First, I opened the mail one day last week at home in San Francisco, and found a bill. Not just a bill, but a traffic ticket. A traffic ticket fine worth $125, for failure to stop at a stop sign in a municipal park in Los Angeles.
It unnerved me. I was totally blanked out on being stopped by a policeman and being given a citation. I simply could not in my mind conjure up this scene. Had I spent some "blackout" time? Do I have a mental thing going on? Are all the synapses not firing?
Actually, turns out I'm fine. There was no policeman, there was no traffic stop. Just a ticket in the mail for $125. And a link to a video.
I ran to my computer, accessed the link, and watched a short video of a car with my license plate fail to make a dead stop at a corner stop sign, then turn right. A short video taken by a fixed-in-place video camera, mounted somewhere near an intersection in a municipal park in Los Angeles, that I happened to drive through on my way to somewhere else.
The mailed citation was signed by a park ranger (a park ranger!), attesting to the fact that he had viewed the video, and deemed it an accurate portrayal of me committing a moving violation. And thus the citation, totally impersonal, in the mail.
Am I guilty? Apparently I am! It's on video!
But this bothers me - a lot. It's way too sneaky. Way too "Big Brother is watching." If I am to be arrested, I want to be arrested in person, by a real law enforcement officer. An officer who is charged with public safety, and who has observed me recklessly endangering public safety, and who is justified in arresting me. Not by a park ranger sitting in a darkened, windowless room watching videos of cars going around a corner and cranking out $125 demand letters.
Creepy.
What's even more creepy is that this citation is not an infraction of Santa Monica statute, or California law, but rather is just between me and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. No record will be sent to the California DMV, or my insurance company. Seemingly, my fine derives from my infraction of a private traffic law.
Should I pay this? Looks official. But the fine print makes it seem off-the-books. Hmmm...
By the way, the monitored address is 15601 Sunset Blvd., in Temescal Canyon Park. Watch out, all you citizen suspects. There's a park ranger's video camera watching you drive by, every day, hoping to collect another $125 by demonstrating that you eased around that corner!
Just creepy.
........
Item Two:
Our son Colby, 25, was recently accepted into the graduate Master of Fine Arts program at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles, in the discipline of cinematography. The Conservatory accepts each year 28 new fellows worldwide in each of a handful of disciplines(producing, directing, set design, etc.). The Institute sponsors the well-known AFI annual achievement awards in filmmaking, and boasts all the Hollywood names you ever heard of.
Colby's Conservatory program is the filmmaker's equivalent of, in my world, Harvard Business School on steroids. We have many friends in and around the movie business, and they say this acceptance is HUGE! Congratulations to Colby, who did this without insider connections, or committing to building a new wing; he did it on raw and unadulterated talent, coupled with his fierce determination to succeed.
I and his mother are simply falling-down proud of our son.
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