humans are funny

Category: los angeles

  • Home is where the LA is.

    I’ve lived in LA for almost 14 years now. I’ve left to go try other places during those 14 years, but I always come back. I never mean to come back, but I do. Here I am.

    Hi!

    Since I’ve been here for so long, I have grown accustomed to my environs. I can easily walk by a pantsless homeless man on Venice Beach or a hooker on Hollywood Blvd and not blink an eye (unless it’s a regularly scheduled eye blink.). Converting to full Angeleno was a big step. I arrived having never seen flip-flops. Now I live steps from the beach. I arrived not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. Now, I totally know (kinda). I arrived when I had just lost my virginity. Now, I’ve fucked {{This sentence has been interrupted by the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test.}}. Since my transition has been so gradual, I haven’t really noticed it. But something happened the other day that pulled the wool off of my unblinking eyes.

    My friend came over with a bag from Whole Foods. She pulled out her carton of sushi and screamed. I thought there was a mouse in the bag.

    “Oh my god.” She exclaimed. “I forgot to get brown rice!”

    She forgot to get brown rice.
    In her sushi.

    The. Horror.

    The starch!

    O. M. G.

    It took 14 years, but now I realize: I AM IN LA. Holy mackerel, am I in LA. (I obviously knew I was geographically located in LA since I see the street signs, but I didn’t realize how unique it really is until lately.) Such an event would not have been a tragedy or even a possibility in the city where I grew up (Addison, IL, a blend of Jersery Shore and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.).

    Since the rice catastrophe, I have been hyper aware of my surroundings. For example:

    I stumbled across these screenplays in a bar bathroom garbage can. What? How? How did those get there? “Oh, Larry. I’m sick of lugging around all your screenplays. You’re never gonna sell ’em. I need to find a bar bathroom to throw them out.”  “Miranda! You go throw out all my screenplays. I don’t even want them anymore. Did you see that they’re not printed on brown recyclable paper? The. Horror.”

    Oh, LA, you are so mysterious.

    And then there’s the food. When I go back to Addison, I say I’m a vegetarian, and the waitress says, “Okay, you want chicken or fish?” Sometimes in LA you have to ask a restaurant if they serve any meat at all. Here people eat seaweed chips. And I walk to get wheat grass shots in the morning.

    It must work because there are no fat people here. It’s a cliche, but so true. I stood on my corner the other day and looked for some for an hour (read: three minutes). Okay, there are two. But one has a thyroid problem and one is Tyra Banks wearing a fat suit.

    You think maybe someone thought they’d get discovered if they threw their screenplays into a bar garbage? Or maybe it was a trick, and I would have won a prize if I had pulled one out? Dammit, I always miss out on prizes.

    My friend got married in Malibu last week. He said it was great except for the stunt man who was practicing diving off the cliffs right behind them. Over and over again, he plunged to the ground, suspended by ropes. He’s right behind the happy couple in their wedding pictures. I should make a joke here about taking a plunge, but instead I’ll make one about lamps: Lamps are so skinny. They belong in LA. (Nah. Plunge would have been better.)

    And isn’t this the thinnest grilled cheese? LA, not EVERYTHING must be thin.

    And the namedropping. I’ve realized it’s unavoidable in LA. Even though it’s sometimes a necessity, it doesn’t lose its douche factor. I mean, there are helicopters because Lindsay Lohan lives next to me. And I locked eyes with Jake Gyllenhaal. I cannot help drop some names once in a while. (ahem, I also saw Arnold while eating that skinny grilled cheese.) (Please note: it was still a good grilled cheese. Gone in aprox 4.3 bites).

    And the laptops. In any LA cafe on any given day, you can find a smattering of writers pecking away at their laptops.They are the people who will spend hours perfecting some blog that won’t even earn them a penny. There’s so much hope and opportunity in those people. You can’t spend your days wilting atop your laptop if you don’t believe in possibility. I bet if we took the amount of ambition and hope in LA and tied it all together, it would go around the world twelve times. Or Maybe thirteen. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.

    That doesn’t happen in too many other places.

    So, yeah, I’m in LA.

    And it’s a weird place. But I love it anyway. Did you see how skinny that grilled cheese was? Why do they even slice bread that thin? Such a travesty. Bread! I sometimes have to drive two hours outside of LA to get bread. Not really. That would be weird. But I do walk to get wheat grass, which is a bunch of grass they grow inside the restaurant. And then they mow it down right in front of me, squeeze it until green water comes out. And then I drink that water. And then my burps smell like summer all day long. That’s LA, baby.

    Please, come visit. Or don’t.

  • Vaginas! Vaginas! Everywhere!

    I went to a club again. Ugh. I was that 30-year-old I used to make fun of when I was 20. I stuck out, in that black-lit lounge, due to the existence of my self esteem and my non-revealing outfit. I don’t even know how I got in. This was some ‘really cool’ place where you have to know someone who knows the president to get in. The kind of place that delights in turning innocent men away at the door. The kind of place that plays ‘Baby Got Back’ and lines the walls with grody rich men and their bottles. The kind of place that’s ‘so cool’ some people’s egos actually burst when they walk through the door. When they let me right in, I even accidentally said ‘That’s how it’s done, bitch.’ Gross. I went for a birthday party, and it confirmed for me the fact that I will never ever ever step foot in one of these places again. Because I’m just too old. And uncool. And I’d rather spend my nights talking with people who know what it’s like to pay their own rent or have heard of things like politics, Panama, or pants.

    I wasn’t always so uncool and interested in men who could talk about more than the alphabet. Let’s take a look at how hip I actually was back when I used to laugh at thirty-year-olds:


    One day back at the turn of the century, when I was living off my stash of unused Y2K supplies, I actually requested that someone document this getup. I wanted to remember just how alluring I looked in these stylish high-waisted pleather slacks that tapered lovingly towards the ankle. And of course the classy bikini-ish top with extra expensive wrap strings. Hot hot hot. Lastly, I couldn’t dare forget the mushroom haircut, which I have to brag is not that far from that of Anna Wintour (if the lady is so fashionable, why does she have my Y2K hairdo?).

    I’ll admit it. I met truckloads of men wearing this outfit. Men love pleather, let me tell you. The dapper clubgoing man can’t resist a mushroom ‘do atop a boobless bikini top. Worked like a charm, as I met quality man after quality man who would buy me a Red Bull and offer me capfuls of GHB by the bathroom. Ah, those were the days. The days of cutting lines. The days of leaving the house at midnight. The days of going to bed at noon.
    They were fun. They were exciting. They are over.
    Thank the heavens, they are over.

    I realize they are not over for some. I know there are twenty-year-olds out there who feel the same desire I used to feel: to get into hot spots with fake IDs and get phone numbers and try to go on dates with anyone in some sort of circle with any celebrity, even if it means the cousin of the neighbor of that guy, Buddy, from Charles in Charge. Celebrity Adjacent works. I get it. I had different goals then, as the twenty-year-olds of today do.

    But there is an epidemic among these clubgoing girls, and I must reach out to them. I must get in touch with their poor souls and tell them that what they’re doing is unnecessary. This epidemic is sweeping Hollywood, and I’m shocked at how little press it’s getting. It’s the plague of the streetwalkers. It’s Anna Wintour’s fault, I assume. Somebody started a trend, and I’m guessing it’s her. Judging by my photo, I don’t exactly follow fashion. But someone… some powerful jerkwad told these young girls they should try their best to look like successful street walkers and then manufactured “dresses” out of napkins.


    It’s gross. I have never seen so many almost-labia in my life. These vaginas are barely dressed and able to peek out without notice. GIRLS! I can see your perineum when you dance. Stop it. Just stop it.

    Clubgoers, beware! Vaginal fluids are splashing like lazy martinis all over the dance floor and we ALL MUST BE AWARE. These dresses of today are too small to be called dresses. These dresses of today are too small to be called shirts. This is a tragedy! Anna Wintour, please help.


    I saw this one in leopard print at the club. I’m guessing she got free drinks. And a venereal disease.

    I realize that these ho costumes are just an updated version of my pleather, so I would like to tell these girls from experience: don’t do it. These outfits will only get you dates with drug dealers, men who drive Beamers but live with their parents, and guys who will have sex with you for three months and then disappear (totally guessing on that last one.).

    But who am I to teach lessons? Everyone has to learn for herself. My mom told me not to wear pleather, and look where it got me: wearing pleather. So I shall stop acting old. I shall stop judging and preaching. I will be silent and hold onto the hope that by the time I have a daughter who is of age to hit the clubs, Polygamist Sect Skirts will be all the rage. Anna, you have about thirty years to make this happen. Do it.

    Oh! Gotta go. Matlock is starting.

  • Butter. It’s creamy. And Chinese people like it.


    I have a new friend, Ryan.
    He’s my current favorite person.
    Ryan grew up in a very Christian family. In China, his native country, the government doesn’t like certain Christian families. And when a Communist government doesn’t like you, you’re fucked. They took away his house. They confiscated his family’s store and all their working privileges. Then the Commies pursued the family, so they could never stay in one city for too long. Ryan didn’t get to finish high school, learn to drive, or make any lasting friendships. When he was 16, his family illegally crossed the border into Laos and counted on the kindness of strangers to get to Bangkok, where they would wait out a refuge offer from the US. Five hard years later, they arrived in good old sunny California.

    I learned so much about our amber waves of grain from this Chinese refugee. The first one being that I might actually be proud of the purple mountain majesty. We are damn good hosts. Before Ryan, I’d never been a fan of welfare, believing the stories I’d heard about mothers popping out schools of babies to get more money and lazy people cashing in on our tax dollars. I’m a fan of good ol’ working hard, so I eschewed welfare as an option for anyone (one of my very few Republican tendencies).

    But that’s not what it’s about at all. At least not in Ryan’s case. He gets just a small stipend but lots of help in finding jobs. His parents get intense English classes and their own tiny apartment in a very Chinese suburb. Their church helped too, and after arriving in February, they already seem quite comfortable. They really needed the help, and I like that our country can and does give it to them. What else would they have done?

    “I went to San Diego a few weekends ago. Just had to get out of LA,” Ryan said last week on the phone. He sounds like an Angeleno already even though he just bought his very first pair of sunglasses last month. That’s why he’s my favorite person. So driven. So adorable. So ready to be American. But frustrated because he and his parents are stuck in a suburban one-bedroom where not many people speak English.

    And that’s where I come in. I have appointed myself Ambassador of Americaness and have vowed to show Ryan all the evils of America, like Taco Bell and He-Man. So, where did I take the whole family to give them a peer into American gastronomy? The Cheesecake Factory. The bread. The humongous plates. The hustle and bustle. The menu as long as the bible. It was such a joy to see it all from foreign eyes: The curious eyeing of the ‘tell you when the table’s ready’ buzzer, the humongous drink glasses, and the ice water deemed ‘too cold.’

    After an awkward instruction of napkin placement, we were all in. Ryan said the salad was the best he’d ever had. His dad ate the shit out of some tamales. His mom nibbled daintily at the salmon. But both parents were fascinated by the little gold packets in the middle of the table. They rolled them in their hands curiously and peered inside. Though I tried to show them that the creamy spread was meant for bread, they didn’t mind eating it a la carte. When it was all over, we’d demolished a goat cheese pizza, several entrees, and a raspberry cheesecake. When asked the favorite part of the meal, the parents pointed to the butter. Butter. The crux of American culture. Who needs goat cheese pizza when you’ve got butter? Who needs anything when you’ve got butter? I agree. And I appreciate that the eyes of these newcomers have led me to appreciate the little things, the things that come in gold wrappers. The things that were sitting there all along. And free.

    God Bless America: We have butter.

    Burritos and sunglasses. It’s like he was born here.

  • It’s hard out here for a hippie.

    I’m having the hardest time being a hippie lately. I had no problems last year– never brushed my hair or wore makeup, carried my life in a sack, lived wherever I felt like it. Life couldn’t have been better.

    But now I’m in Los Angeles.

    Chihuahuas wear designer clothes and you’re an oddity if you don’t have a German-engineered car. Plus, my adult acne requires I wear some fancy foundation for anyone to take me seriously, and I was forced to buy some decent jeans due to my exhibitionist butt crack. So, I’m now feeling like ‘one of them.’ I’m a paradox– surrounded by creative directors in Diesel jeans by day and meditating in lotus at night. It couldn’t feel more weird. I know a guy who just paid $50,000 for a couch (‘It is the focal point,’ he rationalized). Some of my friends are struggling to raise $400 to send a year’s supply of water to a village in Africa. Where the hell do I fit in the mix? If I could, I’d sell that couch, pay off my student loans, and go to Africa to deliver the water myself. Does that make me a hippie or just some chick who says she’s a hippie but is just lazy and wants to use travel as an excuse for never having to work?

    I don’t know. But the best part is that I don’t have to know. Because I live in Venice Beach! You could wake up in Venice Beach stuffed in a cannon. You could crawl out of that cannon and find an eyeless homeless man, a guy selling cotton balls and taser guns, and a yuppie jogger pushing twins in a five-thousand-dollar stroller. And none of this would seem weird. And you’d say to a man playing bongos, ‘Excuse me, do you know why I woke up in a cannon?’ And instead of looking at you as if you had five noses, he’d tap his friends on their leathery shoulders and they’d all help you find out why you awoke in this cannon. And all together you’d find a guy sleeping in the sand who remembered that you were at the local freak show (the one that features an assortment of 2-headed animals) and that you volunteered to shoot yourself from the cannon after downing a magnum bottle of Opus One (bought for you by this Hollywood big shot at a bar down the street for $749 plus tax). And then you’d hear that the freak show owner stuffed you in the cannon but ran from the cops right afterward because he’s also the owner of the medical marijuana joint across the street that was getting raided. You know the one, next to American Apparel. And so you fell asleep in the canon until now when you just awoke to the aforementioned plus a dude frying up worms on a pocket kerosene grill, not because he’s homeless but because he’s a shaman and these particular worms are from Tibet and will help him with his Tantric sexcapades, about which you don’t want know– trust me.

    It’s a strange place, this Venice area. On the beach, it looks like a scene out of Rishikesh, India– free yoga, dirty dreadlocks, street sleepers, seedy taverns, and marijuana. Lots of marijuana.

    Four blocks over is where the hippies become pseudo. Here the marijuana is legit, the bars have bouncers, and the coffee shop baristas draw hearts in the latte foam. The dreadlocks on this side of Venice were professionally installed by a guy with thick plastic glasses and expensive skinny jeans. The yoga classes run upwards of twenty bucks.

    It’s strange, this paradox of lifestyles. But I love it. Because I’m neither nor. I’m not one but both. I am a daily contradiction. I like chocolate and bread pudding. I want it all. I’m every woman. It’s all in me. And there’s no point in choosing now. So, I’m gonna ride my 400-dollar bike down to the free yoga and meditate the day away with the drum circle. And then maybe wash it all down with a plate of foie gras in truffle oil. (Ok, I would never eat foie gras, but the vegetarian shit I would like doesn’t sound fancy enough to make this dichotomy sound so astounding. So just imagine something really awesome & pricey on a plate served by a super cool hipster with funky pants and Converse.)

    Venice is it.

    Macho men that spend sunny weekends choreographing dances on their roller skates. Where else?

  • Los Angeles is totally talking about, like, stuff.


    The ear is a funny little organ. If all other senses disappeared, the ear could tell you if you’re underwater, if people are laughing at you, if you fell through a hole that led to China, or if you have a shell held up to it (unless it gets confused and thinks it’s at the beach). The ears are smart little organs. Or, in some cases, big ones.

    Now that I am back in an Enlglish-speaking country, my intelligent little orifices have been picking up the most interesting tidbits.

    See, for 9 months I have been training them to find English. In a Cambodian café, for example, my little ears scanned the place for those speaking my language, those with accents, those who might be on the same route as I, ready to slink into the next destination with me.

    Once my aural radar picked up a signal, I would make a new friend. Or ask for a direction. Or avoid a woman with a penchant for ‘like’. We would talk about our global experiences and how devastating Cambodia was or how many people live in Europe or what it all means in the end. My precious lobes are the reason I made so many friends abroad.

    But now, with my highly-trained drums lounging in LA, I can’t stop their ultra accent-tracking ability. They no longer discern Germans from Austrians; instead they’ve morphed into expert eavesdroppers. And as I pummel through Los Angeles cafes in search of internet access and cups of chai, I can’t help but listen in. And, sadly, these tidbits are just not as intellectually stimulating as those heard in other countries. The following are some of the “conversations” I have been so lucky to hear:

    (Two girls, both staring at their phones.)
    -I mean, nobody likes onions.
    – Yeah, I don’t think they should make them anymore.

    (Guy on phone, talking loudly in cafe)
    “Babe, I need to see your body really soon. I am making a new movie, and I can really imagine you in it, but I haven’t seen you in, what, a year? You’ve been going to the gym? Well, I hope you didn’t lose that butt. I love that butt. That butt’s gonna be the star of my film.”
    (Guy proceeded to fall asleep on a pile of cafe pillows for the rest of my café stay.)

    (Two girls with fake tans)
    -I do not like her. I mean, her face looks like a dog. A total dog. I’m serious. Like, she actually looks like a dog.
    -Yeah.

    (Two women with big sunglasses and boots)
    -I totally wanna like party tonight. Like really party. Like hardcore party.
    -Me too. Totally down.
    -Let’s call Light. He’ll totally be down.
    -Totally.

    (Waiter, pointing to empty plate) – Are you all done here?
    (Patron) – Yeah, we didn’t like it.
    Eruption of laughter.
    (When will we Americans tire of this unfunny joke?)

    (Two guys in Diesel jeans with iphones)
    -Man, Ian totally cock blocked last night.
    -Yeah, that guy’s a total douche bag.
    (When will we stop calling people by the horrible name of a feminine cleansing product? I mean, isn’t it a compliment? A douche bag is clean. It helps women. It comes in pretty pastel boxes [I assume.] Next time someone calls you a douche bag, say ‘Thank you. Yes, I AM a clean helper of women.’)

    To be fair, intelligent conversation lives well in LA. At this very moment, there must be Angelenos talking about Chinese politics, the situation in Darfur or health care reform. Those folks just, like, totally don’t happen to hang out with the unemployed at, like, 11am in Hollywood cafés. I mean, totally.