When Prison Break clashes with the Los Angeles DWP.

Prison Break had a very intense episode this week.  The title,”Greatness Achieved” apparently refers to my favorite character, Brad Bellick. Formerly a very scary, mean prison guard in Fox River, who delighted in throwing together newbies and hardcore homos, some viewers hated him because he MAY have killed a cat belonging to one of the inmates. I am pretty sure that was never proved.

Wade Williams as Capt. Brad Bellick. RIP. Photo from Wentworth Miller Fansite.

But because the super writers of Prison Break knew what a gem they had in the actor, Wade Williams, they found ways to keep him around in all the next seasons! Bellick was fired from the prison after the boys escaped, and he became a freelance bounty hunter chasing them. His team up with Geary was brilliant, and so funny! Then he got thrown in the Panama prison, Sona, along with everyone else. When we saw him there at the end of Season 3, he was on the floor, beat up and filthy, with only a diaper as clothing. Obviously he had been raped. The boss of them to the lowest of them. That’s drama!

We knew from earlier episodes that he lived with his Mom (at 40!) and had some kind of drug problem at one time. (Posters at TWOP thought it was so funny that this butch, mean prison guard lived with his Ma – great writing! Then the moderator on the forum stepped in to say that in her family it was ok to live with your parents, so stop making fun of him! At 40? Really? Hello, it’s called Television without Pity, ding-dong.)   He didn’t have much of a life except for his job. But he was street smart and in Sona, after being so humilated, he learned humility – and that he didn’t ever want to be with criminals again, or be like them. He gained morals we didn’t think he had.

Prison Break is a very fast-moving action packed show, with great characterization. You really get a lot for your money. But they killed Bellick this week, so I’m crossing it off my favorite list. He wasn’t the best looking, nor the most macho, but he was the only person on the show who hadn’t yet killed anyone. And because he showed fear, he allowed all the other guys not to. I think he was essential to keep the show grounded.

But that’s not why I’m writing this, nor will I go into how Mahone tortured Wyatt so badly, it’s guaranteed he’ll die this season, too! No redemption for him. Here’s what I wanted to share today: The plan was for the guys to get into the DWP water system, move huge pipes, and divert millions of gallons of water and water pressure. Oh, okay. And part of the plan was to dig into the ground with jackhammers and some kind of blasting pipe cutter. But they had to stop after just a few minutes. Why? Because it was GRANITE. And Michael said it was impossible to dig through. And Michael knows.

And that’s what we have to run on, in Silver Lake! I wrote before that our walkway/running track around Silver Lake is solid granite. So very healthy for knees and backs and feet </sarcasm>.

And they are just now finishing the rest of the walkway on the east side. I met a couple of people at a Halloween party who also run at Silver Lake, and they asked, But will the pathway on the other side be rock, too? Oh, yes! When I had my private tour inside Silver Lake, I saw the Bureau of Engineering grading the earth for the dg to be added. (This is just part of Silver Lake’s plan to  tear down trees, kick out animals and birds, and strip our former sliver of nature into a “park”, called “The Meadow. “)

Even though this is Councilman Garcetti’s area, Councilman Tom LaBonge seems to be overseeing it! Internecine warfare, or secret handshakes?! I wrote to Councilman LaBonge’s office with my concerns after seeing the “Meadow” plan of damage. (Several people in the Bureau of Engineering told me they get all plans and instructions directly from the evil Council.) I included links to my extensive research into how bad dg (decomposed granite) is to run or walk on. And links that explain how decomposed granite turns into solid rock, which is equal to, or worse than, concrete for your joints and bones.

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I live about a mile from the lake. Usually the water’s as flat as a bathtub, but for a short time every year the sun hits it the right way, with a bit of a breeze, and it looks like sharp glass.

Their reply? A cut and paste Google definition of decomposed granite!  Not an explanation of why LaBonge approved putting it there, not an engineer’s report, no planning study, no promise to look into it, or consider alternatives, nada. Well, the B of E itself didn’t know what dg was for at least a month – they had to look it up, too, when I kept asking.  Jullian’s Googleness came up with this, too:

 More over, it’s cheap, only a fraction of what hardscape materials cost, and it lasts forever.

That’s the ticket! But Councilman LaBonge, guess what’s even cheaper?: dirt! It’s dirt cheap! We would love to walk and run on dirt. It can’t be any dustier than the dg, which gets inside my shoes every time, and which I have to shake out after every walk. And it would drain better. The walkway floods during every rain, sometimes closing down half of Silver Lake Blvd with it.

But that’s it for now, gotta run. On the hardest surface around – the Silver Lake granite walkway.  Ooh, that hurts.