An overcast sky, wet ground. I am walking along the western trail in Elysian Park, thinking about Richard Nixon and a fictional character of my own devising named Doctor Colby. Rosie the dog, who has not yet injured her thigh (as she will do soon) conducts an investigation of smells at the base of a tree, constructing images in her mind, no doubt of a canine who left these scents for her to find. Along comes actor/writer Roger Guinvere Smith, who tells me he is in his head, thinking about Frederick Douglass, rehearsing as he walks a performance he will do in Reston and Roanoke Virginia at the end of the week. In the distance, the sound of gunfire at the Los Angeles Police Academy firing range. A woman I recognize from the path comes by. She always carries her elderly and very small black and white dog. Today the dog has a crisp lipstick kiss on the white spot on his forehead. Rosie, my dog, and I arrive at the horses' pen. Frankie, Valentino and Sera eat green hay for breakfast. Rosie no longer barks at them as she used to do, but their smells excite her and she starts running. She jumps off a two-foot embankment back onto the park trail, and it’s there she injures her leg. So then I am on the path, which suddenly has no other people or dogs on it, carrying a 45-pound dog, thinking about the quarter mile back to my house, which is out of the question. We stop at a friend’s house on Park Drive. I leave Rosie at their house and return to my own for my car. The injury does not appear to be serious. Hopefully it will be one we all forget about quickly.

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More billboard: I heard from a reader named Anthony, who wrote:

The American Apparel billboards are certainly meant to be provocative. Getting people talking is what marketing is all about. I find American Apparel marketing rather distasteful in general but the bigger issue here is the Anaheim Angels logo displayed on a huge billboard near the corner of Sunset and Elysian, the entrance to Dodger Stadium! Now there's a billboard worthy of outrage.

Yes, I would say that Angels billboard is meant to be provocative, too.

CORRECTIONS: No change in American Apparel billboards. AND, I was uncertain whether Dakota Smith was a woman or man. It turns out she is a she.