Until The Sun Comes Up Over Santa Monica Boulevard
I went down to Santa Monica yesterday to enjoy the time I had off for Labor Day. I stopped at a Borders on the way in and was standing in line to buy some things when I heard the sales lady answer the phone, "Hello, this is Borders Hollywood." I don't think I've ever felt so glam in my life. It's not like I'm a really glam guy, though. Anyway, I also stopped at a gigantic used music store that made me feel like what Blink-182 feels like whenever they walk into their local used book store (i.e. in over my head). For some reason, everyone there seemed to have this distinct body odor about them; maybe it is music aficionados way of signaling to other music aficionados that they have too much important and good music to listen to to be scrubbing all the smaller parts of the body or clipping nose hairs. I did not find any music that I wanted to buy; in fact, the artists that I did recognize - Blink, Nick the-guy-who-was-married-to-Jessica-Simpson, Limp Bizkit - seemed only capable of increasing the intellectual, perhaps even moral, distance between me and the haughty punker behind the counter (my superiority in trimmed nails would only carry me so far, I could tell).
Santa Monica is a wonderful little place. It had the family attractions of the Jersey shore without the nose-wrinkling sensation of always being just slightly downhill of New York City (on a global scale). Maybe it's just from growing up on the East Coast, but the Pacific Ocean has always seemed to me to be the cleaner of our two oceans. The Atlantic has Europeans on the other side, slobby folks who've been polluting the water almost as enthusiastically as we have and for far longer, whereas the Pacific - aside from being much larger and deeper - has people like the Japanese on the other side. Even if they did pollute (which I have never seen any evidence of), I'm sure they'd come up with a cozy little robotic dolphin that would leap through the waters and gobble it all up. The phrase "shiteating grin" suddenly has a new meaning... To the point - Santa Monica is very pretty. Even the bums are remarkably well-spoken. A bedraggled guy sitting in his bags near the bagelry this morning said, "Hey man, how you doin?" I said, "Good, you?" He said, "Just fine, enjoying the weather. Real nice this time of morning." I actually offered him some change. For a second, I had a start - maybe he was just a particularly hairy grandfather waiting for his kids to get some donuts - but then he produced his mangled styrofoam cup and allowed me to drop a few quarters in.
Even the cops in Santa Monica look like cops. The one strolling the promenade had the square build, finely-cut jaw, and long but trimmed sideburns of a movie policeman. His whole uniform was spotless, and he looked like he had just finished shining his badge. Maybe he was an actor, pretending to be a cop for the night so he could get himself into the role. That's the wonderful thing about California - everyone is pretending, but everyone knows everyone is pretending, so its ok. And if you're not sure whether they're pretending or not, it never hurts to guess that they are. People like to be mistaken for actors or actresses.
I met a girl at the bar whose name was Hester. I was working up some great question that would incorporate what little memory I have left of the Scarlet Letter, but then I found out she was as dumb as a lump of rocks, so I just went back to Sportscenter.
I woke up this morning with no glasses. I had thrown out my contacts from the night before, and when I called back to the house, one of my roommates told me he saw my glasses lying on the bathroom counter. So I was three hours away from home, as blind as could be, with nobody around to help me out. I went to the local drug store and bought a pair of their cheap reading glasses, but all they did was magnify the world's blurriness. I wound up driving all the way home without seeing much of anything aside from large rectangular blocks of color. It took me three tries to get on the right highway (there are a lot out here). I went in to a couple of gas stations, and the guy would tell me, "Yeah, it's just down the block, turn right, then you'll see it right there." Unfortunately, I never would see it. The more I heard it, the funnier it got. When the last guy said, "It's right across the street - see?" I just cracked up. Mostly I drove by the memory of experience. I also stayed really close to the car in front of me. That way, I wouldn't hit anybody walking across the street, I wouldn't veer out of my own lane, and I wouldn't run any red lights (they were a huge problem). If a car turned away from my chosen path, I pulled over and sat on the side of the road until another came along. Then I'd take off, like a sleuthing detective on the trail, and do my best to keep the new lead within my limited vision. It pretty much sucked, and I almost got totalled (not because of the blindness, but because these damn California drivers seem to take it as a personal affront that you are trying to merge from an on-ramp into their lane. Not on this highway, no sir! They seem to be yelling.), but I got home alright. The moral of the Santa Monica story is that it is very important for me to have eye surgery within the next year. Unless Iraqi drivers happen to be more considerate than Californians.
Santa Monica is a wonderful little place. It had the family attractions of the Jersey shore without the nose-wrinkling sensation of always being just slightly downhill of New York City (on a global scale). Maybe it's just from growing up on the East Coast, but the Pacific Ocean has always seemed to me to be the cleaner of our two oceans. The Atlantic has Europeans on the other side, slobby folks who've been polluting the water almost as enthusiastically as we have and for far longer, whereas the Pacific - aside from being much larger and deeper - has people like the Japanese on the other side. Even if they did pollute (which I have never seen any evidence of), I'm sure they'd come up with a cozy little robotic dolphin that would leap through the waters and gobble it all up. The phrase "shiteating grin" suddenly has a new meaning... To the point - Santa Monica is very pretty. Even the bums are remarkably well-spoken. A bedraggled guy sitting in his bags near the bagelry this morning said, "Hey man, how you doin?" I said, "Good, you?" He said, "Just fine, enjoying the weather. Real nice this time of morning." I actually offered him some change. For a second, I had a start - maybe he was just a particularly hairy grandfather waiting for his kids to get some donuts - but then he produced his mangled styrofoam cup and allowed me to drop a few quarters in.
Even the cops in Santa Monica look like cops. The one strolling the promenade had the square build, finely-cut jaw, and long but trimmed sideburns of a movie policeman. His whole uniform was spotless, and he looked like he had just finished shining his badge. Maybe he was an actor, pretending to be a cop for the night so he could get himself into the role. That's the wonderful thing about California - everyone is pretending, but everyone knows everyone is pretending, so its ok. And if you're not sure whether they're pretending or not, it never hurts to guess that they are. People like to be mistaken for actors or actresses.
I met a girl at the bar whose name was Hester. I was working up some great question that would incorporate what little memory I have left of the Scarlet Letter, but then I found out she was as dumb as a lump of rocks, so I just went back to Sportscenter.
I woke up this morning with no glasses. I had thrown out my contacts from the night before, and when I called back to the house, one of my roommates told me he saw my glasses lying on the bathroom counter. So I was three hours away from home, as blind as could be, with nobody around to help me out. I went to the local drug store and bought a pair of their cheap reading glasses, but all they did was magnify the world's blurriness. I wound up driving all the way home without seeing much of anything aside from large rectangular blocks of color. It took me three tries to get on the right highway (there are a lot out here). I went in to a couple of gas stations, and the guy would tell me, "Yeah, it's just down the block, turn right, then you'll see it right there." Unfortunately, I never would see it. The more I heard it, the funnier it got. When the last guy said, "It's right across the street - see?" I just cracked up. Mostly I drove by the memory of experience. I also stayed really close to the car in front of me. That way, I wouldn't hit anybody walking across the street, I wouldn't veer out of my own lane, and I wouldn't run any red lights (they were a huge problem). If a car turned away from my chosen path, I pulled over and sat on the side of the road until another came along. Then I'd take off, like a sleuthing detective on the trail, and do my best to keep the new lead within my limited vision. It pretty much sucked, and I almost got totalled (not because of the blindness, but because these damn California drivers seem to take it as a personal affront that you are trying to merge from an on-ramp into their lane. Not on this highway, no sir! They seem to be yelling.), but I got home alright. The moral of the Santa Monica story is that it is very important for me to have eye surgery within the next year. Unless Iraqi drivers happen to be more considerate than Californians.