Quemado

Did anyone else think, as a child, that Mr. Tamborine Man and Mr. Bojangles were, if not the same man, at least related?

...

"Movietown, that bitch burned down!
Movietown, that bitch burned down!"

-My Brother, upon learning of Movietown's burning down

Such was the innocuous chant that would herald what would become the largest outbreak of aggresive arson seen in Orange County since the Great Burneration of 1904.

I first heard what would become the rallying mantra of my generation not in words, but in text on my cellular phone, my brother letting me know that Movietown, a video store that my friends and I had frequented since high school daze, along with an entire stretch of Anaheim strip mall, had burned to the ground as my friend watched from his roof across the street. Nothing but the facade of Movietown now stands, a charred reminder of the one peice of consumerism that held any sanctuary for us in our adolescence. Also, much porn was lost in the blaze.

Then, driving the Mrs. home one night, I viewed a second conflagration a good distance away from the freeway I was flying down. The flames must have been at least four stories tall, and the light the fire was giving off turned the smoke-stifled night sky the sooty black-orange of a hot almost-fall sunset. Driving back from her house, white smoke had started to rise and the flames were no longer visible, though a diminished glow was still visible. Strange this destruction-by-fire should happen so recently after the first.

Finally, we have a special exhibit at the Center opening for the summer, and we've all been running around like hootenannies trying to get it ready in time. I've spent a good deal of my own time out back painting a staircase and, let me tell you, the process of painting a staircase is a long and arduous one.

At any rate... I went to visit a friend of mine who had been relegated to the gulag of stair-painting, and he pointed out to me that, down the street (perilously close to a nearby city zoo, in fact) great plumes of smoke had begun to spew skyward, indicating yet another fire of considerable size, this one the very day after the previous. The effusion from this particular combustion looked unhealthily black, chemical in origin, and I deduced that, simply, that was how monkeys burn.

Why? Why so many legitimate fires so close on each other's heels. Why, so soon after I'd made the comment that we don't get enough real fires around here in Orange County, at least not in the city areas. Sure, once a year we're treated to the Santa Ana winds inspiring some socially-defunct firebug to set ablaze the grasslands, but I'm looking for some property damage. Odd that, not too long after I'd begun looking for it, I found it in an abundance I'd never before experienced, let alone seen in such a tight locus around my own home. I am convinced there is a serial arsonist of the supervillain caliber loose in Orange County, and I will do whatever I must.

In this case, it appears that I "must" start watching movies again (apart from Batman Begins, I've been shirking my duties) and that I "must" get my space movie filmed and ready for post before the summer ends. Before I'm out of time.

So... I suppose somebody else could take care of the whole "arsonist" thing.

Takers?

And yes, I meant Burneration, not Burnination. There is life outside pop culture, fuckers.