ham fisted theatrics

In keeping with the trip’s theme of being late to things through all fault of my own, I make a hash of getting to the airport. I wake up in plenty of time to get to the airport and call down to the front desk and ask if they can call a cab, and then I go downstairs and sit for several minutes, looking outside waiting to see a yellow cab or something like it, before I am told by the woman at the desk that they didn’t call anyone because there is a fleet of four or five specialized hotel-only cabs to ferry guests wherever they need to go. I could have just walked out and gotten in one at any time. I consider it a sign of my fundamental humility that I don’t just assume there’s a fleet of fancy cabs waiting just around the corner at any point. Still, I am mad at myself and if traffic doesn’t break my way I could miss my flight.

In keeping with the trip’s theme of techno pouring out of every orifice related to the hotel, halfway through the trip the driver turns on dance music that the display on the stereo tells me is the hotel’s own mix. The driver is nice, and talkative. He tells me he had an offer to be the private driver for Haiti’s biggest rapper but he turned it down because “I don’t like that music and I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

He makes great time and I get to my gate through skilled application of fast-walking. On the way I spot lots of soccer teams from everywhere, like Italy, Jamaica, and indeterminate European and Nordic locales whose jerseys do not volunteer their country of origin. It is neat that they are all wearing their jerseys but I always thought the fun of being an away team at a sporting event would be traveling in a suit and tie, everybody on the team. Is that something professional athletes actually do, or is it just high school lacrosse teams? Either way: sharp.

The plane is stranded at the gate with us inside of it for half an hour because a hatch in the rear of the plane is shut but an indicator light in the cockpit says it’s open. I think one of the main criteria to be a commercial airline pilot must be an unwillingness to say “Eh, fuck it,” which is what I would do. The pilot apologizes and says they’ll have it figured out soon, then comes on a few minutes later and says they have it figured out, now they just have to do a lot of paperwork. Then he comes on to say the paperwork is done, and we start pulling away from the gate. Then the plane stops dead several yards from the gate and sits there for ten or so minutes and the pilot comes on and apologizes and says they have one more small technical problem, and they’re sure they know what it is and they will fix it very quickly once we get back to the gate, the thing that will take the real time and cause the real delay is all the paperwork.

For the parts of the flight where I’m not asleep, I have the phrase “Taco Crisis” stuck in my head.

Back in LA that afternoon, we are driving to a meeting. I am very tired and spacey and nothing seems all that real. My fundamental LA experiences seem to happen when we are headed to a meeting and I am very tired and spacey and nothing seems all that real. Today we are stopped at a traffic light and a car crossing the street in front of us veers and almost hits another car coming the other way, and the driver of the almost-hit car honks and flicks the other driver off. Then we see why the first driver veered, and why the second driver would probably feel like an asshole for flicking the first driver off if he knew: there is a kitten running around in the intersection. It is dirty and scraggly and black and white and darting around the intersection in a state beyond panic. We immediately start shouting at all the other cars around us, and at the kitten, and just in general. The kitten runs back up on to the curb as we are crawling through the intersection, and we drive on thinking it will stay there in safety, but we turn to see it bounce off the sidewalk and run back into traffic. We are a block away and my head is still turned and I see the kitten not make it. We all agree it was probably rabid, but it doesn’t make it an okay thing to have happened or to have seen.

Later, on the patio outside of a Starbucks in Burbank, I witness what I can only describe as a drug buy with knit baby hats instead of coke.

After our meeting we meet Drew from Motion/Captured for lunch. The dude is insanely nice, and funny, and has wisdom and stories to spare, and apparently he lives in the neighborhood from “E.T.” so if he’s not careful, one day we will cruise by his house on bikes. We leave psyched about "Avatar" and "Where The Wild Things Are" and full of barbecue.

On the way home, standing on the sidewalk we see a normal-looking couple in formal-wear who are also wearing Predator masks. The masks are up so you can see their faces, but you know they are Predator masks from the plastic fangs and dreadlocks.

A thing about L.A. I unequivocally approve of: a 1000% increase in the amount of times I have heard “Somebody’s Baby” by Jackson Browne in drugstores here over times I heard it at drugstores in New York. It is heavily featured in “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” and on the DVD commentary Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe were talking about how they wanted the soundtrack to be music they actually liked, cool stuff like Elvis Costello, and I love that stuff too, Elvis in particular, but damn if I’m not glad the studio made them put in a bunch of music that was probably horrifically uncool at the time but now dates the movie in a wonderful, wonderful way. Timelessness can be overemphasized.