sundries

[rm]

- I am in fucking awe of how expensive my flight to LA is going to be. AWE, I tell you.

Whenever I have to fly to LA, I get funny about it. Even having grown up in the myth of New York, I am seduced by the myth of LA, even though I hate it.

I worry about looking cute (cute? cute!) for the flight.

I worry about having the right luggage (in fact, one of the greatest fantasies of my life revolved around the cute (again with the cute!) luggage I insisted on buying for my Australia trip, just in case I ran into anyone who was anyone in the Sydney airport).

I worry about whether there should be a legal limit to the number of issues of Variety allowed on a single jet.

LA seduces me with the narrative of outsiders who get lucky, although I've never been _that_ type of outsider. I hate LA, but I love the idea of it, I guess. And maybe this will help me on my little chick-lit project. The LA _feeling_ is a bit central to the internal narratives of it. I know, I know, chick-lit isn't supposed to have internal narratives (or, you know, actual people with actual souls), but I really love this idea. There's a symmetry to it. A real goodness in the idea that I can make a ridiculous story out of every little half-assed bullshit 30 second heartbreak I stumble across.

See? LA fucks my shit up. Los Angeles loves love.

- I am really, really going to try to catch up with email today. We'll see.

- I am also really, really going to try to leave work early today so I can go try to find a new winter coat (first frost tonight!) and do some house cleaning while Patty drinks with the pick-axe wielding set.

- I had a stupid hypochondriac freakout the other night. Patty was sane. I remain embarrassed. Good thing she likes me.

- Am nervously awaiting verdict on a bit of workplace work.

- Craaaaaaazy weekend, full of work. But I do get to sleep in tomorrow. And that's not just something, but might be close to everything.

Comments

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Well –

Like New York, Los Angeles has a soul but she’s cannibalistic. And seductive; she especially appeals to those who don’t yet live there. You can ask people who are starving to death on the streets why they stay and they’ll claim they’re ‘not ready to leave yet, they have things to do’. And that soul’s been struggling to survive all the ‘revitalization’ going down – I wonder if, after the Irvington earthquake it still exists. It’s pretty sad, to me, because the thing that makes Los Angeles what it is, this peculiar contrast between dark and light, a place where the messy edges meet the pre-digested pap of the entertainment world, is exactly what the movers and shakers are trying to get rid of.

I lived in LA for ten or so years, just off Hollywood Blvd near La Brea. That little corner seemed to be the last truly mixed income/resident area in the classic areas of the city. I lived in the apartment complex where the Blue Dahlia used to live, just across the street from the Peach Tree of Immortality. For a while, the street had a feral rooster. It also had the hot-and-cold running drugs bar down the street; I came home one night to see a pool of blood the size of a small car and (insert semi-famous newscaster’s name here) all enthusiastic about the quadruple homicide. Not the first time I saw pools of blood randomly in Los Angeles. The first time was a week after we’d moved to LA, in the Laundromat we were using.

There was also a classic old newsstand/magazine stand on LaBrea and Hollywood there, with a surprisingly good selection of science fiction. And porn.

When the riots happened, we stood on our rooftop and watched the city burn, trying to gage whether or not it was worth attempting to leave. The guard stood on the streets below, with their machine guns, trying to decide the same thing, I guess. During the riots the nearby Scientology Museum needed protection so the Scientolists came out in force, dressed up in their uniforms – they looked like airline stewards gone bad; blue polyester and stiff peaked hats with their little walkie-talkies in hand. There were no firemen to be seen though, despite the blazes – they were over extended and our neighborhood was poor.

After the riots, though, and the earthquake so much was destroyed of the old Los Angeles and replaced by souvenir T-shirt vendors. Brown’s Ice Cream is gone, so’s the Brown Derby, the Egyptian theatre became unstable after the earthquake and I have no idea if it was ever repaired. The Chinese Theatre is being forced to compete (and losing) to a 10 plex made of aluminum, glass and overprice chain stores. I believe there are still living places in Los Angeles but I have no idea where they are, anymore.