Oh (he says to a seismically hypersensitive friend), you work in Culver City…. That explains how you felt an earthquake (technically a microquake) that measured 2.8 on the Richter scale.  I try to notice nothing below 4.0, but then I am jaded. But Culver City is built on the Los Angeles River floodplain. In fact, the Ballona Creek that trickles unnoticed though the neighborhood was an alternate channel for the L.A. river in its carefree, unchanneled days. And the soil there must be many feet deep, sediments that go who knows how far back, and are more sandy than clay, given the source (the Santa Monica Mountains). What this means for your nerves is that sandy alluvial soils are prone to liquefaction, and amplify the slightest of earthquakes, so that something beneath of dignity of an Angeleno sitting on bedrock, as in my neighborhood, is noticed by highly sensitive types in Culver City. Were it a more manly earthquake, something, say, in the vicinity of an 8 plus, the earth beneath you would be as water and you’d never be heard from again, and Amoeba could at last have what remains of your record collection.

Here’s a link to a convenient map of the Culver City liquifaction zones. They’re in teal. This map is available on Culver City’s official website, though I doubt they tell anyone, since there’s more teal than is tasteful. Teal is best in small quantities. It’s a pungent off-blue and a little goes a long way, like a rank cheese. Also it makes Culver City look so screwed. Like beyond screwed. Like doomed. Which it’s not, really. It’s that damn teal. Pastels would have been much better.

Incidentally, Culver City is the Heart of Screenland.