One of the things I do in other parts of the country is look at strangers in public places and want them to embody the place so I'll really know I'm in wherever. In Texas it's fine--you actually do see lots of cowboy hats and hear lots of accents. In LA I want them to somehow evince LA but I have no idea what that looks like.
I'm two days behind.
Got in my trip to Santa Monica to dip a toe in the ocean. Really a purely punctuational trip, was there at most 15 minutes because then I had to meet J in Silverlake for lunch, and that's quite across town.
It's good to see the neighborhoods you've heard of! Next time they are mentioned somewhere, you will know how to picture them.
Evening was L's book party in Laurel Canyon at the home of an actress enjoying a certain notoriety. Well ok, she's on a popular tv show but it sounds fun the other way. This involved most of the people I know in LA, an interesting drive up along winding roads, a car parking service staffed by young ladies called Valet of the Dolls, a bunch of very good gluten free food (L's wife, who I toted around in a chair in a hora after their wedding, is not friends with gluten), a long conversation with a standup comic...and I think it was a happy-making celebration for L.
Called the rental place for another day on the car, which worked out very well, as the next day I was awkwardly between people for a while and drove up to Griffith Park, where I climbed the surprisingly steep path to the observatory, and then drove into Los Feliz to go to Umami Burger, parking right across from the Scientology mother ship.
Umami was a universal recommendation and with good reason. The onion rings were like some kind of donuts. Unbelievably good.
The drive across town on Sunset took forever and I didn't once see a driveway I might swerve into and attend a monkey funeral in the home of a faded star.
Dinner with the crowd of people I know through D and like a lot, in Hollywood, which turns out to be pretty bleak. Everyone wanted to know where we will be next year, and doing what, as do I.
L and R live in West Hollywood which is not at all bleak. We watched an episode of survivor and called it a night. I don't think I'm quite on Western time which is to say I'm keeping normal human hours here.
I have begun to long for my bed and my apartment. My town, a little less. Having so largely tied off loose ends at work, there is a dreamy quality of having moved away and being fully adrift.
No comments:
Post a Comment