"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles."*

   So now every damn street in Los Angeles has this painted on it:

On the upside, now I have an easier way of drawing bikers.

   Oh great. As if my loathing of bicyclists couldn’t increase, this damn town found a way to make the problem immeasurably worse.

   I first wish to address my issue with bikers: okay, biking is super fun. Biking instead of driving is a great idea. My whole beef is, why are you acting like you’re in a car and taking up the whole lane, AND YET you’re not bothering to obey any of the traffic signals that the drivers have to obey? For instance, is signaling your turns not considered “cool” anymore? Is running red lights okay? If you get in the left-hand turning lane in front of me, your measly bike will not be enough to prompt the left turn signal for the 8 cars behind you. And unlike you, we can’t run whichever lights we feel like running. The speed limit is 35. You are going about 25. There are 9 thousand cars behind you. Is this really helping with the traffic congestion problem or is it causing it? Again, biking is a great idea in theory. It is good exercise and you aren’t contributing to the smog. But you are still not part of the solution. Los Angeles: letting the bikers take over all the car lanes may not be the answer. I’m just saying. And that is all.

   Now, what I really want to write about is how seeing these new bike lanes, along with the city buses that have “Every lane is a bike lane” printed on them (check out this HILARIOUS photo) remind me that leaving Los Angeles isn’t the saddest thing that’s ever happened to me.

   Allow me to share some other things I won’t miss:

1.  People who stop their cars in the middle of the freeway to check out the accident on the OTHER SIDE of the freeway, thereby causing both sides of the freeway to be congested. Check it out on the news when you get home, you assholes.

2.  Those beautiful springtime wildfires. Living near any kind of plant is a liability in this town. And it helps contribute something extra to the smoggy horizon. Last night, Chad and I went out around sunset and he was admiring the beautiful storm clouds. I had to point out (had to?) that half of those clouds were made of smoke from the current raging bonfire in Camarillo. Nice.

3.  The overwhelming number of actors, musicians, screenwriters, dancers and models. Who does the accounting around here? Who teaches the children? Who picks up the garbage? I can’t see how this city is surviving with everyone out on auditions. But god bless them for keeping the Hollywood dream alive.

4.  Traffic.

5.  Hard bodied women and men who make me feel inferior right after I just lost two pounds and was feeling pretty sexy.

6.  Those helicopters that fly over your neighborhood with their searchlights blazing for hours at a time. I just want to know if they’ve ever actually helped catch anybody. Apparently all the criminals hide out in my apartment. No matter where I live. 

What Satan is doing with taxpayers' money.

   But then there are things that I will miss. Things that make Los Angeles goofy and unique in a way that I don’t know if you can find anywhere else. Things that are so ridiculous, you have to love them just a little bit.

Will miss:

1.  Actors, musicians, screenwriters, dancers and models. They are trying and they are working very hard at a game that isn’t easy or often possible to win. The hope is what gives this city its energy. And sometimes it’s an energy that reeks of desperation, but it’s an exciting energy all the same. I applaud anyone who can stick it out year after year and work his or her tail off at the mere glimmer of success. I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t really want to. I think those people are incredible. They give this city some intangible vibrancy that no other city has. (Am I being cheesy? I don’t care. I’m not sorry.)

2.  Sunshine. Warm weather. 

3. People trying to get into restaurants because they've been told that the restaurant(s) are impossible to get into. People in Los Angeles love being told they can't go somewhere. Then the place becomes super popular right away. Especially the places that have names with no bearing on what goes on inside. (I've always thought that if I ever were to open a restaurant in LA I'd name it "Chair" or "Poo" so people would be confused and then curious and then determined to get in. I'd spend the first few weeks not letting ANYONE inside. I'd be a hit.)

4.  The trifecta of beautiful scenery: ocean, mountains, deserts.

5.  A sea of ethnic and religious diversity. I don’t think I have a single friend here who is my same race and religion. (My coven is currently all Filipinos.)

6.  8 million different kinds of restaurants (see number 5).

7.  The kiddos (can't think about it).

8.  My friends (ditto).

   Boo. Now I’m sad. Cue montage of me with my friends having meaningful moments together while Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You" plays. (I'd watch that, don't know about you.) But change is always a little sad, a little scary, a little awesome. But, as I read in some women’s magazine somewhere sometime, change creates new neural pathways in your brain and leads to happiness. And women’s magazines are always correct about everything. 

   And if I start to feel too sad, I just look at this postcard Bert sent me during college:

And he wrote on it, "Look familiar?"

*The title quote is from Frank Lloyd Wright. And he ought to know. He designed some pretty crazy houses in this city.

"But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant."*

Road Trip Part II           

              This is the story about how  my dear friend Mike and I continued our journey to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. You can find the first part here. And yeah, you're gonna wanna read that.

**************************************************************

             Mike and I scooted in under the wire and moved our In-and-Out fattened butts over to the edge of the Canyon in record time.

            I have to take a moment to explain how awe-inspiringly beautiful The Grand Canyon is. It actually brought out emotions in me that were totally unexpected. It’s like as if the world held all of these sort-of sub-par moments and then you experienced one that was just beyond all of that and you saw something that was so much greater than any painting or book or piece of music and it just left you utterly stunned and moved in a way you never thought possible. 

The Grand Canyon just after sunset.

            It hits you in the solar plexus and bleeds out your eyeballs. 

            Also, the air is a bit nippy at night, so you might start looking like you’re tearing up, even if you’re just having an awesome time and you’re not crying at all. You ARE NOT crying, okay?

Still doesn't capture it.

         

         So we immediately set about taking a gazillion pictures of ourselves from every angle imaginable and ended up looking so cute in one that I almost proposed to Mike right there on the spot. (If you look good in a picture together, what difficultly can the world hold for you, even if you are not at all in love romantically? A story that illustrates this point: I was dating a guy one time and someone took a picture of us kissing and it was so gross, I wanted to break up with him when I saw it. See? You gotta look good in the pictures.)

My lord, aren't we adorable?

            But then we realized a bunch of things needed to happen if we were going to be happy for one more minute: we had to pee, we had to find our digs, and we had to eat.

            So Mike busted out his incredible navigational skills while I popped on my driving glasses (which I keep in the glove compartment and which he kept insisting I should keep over by my door, probably because the glove compartment door kept hitting the knees of his tremendously long legs. But I explained that I don’t drive at night all that often so maybe he could keep his big mouth shut), and we wrangled our way to our lodgings.

            (Bossy Mike had made me the person in charge of lodgings all along the trip, so this was destined to be the first in a series of letdowns for him. But he was a butthead to leave it to me in the first place! I’m poor! And I’m horrible at planning things!)

            We pulled in to the cheapest of all possible venues: The Maswik Lodge, on the south rim of the Canyon. On first glance it looked like the summer camp I attended as a kid, but on second glance it proved to be much awesomer. (Yeah, I said awesomer. Suck it.)

            Maswik Lodge is essentially a lobby with a big cafeteria inside and a bunch of little cabin-style rooms scattered out around the premises. We retrieved our key and headed over to our cabin with mixed expectations.

            I opened the door and turned on the light.

            “Oh my god, Mike! It’s just like a regular room in here!”

            He laughed and followed me in. We settled ourselves and picked beds and took turns in the WC. His turn was running a little long so I stepped onto the porch to call my mom.

            It was an obliterating view. Pitch blackness and smothered in stars.

            After I talked to Mom, Mike met me on the stairs and we got in the car. The woman on the phone at the Bright Angel Lodge said it would be a quick drive, but it was definitely not walk-able, and this was where we planned to eat dinner. We followed her directions and found ourselves taking a series of left-hand turns and ended up in front of the Bright Angel approximately 2 minutes later (with traffic).

            There was no parking and it was one block from our hotel room anyway, so we took the car back and parked again.

            So then we set out on foot, but found it difficult to navigate because it was so utterly dark outside. He lives in San Francisco and I live in Los Angeles, so neither of us had seen stars in some time, let alone experienced darkness so profound as to allow for stars of this abundance.

            Mike, ever resourceful, pulled out his iPhone and used the LED light as a flashlight. He pointed at the sky and said that he could see the Milky Way. I pretended to know what he was talking about.

            Then I made a confession.

            “Mike, I’ve been known to fake constellations before.”

            “What?”

            “I pretend to know what people are pointing to, but the only thing I’ve ever seen is the Little Dipper. Or maybe the Big Dipper. I can’t tell them apart.”

            “Yeah, I can’t really see too many, either. Except Orion’s Belt. And the Seven Sisters.”

            “Oh, where are they?”

            “Um…”

            Mike craned his neck up at the sky.

            “Yeah, I don’t really know,” he finally acquiesced. “Do you think I can take a picture of these stars?”

            He tried. It didn’t work. We walked on. It was black. (It occurred to me later that mountain lions or bears or even aliens could be standing three feet away from the pitiful light from his phone and we would be none the wiser.)

            As we approached the Bright Angel Lodge (which is settled right on the rim of the Canyon, on the south side), Mike pointed up at the sky.

            “There’s Venus!” 

            “I thought Venus was the morning star?”

            “Nope, Venus is the evening star and that’s it. Right there.”

            (Okay, I did a little research and in a way we were both right: Venus is known both as the morning star and the evening star.)

            “Okay.” I lied and pretended to believe him because I was hungry.

            We sauntered into the Bright Angel.

            It wasn’t that much fancier than the Maswik Lodge, but it smelled like tourists and old people. And the Bright Angel turned out to be named after a scary, Native-American themed bird sculpture hanging over a large fireplace. And it was neither bright nor angelic, but sort of...hmmm, hideous?

            So we rerouted and put our names in for a forty minute wait at the more unassuming restaurant in the lodge. We then wandered down the hall and found ourselves in a quaint little bar with a man playing endless covers of Van Morrison songs (with a huge tip jar in front of him) and ordered some strong, fortifying cocktails.

            There was nowhere to sit, but a nice couple offered to share their table with us. Our butts were too sore from sitting all day so we passed, and stood there in the middle of the bar sucking back our cocktails.

            Ugh…this is long, so I’m stopping.

            More later…
*More from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

"Get out of my dreams and into my car."*

                        Do all of my blog posts have to have a specific topic or can they just be my insightful musings on life? For instance, last night I woke myself up from a dream laughing. How great is that? I wish to god I remember what the hell I was finding so funny so I could write it for you here. Although stuff that’s funny in dreams is often super un-funny in life. And speaking about that, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people insist on relating their dreams to me in explicit detail. News flash: your dreams are not entertaining to me unless I was somehow prominently featured. Or if the dream was really sexual and about someone I know (preferably me). Haha, just kidding.(But seriously, don't tell me your dreams.)

            What I really want to address is road rage. (Perhaps a non sequitur.)

            In the past, I’ve been known to be a person with a heinous case of road rage, and I can accept that. Los Angeles is a brutal city to drive in, and there are any number of different reasons to be pissed off on a daily basis. (Of course, to be fair to my detractors, I was also known to have road rage in my early driving days in Omaha. At least that's what my friends told me.)

            But one of main things that irritates me, for example, is when people cut me off as though they’re in a huge rush and then proceed to go 15 miles under the speed limit. I was okay with you cutting me off, I figured you had to pee. But this is clearly not the case now, jerk-off.

Los Angeles Traffic of Yore.

            Or when I try to pass someone (usually a man—no offense to guys in general, it’s just a trend I’ve noticed), and suddenly he feels the need to speed up because in some twisted scenario in his mind it’s emasculating to have someone (especially a woman) pass you. Even if you drive a Volvo station wagon and insist on going 10 miles below the stated speed limit every moment of your life, the second someone tries to pass you you’re in a game of chicken to the death, and society’s perception of your penis size is at stake! (Again, no offense to all men, and no offense to Volvo drivers, either.) Go slow if you want to, I just would rather not, if I can avoid it. Can I get by now? 

            These kinds of situations leave me screaming at the top of my lungs and pounding on the steering wheel, usually. And this, I am thoughtful enough to note, may be the reason my friends said I had "road rage" as early as high school. But you have to draw the line somewhere. Like, when I flip other drivers off, I usually do it so low that they couldn’t possibly see. I mean, who wants to get shot, right? This sets me apart from the other psychos on the road.

            But lately, I don’t seem to be the one with all the rage.
            Gasp! Am I mature now? Aw, fuck no! I'm just more observant. And tired. And I don't really drive anywhere during key traffic times (e.g. rush hour or "Saturday night"). I just don't have enough of a life to get mad. But no, I'm definitely not "mature." I am something of an "old fart" when it comes to driving (only in the middle of the day and only with my headlights and glasses on) but definitely, certainly not "mature."

            Anywho, I’ve witnessed several things happen in the last two weeks that make me feel like society has gone insane.

Los Angeles Traffic of Now.

            I’ve seen people stop their cars in the middle of the road to get out and yell at other drivers; people (usually women on this one) so engaged in cell phone conversations (which are ILLEGAL, by the way) that they stop their cars in the middle of the road because THEY’VE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT THEY’RE DRIVING. I’ve seen big SUVs nearly run cars off the road so they can proceed to speed past. I saw a woman park her car at a fire hydrant and then make every driver in the street stop so she could jay-walk her kid across the street to school and then she got mad when the drivers were annoyed.

            What’s happening, people? Is it the End of Days? Or was it always like this and I’m suddenly morphing into one of those Zen-like hippies who is so serene that I can see other crazies for who they are?

Ah, Omaha. Why was I ever angry driving in you?

            I wish I had a clever way of tying this into my little paragraph about my funny dream, but I don’t. I think, if I’m being super positive, that perhaps my dreams being so happy that I laugh myself out of them is a sign that I am becoming more peaceful in my subconscious life, if not so much in my waking life.

            Yeah, okay, let’s go with that. 

*How great is it that Billy Ocean has one song about dreams AND cars? Perfection.