The other day while walking down Westwood Blvd I saw an old homeless woman shambling down the street wearing only a dirty bedsheet wrapped around her body and head-- only her face was visible--and what a face it was!--this pitiful specimen was covered in open sores and thick, hideous scars--she may have been blind, or, more likely, perhaps her milky eyes were covered in cataracts--she passed me on the street and I nodded to her and she smiled slightly--revealing a mouth full of broken and rotted teeth--she reminded me of a street arab or one of the witches in Macbeth...

But this is not an unusual sight on the streets of Los Angeles-- as much as the city has a reputation for beautiful people and wealthy hedonists--there is actually a strong medieval element here as well-- on any day of the week one will see deformity and degradation of every kind--a veritable freakshow that is no longer found in circuses but that thrives in the sundrenched, always 78 degrees environment of So Cal--toothless grifters--speedfreaks--pneumatic lips, tits, and ass--amputees--ancient weathered faces--botched plastic surgery--crackheads--beautiful southeast asian transexuals with bellyshirts and comehither eyes-- immigrants and misfits from everywhere in the world prattling away like mad in 10,000 tongues and 10,000 additional dialects--it's enough to drive a person crazy.