Jean Phillipe

After a winter wedding in New Jersey, Sarah and I settled into a 10-unit apartment complex, just south of Melrose. One of our neighbors was an angry Frenchman named Jean Phillipe.

He lived in one of the front apartments with his wife, a political exile from some Central American warzone. According to the way Jean Phillipe tells it, the couple had originally tried to live off the land on Catalina Island.

Catalina is 26 miles off the coast of L.A. The part of the island that most people see is the quaint little harbor town of Avalon, but apparently there's a sizable wilderness over there. Jean Phillipe set up shop on the outskirts of one of the main campgrounds. He tried fishing for his food, but quickly he realized that this was too much work, so he resorted to raiding the coolers of the weekend campers. He would wait till the tourists wandered off for a hike, then he'd swoop down and make off with their steaks, hotdogs, beer, etc...

This swoop-and-steal lifestyle worked pretty well in the beginning, but once the park rangers received enough complaints about a marauding Frenchman - warning posters started to appear with a primitive sketch of our hero. Jean Phillipe knew he would have go deeper into the wilds of Catalina.

All the while, Jean Phillipe was becoming more and more the savage. He was always dirty. His clothes were starting to give out. One day while taking a bath in a stream, a wild goat came out of nowhere and stole one of his tattered shoes. He chased the animal, and eventually recovered his mangled shoe, but his run-ins with this beast were just beginning. Many mornings Jean Phillipe would wake up to find that the goat had eaten his stolen fruit. One night it even took a bite out of his tent. The wheels were turning in Jean Phillipe's head. He had to find a way to stop the goat.

One lazy day his moment came. Jean Phillipe was perched atop some rocks, watching sailboats round the island's isthmus. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied something moving beneath him. There was the goat, nibbling on some grass along a steep incline. Jean Phillipe acted on impulse - heaving a medium size boulder down the cliff. It started a small avalanche, which was enough to send the stunned goat tumbling. Jean Phillipe bounded down the hillside and delivered the coup de grace with a carving knife he'd pinched from the last restaurant he worked in. Proudly, he brought the goat home to his hungry wife.

A short distance from the scene of the crime, a tour bus slowed to a stop.

"If everybody's quiet, we might get a visit from one of Catalina's most popular celebrities, Billy the Goat. This friendly character is descended from a family of goats that was brought to the island for the 1935 production of Mutiny on the Bounty."

After a few days of no-shows by Billy the Goat, the island veterinarian was dispatched to find him.

Imagine his horror as he came upon Jean Phillipe's campsite. Billy the Goat's stripped carcass was covered with flies. Sitting on an Igloo cooler was Jean Phillipe. He was so busy trying to create a flute with one of Billy's femurs, he hardly noticed the stranger.

There wasn't much they could do to Jean Phillipe and his wife. They just put them on a boat for the mainland and told them to never come back.

Jean Phillipe eventually got a job in a fancy L.A. restaurant. We would go to Winchell's for late-night doughnuts and he would tell us crazy stories like this one.

Summer of '88

I rolled into California with my college roommate, Lee. We had caravaned across America from North Carolina. Both our cars were loaded to the ceilings with clothes, futons and guitars.

My old Uncle Eric was kind enough to let us stay for a few days at his home in Santa Monica. During this time we scoured the classifieds for apartments. The ads were broken up into areas with names like Century City, Silverlake, Eagle Rock, Glendale, Miracle Mile, yadda yadda yadda. We mapped the areas with our road atlas but we had no idea what we were looking at.

"Glendale is green."

All the other areas were various shades of yellow and red.

"Okay, let's live in Glendale."

Finding someone who would rent a place to 2 unemployed hillbillies wasn't easy. After several failed attempts, we had an appointment to meet a lady who seemed willing to take a chance on us. We cleaned out Lee's car, put on our best clothes and drove to pick her up. Lee set his radio to a classical station, in hopes this would impress our potential landlady.

She lived in a large Spanish style home in a nice area of Glendale. She was short and stocky, and she spoke in a high-pitched voice that stretched words out in odd ways.

"Do yooooou see the waaaaax in the craaaaaaacks?"

"Excuse me?"

She was pointing to the floor.

"Riiiiiiiight theeeere. I can't get rid of the waaaaaaax."

Next thing we knew, she pulled out a mop bucket and some old toothbrushes. Lee and I were down on our knees scrubbing some invisible residue out of the cracks in this lady's floorboards.

Then she started talking about wanting to make a soup.

"I want to make a sooooooooup toniiiiiighht. I neeeeeed to go to the market to get some meeeeeeaaat."

Lee and I nodded up at her. "Okay."

"I did not go to the baaaank todaaaaaay. Do you haaave any mooooooney?"

We dug our thin wallets out and handed over about $10.

"I will be riiiiiiigght back"

Then we watched through a huge picture window as she drove away down the long driveway. The view overlooked a beautifully landscaped yard. There was a fat mourning dove hopping about and pecking at the grass. Suddenly a huge yellow cat pounced out of the bushes and sank its fangs into the poor bird's neck.

Lee and I should've heeded the omen. We wound up renting a terrible apartment from this crazy lady for a few months. It was wedged inconveniently between 2 other crappy apartments and had no refrigerator or stove. We also could never figure out where to take our garbage, so it stacked up in the kitchen.

On one side of us was an older couple. He was always walking around in a dirty t-shirt and naked from the waist down. He yelled at his poor wife constantly and he drove a car with a bumpersticker that read "A little kindness won't kill you."

The other side of us was a woman who worked as a horse trainer at the equestrian center in Burbank. She had a yippy little dog that took a crap right outside Lee's window every morning. She drove a big truck and would rev her engine for what seemed like an eternity.

Lee and I spent our days exploring L.A. and looking for jobs. At night, we would put a bag of ice and and some beers in the kitchen sink. We watched the Dodgers win the world series.

One evening, little crinkly noises started coming from the mountain of trash bags in the kitchen. We could see the bags shifting and moving ever so slightly.

A few months later, Sarah and I got married and moved into a small 1 bedroom apartment in Hollywood. Lee found his own place just south of Sunset.