Photo Synthesis

Nate, Dizz’s hirsute host, snaps his gum and, legs crossed, waggles his Vans sneakers as he runs a finger down the list of people waiting for a table. “About an hour,” he says in reply to our inquiry as to how long the wait is.

“Barely enough time for a drink,” Lonnie says. Nate smiles, snaps his gum, adds our name to his long list.

I don’t know what it is about Dizz’s As Is but it’s always busy. Always. Despite its mismatched plates, its faux-brothel decor and its unintentionally retro menu. Or maybe it’s always busy because of those things. Who knows?

Dizz’s is the anti-Spago of Laguna Beach, the epitome of kitsch-as-art eateries in Orange County. The walls are pink, the lights are red and there’s an abundance of Palm Beach-inspired prints of white parrots, sedate flamingos and vamping Marilyns.

It’s the perfect place to have dinner with Lonnie, an accomplished photographer who isn’t working at the moment because he’s bored. Or uninspired. Or maybe both. If anyone appreciates kitsch, it’s Lonnie. Not that he endorses it. Quite the contrary. It’s the opposite of who he is, so it fascinates him the way doughnuts probably fascinate Courteney Cox Arquette. You should see the house he and his wife live in. It sits on the side of a hill in the shadowy canyons of Laguna and resembles an art museum. Cool blue glass for walls, landscaping to rival the new Getty and LCD screens in the bathroom playing the Weather Channel. Lonnie and Melanie are so hip they make Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman look frumpy.

Lonnie, who creates astonishing images with equipment that costs more than my car, pulls out a little disposal camera from his coat pocket and asks a young man in a silk shirt sitting at the bar to take our picture. The flash won’t go off. Lonnie grabs the camera, plays with it, hands it back to the young man, whose companion, an older man with a white goatee, grabs it from him. Still no flash. “Damn things,” he says, pounding the camera on the bar as if it were a shoe with a floppy sole. “Don’t worry, I’m a professional photographer,” Lonnie tells the startled man. He hands it back to him. “Try and get the mural in the background,” he tells him. “That’s the best part.”

The bar mural is . . . well, let me just describe it instead of trying to explain it. It is a faded brown interpretation of Africa, I think. Though not the real Africa. The Hollywood Africa of Tarzan and “The African Queen.” From the ‘40s and ‘50s. There is a nubile young woman wearing very little clothing, smiling as she carries a large platter of tropical fruit on her head in front of grinning, appreciative natives. It is so politically incorrect that it takes your breath away.

For some reason, the mural reminds Lonnie of a story. While we snack on a little pate du maison and sip a Jordan cab, Lonnie tells me how he took his 18-year-old son, Daniel, and some of his friends to Paris for New Year’s. “We go to this very expensive restaurant on the Champs-Elysees,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder, something he always does when telling stories, “and the boys are having a great time, I’m having a great time, and then suddenly the clock strikes midnight and all the waitresses take their tops off and start dancing.”

His eyes get large, his eyebrows arch. He leans forward a little and in sotto voce says, “Dave, I didn’t know what to do. Should we leave? Should we stay? I mean, I was in charge of these boys and I didn’t want them going home and telling their parents I’d taken them to a strip show in Paris, you know what I mean?”

There is a pause as he shakes his head and pours more wine.

The young man at the bar, who was listening in on this story, as Lonnie well knew, laughs and flashes him a smile. “Only in Paris,” he says.

Nate, still snapping his gum, comes for us and leads us down the long pink room that is like a model’s runway with tables on either side from which diners look up from their meals and evaluate the newcomers. Nate gives us a bunch of plastic-covered pages--the menu--telling us to share. There are appetizers and wines on one page, pastas on another and a third and fourth page of dishes that sound as if they were picked from menus in Better Homes and Gardens circa 1965: steak Diane, Cornish game hen with rice, duck a l’orange, veal piccata. “I feel like a steak tonight,” Lonnie says. Then he takes out his disposable camera and snaps a picture of me looking at part of the menu, with a print of a youthful Elizabeth Taylor on the pink walls behind me.

We order. I go for the osso bucco and Lonnie has the steak Diane. I ask him again about his work, but he waves me off. He doesn’t want to talk about it. “I don’t know what it is,” he says. “I just don’t feel like returning client’s phone calls, Dave, know what I mean?” He takes out the disposable camera, holds it at arm’s length and snaps a pic of the two of us. The photographic smile remains on his face.

“Why don’t you come to Berlin with me?” I ask him. Earlier in the evening, when Lonnie had asked me what I was up to, I told him I had an assignment to write about the Love Parade in Berlin, a street party for about a million ravers who dress in costumes and follow beat-up Volkswagen vans decorated with colored paper, palm trees and huge black speakers down the Ku’damn as European DJs pump out hypnotic techno music. The nonstop dance party lasts for two days.

Lonnie’s eyes light up. “Really, Dave,” he says, shaking his head. “I would love to do that.”

“Just go,” I say.

“I’m there.”

“We’ll just wander around Berlin.”

“Absolutely.”

“It will be great.”

“And maybe we won’t come home,” Lonnie says, pushing his plate away. “Maybe I’ll just stay over there. In Berlin.” He looks vacantly past me, nodding to himself.

“Are you serious?” I ask him.

He turns toward me and smiles. “Why not?” He picks up the disposable camera. “One shot left,” he says. He looks around the restaurant, looks at me, then shrugs and puts the camera away. On the way out of the restaurant, Lonnie is suddenly inspired. He tells me to stand by the African mural, then he gives the disposable camera to the bartender and runs over to join me. He positions the two of us so that it looks like the nubile woman in the mural is grinning at us as she carries the plate of fruit on her head.

Lonnie puts an arm around my shoulders. The flash is so bright that I stand there blinded. Lonnie steadies himself for a long time with his arm around me, his photographic smile frozen on his face. Neither of us moves. Even when we can see again.

Dinner only, 6-9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 6-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 5:30-9:30 p.m. Sunday.

David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.