ham fisted theatrics

Meggie has just gotten back from New York so to celebrate, we go to the beach. For the occasion I have made a beach-mix CD full of heavy hitters. Before we pull out of our parking garage, one of us points out the Rolls Royce that is parked with a welcome mat sitting outside of the driver’s side door. Lucky for us, the driver of this car then appears. He gets something from his car, then leaves the parking garage to walk his poodle. We make fun of him without his knowledge inside our parked car with the windows rolled up. It’s very snobs vs. slobs.

The plan is to go to Redondo Beach, where our friend Daniel runs a restaurant, so we can lay on a beach he recommended and then eat at his place afterward. On the drive out to the beach we pass several things that prove that Google is both good and bad. One is in Venice, an austere little building labeled the Institute Of Jurassic Technology. The next is near Redondo, a Roundtable Pizza whose marquee reads “I LOVE YOU WONDERWHEEL.” Now we could easily Google these things and we would, with truly astounding quickness we take for granted, be provided with probably very simple answers about what these things are and mean. But then we would be robbing ourselves of the image of a little shack-laboratory in Venice run by a disgraced paleontologist filled with dioramas of T-Rexes piloting backhoes and helicopters, or the image of a sad and mostly crazy middle-aged Roundtable Pizza owner-operator who, as his wife has withdrawn further and further from him (and further and further into her affair with the hot-shot night-manager of the CPK ASAP across the street) has started to develop a very real, very dangerous romantic obsession with a carnival ride down at the boardwalk. (I realize both of these mental images center around sad little men. But let’s be honest, on their way to the really dangerous crazy stuff, sad little men do some pretty hilarious shit.)

The beach Daniel recommended is really hard for us to find, but in trying to find it we wind through some gorgeous scenery. It is a place where it is hard to be mad you are lost because you sound ridiculous when you say, “Shit, another breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean? Are you fucking serious?”

Once we sort of get our bearings, a street fair keeps thwarting our attempts to get down to the beach by blocking off every street that wants to take us there. Finally, we’re there. We know we are there when a man is smoking a joint in front of the public restroom. The beach is the best, you guys.

The second song that plays after we walk into Daniel's restaurant is “National Anthem” by Radiohead, to which we once did an incredibly bloody choreographed zombie-killing sequence live on stage in a Hammerkatz show in college. It was in this group that we met Daniel and Steve and Robbie and Matt and all the old knuckleheads, who we all used to be in a sketch comedy group together and now we’re all adult people in the world. It is always neat to see Daniel in his element, being the fucking man, bringing crazy absinthe-soaked cocktails to our table, waving to regulars as they leave satisfied, and think about not so long ago when we’d block out comedic swordfights for upcoming shows in darkened lecture halls at two in the morning when we all had class the next day.

On this particular night it is almost a requirement to be seated at this restaurant that you be a family, and that one member of your family be an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy wearing a red and white little league uniform.

Early on in the meal Daniel brings us a Caprese salad featuring mozzarella made “down the street.” If you said “Hey man, sorry, Caprese is the only food left in the world,” I’d kiss you square on the mouth. I love the stuff.

At a certain point a man walks in wearing a blazer and jeans and sandals. In my head I instantly christen him Danger Man.

I haven’t been drinking for a week or so since I’ve been trying to dispatch my neck/throat mystery malady, and I am definitely missing that part of the experience. I am also missing the talking part of the experience. Sitting at the end of the table fidgeting, I realize that the steroids the doctor prescribed are making me jumpy and irritable, but not talking is robbing me of a main outlet for that jumpiness and irritability. I'm in my own little hole of aimless not-positive energy. The serenity of the not-talking thing is canceled out by the professional wrestler running around inside of me telling my thoughts and emotions that he'll see them at SummerSlam. The steroids are also making me think, “Feh, I could talk.” I don’t, which is good. I just sit there being twitchy and not particularly great company.

When we get home and I climb into bed I realize I am not used to coming home from the beach with sand on me and climbing into a bed that isn’t a hotel bed. I am not used to coming home from the beach and getting into a bed I’m going to have to inhabit for more than one night. I don’t know any better. I should have known better than to throw my beached-up sanded-out backpack on the bed first thing upon entering the room, though. That’s just basic room-entering stuff.