The Absurd, The Ironic, The City of Angels

I so want to complain about L.A. in this post. But I won't. Not much anyway. I've been putting off sitting down to write it because I knew I would feel like this, and I don't even want to sit and listen to it myself, much less make others read it. It's just......it's October! It's colorful foliage and pumpkin season, it's my favorite time of year in New England, when everything smells frosty and smoky and the light is so bittersweet, golden and beautiful. My Dad is harvesting his grapes in VT this week and starting this year's wine. It was 114 degrees downtown last week with air quality warnings. I would just rather be there. Ok I'm done now.

Whenever I have trouble appreciating life in Los Angeles, I look for evidence of the absurd, because I love absurdity, and I find that L.A. rarely disappoints on this subject. I love a flyer that we got in the mail the other day for a local realtor, touting her capability, 20 years of experience and solid knowledge of the market alongside her photo, in which she appeared with windblown hair, sultry half closed eyes and parted lips covered in wet-looking red lipstick. She looks experienced and competent maybe, but real estate is not what she's really bringing to mind. I guess it doesn't matter, she got our attention, and that was the point. Sex sells just about anything, so why not real estate?

Another funny thing about L.A., in not such a good way, has to do with the fact that everyone is so friendly and laid back. Or at least they act like that in person. I'm always like a confused beat behind in delivery of these over enthusiastic greetings that seem to be expected when seeing other parents from Brick's school or friends of friends that I have met just once or twice before. Anyway, there's the facade, or perhaps the reality of extreme friendliness face to face, but it all disappears as soon as people are safely locked away in their automobiles. Then, most interaction turns to greed, incredible impatience and barely controlled rage. No right of way for bikes or pedestrians, honking automatically if the person in front of you is moving one iota more slowly that you would like them to at a stop sign or red light, screaming obscenities at each other in parking lots, and weaving around each other like madmen on the freeways. But then out of the car and those ultra-bleached pearly whites flash again!

Another, more sweetly ironic L.A. thing we noticed just the other night on an evening stroll down the pier in Santa Monica. The pier and the 3rd street promenade shopping area are some of the biggest tourist attractions in L.A. There are tons of nice hotels, restaurants, shopping, the beaches, a bike path, fountains, landscaping, lots of people dressed very stylishly and a real upbeat, modern, consumer vibe. At the very end of the pier though, all through the evening and late into the night, lower income, decidedly un-stylish and un-consumer and un-tourist Latino families hang out together with poles and buckets and fish for their dinners, or for fun, or for some extra cash. Who knows, but there they are just out of view from the fountains and lights, talking and playing with their babies and gossiping in Spanish on folding chairs on the farthest, fish smelling, worn concrete deck leaning over the rhythmic, dark ocean below.

A hundred years ago L.A., as a town, barely existed. Now it is one of the largest cities in the world, with most of this growth happening since the 1930s. Most everything here is fairly new, and most everyone here is from somewhere else. Sense of history in L.A. is very short, evidenced by this example that Tim gave of a situation in which a couple of middle aged dads at one of Nick's baseball games were complaining about the Dodgers and their east coast influenced management and how the team should go back to its roots, to being a real west coast team, like it was 20 years ago in the '80's. Apparently these guys are forgetting that just 20 years before that, in the '60s, the Dodgers were still playing at their actual roots, in Brooklyn!

Perhaps one of the most absurd L.A. events of late happened for us at parent's night at Nick's high school, where we sat in a small classroom in a row of plastic chairs behind comedic genius, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star and "Seinfeld" creator, Larry David and were introduced to the school's film classes by a couple of stuttering grad students. It's just so weird to see someone you watch on TV suddenly standing with you in a real life, unglamorous place, like a high school. He looked sort of washed out and somewhat confused, like the rest of us, shuffling through the florescent hallways, sitting in rows of narrow plastic desks, listening to the teachers of our kids' classes. The one difference being I guess that he's a genius billionaire, and I'm, well, me.

I may not be a genius billionaire yet, or likely ever, but I am working pretty hard these days. I'm taking some pretty demanding classes again this semester which keep me heading back to the drawing board, literally, much of the time. Also, after a few unsuccessful trips looking for waitressing jobs left me wanting to shoot myself in the head, and that was just at the thought of actually getting a position at one of these places, I've decided to take the next few months and build a website and some more finished work so that I can go looking for some actual illustrating or storyboarding work. Wish me luck!