAX. Six in Chicago dreaming on shared stages they rented a van they’ll see if any of them can make it. Two from Arizona hitchhiking. Four more just crossed in Texas walking. Another one in Ohio with a motorcycle and a dream. All of them with their dreams. It calls to them and they believe it and they cannot say no to it, they cannot say no. It calls to them. It calls. Calls. "
15 " In 2001, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-arc), an avant-garde architecture school that has produced some of the prominent architects in the country, relocated to the Artists District "
16 " You want worship for what? For what you give? For how you treat us? For what you allow to happen? For the hatred that exists that you don’t stop? For the violence that you don’t stop? For the death that you don’t stop? Man killing man killing women killing children that you don’t stop. And you want worship? You want us on our knees? You want devotion? You want exaltation? You want faith? A crown of thorns pressed into the skull bleeding at the tips. "
17 " In 1918, a Chinese immigrant working in a Los Angeles noodle factory invented the fortune cookie. He did so believing that a cookie with a positive message in it would raise the spirits of the city’s poor. "
18 " In 1935, the Los Angeles Police Department, via mayoral directive, sends a battalion of police officers to the Nevada border to stop hitchhikers, primarily Mexican nationals, from entering the state of California. They return after four days and report that they were unable to stem the flow of immigration. "
19 " Twenty-nine cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on law enforcement. Fifteen cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on sewage collection and treatment. Eight cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on road maintenance. One-point-five cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on education. "
20 " A small portion of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes are enshrined at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades. They are the only portion of Gandhi’s remains that are kept anywhere outside of India. "
