If it’s a new week, that must mean there’s a new job. The other one didn’t work out… MY choice. The new one... I’ll let you know.

If there’s a brush fire, it must be Fall.

The Angeles Crest National forest is still burning as I type. The last report had containment listed as only 10%. The local newscasts have the graphics for “Fire Watch ‘02” and they’ll repeat the same information over and over, show the same footage of the fire over and over.

Driving home on Monday night, I didn’t realize just how severe the fire actually was. Come September we get brush fires aplenty so it’s easy to kind of ignore them. Heck, it’s not uncommon to see the LAFD putting one out on the side of the freeway during rush hour. The ash will dust itself off of your car if you can get up to 65; who knows from smoke when there’s either smog or a marine layer anyway. But it’s completely different when your own eyes can see a hillside burning at night – from nearly 40 miles away. It had a surreal appearance -- a giant black charcoal briquette glowing red.

During the following day, it was a completely different look. Two huge columns of smoke pluming into the aqua sky. It was as if Jack had planted cauliflower instead, or the Giant had dropped huge kernels of perfectly popped corn. At hillside level, the smoke was dirty, with pale rusty areas showing in between. The columns merged at their bases, obscuring the entire Eastern portion of the mountain range.

This time the view was a little closer, maybe 30 miles South.

It’s sad to think of how awful the forest will look after the fire’s been doused. It looked awful-enough last year, pre-disaster, when I visited Wrightwood and looked down over the adjoining area. I had a certain ex-Watcher envision it in “Force of Habit: Dismantling”: Wesley searched the vista, identifying with the forest. Some deformed by fire, most barely earthed by their roots, even the scruffiest of conifers had declared an intent to survive by remaining upright.

The forest will be scarred; it’ll be bald until the ground cover is replenished. Next Spring, it will still show the signs of having been ravaged. Eventually the hillsides will renew themselves. This is Southern California, land of the Santa Ana winds, tinder land. The forest will never be the same, regrowth will definitely *not* be better. But, even under siege, it’s still alive; and, like Bel Air and Malibu and Big Bear before it, the legend of the Williams Fire will also endure.

I was cropping photos tonight. I finally got a disposable camera to Target for developing. It’s always fun to find out what’s on one, which memories got captured after all.

I smiled. There were pics from a Spring visit to the Los Angeles Museum of Art to view their exhibition of fashion from the past decade. LACMA is a weird museum. I’ve seen some excellent fashion exhibits there – a historical movie retrospective, Galanos, Adrian – and I figured that an exhibition chronicling an entire decade should have been superb.

Alas, it was very far from that superlative.

I believe I heard a recent commerce report dictate that Los Angeles had surpassed New York City in the number of garments produced in one year. Given that acclaim, and given the fact that LACMA is a *major* museum in a *major* city, one would think that they’d have access to any freakin’ garments that they’d want to borrow from around the world. I know there’s an original Schiaparelli tromp de oleil sweater in Paris; I saw it there, including a Dali telephone purse. I know that Dior’s ‘Bar’ suit is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in downtown Los Angeles has an excellent collection all their own dating much farther back than just the turn of the century.

And, to top it all off, there are MOVIE STARS who have closets full of designer clothing that they’ve either bought to wear as vintage or that they’re collecting. An Yves St. Laurent ‘Mondrian" dress for the 60’s or his ‘Le Smoking’ suit for the 70’s should have been on a LACMA mannequin. I’m sure someone in Los Angeles had one to lend. LACMA should be ashamed of displaying his most non-descript ostrich feather-trimmed dress they had on hand.

The entire 1900th century was the first one to be photographed in it’s entirety and, because of that, there are not only records of the word’s activities, there are visuals of what was being worn while history was being made. Flapper dresses epitomized the 20’s as much as Halston Ultra Suede pantsuits epitomized the 70’s. Famous people were celebrated for what they wore – King Edward and Wallace Simpson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edie Sedgewick. And every ordinary person has probably had a horror-filled Kodak moment of leafing through a family photo album and cringing at what they once wore.

Were white platforms ever *really* in style?

I’ll file away my photos, if not today then at some point in the future. Years from now, I’ll look at them again, I"ll share them with family and friends. They’ll look as dated as Season 1 Buffy episodes not just because of how I’ve aged, but because of the clothing but I won’t be ashamed. Nope, not in the least. Because I know that I was just making an historical record.