Lack of Snow

Reason #1021 why I will never be cool in Los Angeles: I have bus-stop sunburn. It’s ninety degrees today, and I am as pink and porcine as an English rose should be.

It’s only ever this hot on the four-bus days, when I have to spend two hours getting from West Nowhere (WeNo) to West Hollywood (WeHo) for a thirty-minute volunteer job. My first blue bus is crowded with perspiring UCLA students, and I sit in the middle of the back seat, wedged between a man wearing a scooter helmet and a Japanese girl in lollipop brights. The bus smells like squashed, overripe fruit, and we are all dozily subdued.

CAD -- PLOTTING

MOUNTING
    ON DEMAND

says an printing shop, an enigmatic semi-haiku of menace, and in Little Persia the billboards wish me a

HAPPY NOWROOZ

and sell legal counsel.

As usual, transferring to the Metro at Westwood ramps up the lunacy level, and I get on board alongside a man dressed as an vagabond magician -- top hat, black trousers, white puffy shirt, and a hot-pink lint-roller holstered onto his belt. The bus driver honks at a gardener’s truck full of lilies. Beverly Hills is coming to an orchestrated bloom amidst a symphony of palm trees, with bougainvillea playing every other note on the scale of pink: cerise, sakura, baby, fuchsia. The bus is very hot and I think I might be sick.

Why won’t it snow
Like they said it would
What is it that they know
That I really should

whines my iPod, and I think about snow. Snow in Japan, snow at our wedding, Königsallee snow, snow lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns and then

The rooms was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

[...]*

*Louis MacNeice, 'Snow' (1935?)

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You're Invited!™ (No, Not You)

You're Invited!™

say the 2011 Academy Award billboards; we're not, but we go anyway. At least, we go to the Kodak Theater, twenty-four hours before the event, for a little light gawping.

We could do with the exercise. On Friday, I didn't leave the house at all; first there was a hangover -- grade 'nuclear winter' -- and then there was a migraine. I lay on the sofa for several hours, unable to find the remote or otherwise escape 'Maid in Manhattan'. The cat clambered over me, dribbling. Eventually I went back to bed; Dr Strangename came home, at the end of his working day, to find me in exactly the same position as when he'd left that morning. He can be very sarcastic.

Today I'm up by ten-thirty and we manage to leave the house before two. There's just no stopping us. We get the 12 to Westwood and, in undeserved good bus karma, transfer quickly to the 302.

It's always a relief when the bus behaves itself, as, approximately once a fortnight, Dr Strangename puts his foot down, shakes his fist, and says we'll never go on the Metro again. But this Saturday it's swift and uncrowded, and Dr Strangename laughs at the potholes on Sunset that threaten to disengage your cranium from your spine and roll your head down the bus like a bowling-ball.

We pass though Beverly Hills, with its ice-cream stripes of strawberry, vanilla and mint -- bougainvillea, white-washed walls, lemon-trees and lush hedges, almost pretty enough to distract you from its purpose (keep your dirty little bus-rider eyes off my lawn).

In West Hollywood we pass everyone's favourite artificially-enhanced-sex superstore:

JOIN THE HUSTLER FAMILY!

says a poster in its window, next to the shamrock-themed erotic outfits. I imagine the Hustler family: mom showing plenty of underboob in a sawn-off t-shirt, bending cheerfully over the (unlit, but no one notices) BBQ; dad doing some suggestive business with a foot-long; daughter eighteen yet still obliged to wear an undersized Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

Prohibition Is Over

appears in white on a sober black billboard across the road. No, thank you; after Thursday night, prohibition is back, and this time it's personal.

(I was drinking these lovely, faux-Japanese martinis, made from elderflower and lychee and gin, and they were as light and meadow-fresh as a fabric softener commercial. Friday morning, they may as well have been Clorox.)

Just as bus sickness and residual hangover are about to cause disaster, we reach Hollywood. Apart from Downtown -- where a woman directed a canary-coloured rain of junkie vomit at me -- Hollywood is the least glamorous district of LA we've seen so far. It's a particularly unappealing combination of genuine grot, tourist tat and anodyne chainstores. But everyone who visits us wants to go there, and, god, here we are again, of our own volition. You feel guilty for patronising it, as if encouraging some morally-dubious commerce that lowers us all, like a nice young man who keeps finding himself in Thai brothels.

But this weekend Hollywood is brisk and professional, full of tents and trailers and people with clipboards. Hollywood Boulevard is closed to traffic for several blocks, and we skirt alongside a screened area that is the Oscars red carpet. We can't see it, but we know it's there.

After being diverted through some battleship-grey service corridors -- it's no more than we deserve -- we find ourselves in the Kodak Theater. An Italian correspondent in a backless evening dress and a lot of panstick is making a broadcast. I take a photo of a sign saying NO ACCESS, and am reprimanded. There's more red carpet, a cinematic sweep of stairs, and some shrouded Oscar statuettes. Although the carpet is covered in polythene, we aren't allowed to step on it. I take several more photos. Even Dr Strangename is awed.

Eventually, we get to the top of the Hollywood and Highland mall, where you can look down fifty feet onto the transparent tent and red carpet walkway below. I see the public audience bleachers; I applied for a seat, but it's something like a 0.035 chance and I didn't win. Can't catch a break. This aerial shot is the closest we'll get.

We briefly consider throwing ourselves off the mall terrace onto the plastic roof, where we'd bob, waving at celebrities, for a short while, before being shot down like a couple of rogue parade balloons. But the celebrities aren't here until tomorrow, and we can't be bothered to take the bus again.    

They told me to come to Hollywood,
that it was the third biggest industry in the world.
Number one was safety razors.
Number two was sticking plasters.
Hollywood was number three. So I came.
-- Cowboy Actor

This is written on the mall's floor, along with lots of other dubious stories relating to The Road To Hollywood. Outside, we're filmed by someone getting establishing shots for The Lead-Up To The Oscars -- do look for us on Belgium TV -- and I linger outside a production van for Channel WowWowWow Japan, hoping to be discovered as a new Gaijin Tarento.

In the end, we walk south back to Sunset and wait for the Metro home. Our companions here are a guy with a guitar and gas mask, and another man who looks exactly like the reprobate who shot Sam in 'Ghost'. But on the way back through West Hollywood, I see a sign saying

Pierced People Pray Too

and resolve to be less superficial.

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Rain is General All Over LA

It's been raining for five hours in Los Angeles. Our bedroom window is leaking. The building's carpeted corridors squelch. Our local intersection is a lake, and Escalades joyeously hypraplane over it like fat Canada geese.

This evening I spend thirty-five minutes standing in the dark, outside a gas station near Sony Studios, waiting for the 12. My umbrella is rusted and crippled from inactivity, and looks like an old bicycle that's collided with a derelict's tent. Due to the weather, I'm wearing an extremely laughable beret, purchased in Germany, and have tucked my jeans into my boots; I look like I've wandered in from a European pantomime. An elderly Korean lady waits under the garage's forecourt, periodically darting out to look up the long line of red and white lights that is Palms Boulevard.

- You waiting for this bus?

she asks me. I say yes.

- SEVEN BUSES GO: OTHER DIRECTION,

she tells me.

- I COUNTED. SEVEN.

I counted too, so I agree with her.

- It's crazy time god damn it,

she says, retreating to cover. My umbrella blows up into a tangle again, and a man my age, filling up a silver car, gives me what seems to be a sympathetic look. More of a pitying look. Or maybe he's a serial killer. Then someone backs their Camry into a bollard, and the Korean lady rolls her eyes at me in a way that clearly states: why does this fool have a car and we're still waiting for the god damn bus?

The rain doesn't stop. The bus comes. Unfortunately, the Big Blue Bus was not built for this weather, and it's leaking worse than our apartment; I sit on a boggy seat and fail to dodge drops.

Arriving at the supermarket near my house, I feel that some wine is in order. As I'm choosing, a man in a black tracksuit approaches me.

- Hello,

he says, and I tentatively remove an iPod headphone.

- Hello,

I say, noticing that 'Guard' is embroidered on his pocket; I fear that I'm about to be evicted from the alcohol aisle under suspicion of being underage or foreign or both.

- How arya?

- I'm sorry?

- Oh I'm sorry, see, I only just asked howrya doing?

- I'm fine, thank you. And you?

(This is truly how I speak with strangers -- somewhere between Princess Anne at a fete and the Japanese kids I've taught to chant 'Howuryoamfinethanyoseeyoladeralligader'.)

- It sure is raining,

he remarks. I smile and nod, edging closer to the imported wine. He is youngish and well-scrubbed, but there's an inauspicious air of missionary zeal.

- I'm Jerry, by the way.

- Oh. I'm Ped Xing,

I say -- I'm not really Ped Xing, of course -- and he suddenly becomes anxious, flustered and blushing, as if we're in a job interview.

- I'm sorry -- Zed Ping?

- Ped Xing.

He shakes my hand vigorously, eyes bright. I begin to realize he's not a security guard.

- I think you're pretty,

he says, which is generally a sure sign of derangement.

- Oh. Thank you.

- I wanted to talk to you,

- I -- have to go. But it was nice to meet you,

I say, still nodding and smiling like a foreign grandmother, whilst grabbing a cheap bottle of Pinot off the shelf. I feel bad, but later on, in the cheese section -- nothing like pairing a discount wine with some violently orange Monterey Jack -- I see him shaking some other girl's hand. I give him a sympathetic look. More of a pitying one. Or maybe he's a serial killer.

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Facts for Visitors

GOD IS STILL SPEAKING

says a sign on Westwood Boulevard. It sounds testy, or ominous, or plaintive, depending on your mood.

Today on the Westside it's Golden State sunny but cold in the shade, and by the BluWave Carwash a man is wearing a sack over his ragged clothes for warmth. He's cut holes for his head and arms, and secured it round the midriff with twine, making it look like a Medieval tunic.

This is at Santa Monica and Westwood. Last month, in the LA Times, I read that there was a particularly nasty accident two blocks down from here; a northbound car crossed early, an eastbound car crossed late, and their collision killed a pedestrian waiting at the lights. Both drivers survived. The Escalades shall inherit the earth.
   
When the Blue Bus gets to Westwood proper, I switch to the Metro. While I'm waiting -- leaning against the wall of a Burger King that accepts food stamps -- I watch students, doctors and nurses at the busy six-way crosswalk. The UCLA medical buildings on the other side are monoliths; plaster-cast white, darkly mirrored or sonar-screen blue. My friend Rodeo Girl, TX, told me the other day that she overheard a hospital administrator on her campus shuttlebus say she loves the sound of ambulances sirens: it sounds like business. Rodeo Girl wants to get the hell out of TX .

After a while, a tourist asks me the way to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and whether this is the right bus stop because the schedule says there should have been a bus by now but there hasn't  been so he's just wondering if there will be. I reassure him that it'll arrive eventually. Which it does.

When I get on, the guy in front of me has trouble swiping his bus pass.

- It don't work,

says the driver.

- It should work.

- But it don't,

he restates, and then lets him on anyway. I feed my dollar fifty to the fare machine. The only other people onboard today are two middle-aged ladies chatting in Spanish. One pleasant thing about taking the bus is, I suppose, the knowledge that, should we recreate the film 'Speed' right here and now, I will be a shoe-in for the Sandra Bullock character. That's just demographic fact. The 302 rattles up onto Sunset Boulevard, and its ads feature the same poem that always haunts me on this route, ending.

Some men will make a grave out of anything.
Anything.
Times when a body could dig through the night.*

Then I get off the bus near the Hustler store, and am nearly run over by a hippy on a Segway.



*Srikanth Reddy, 'Sonnet', from Facts for Visitors (LA/Berkeley: University of CA Press, 2004)

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On California

5 Things You Will Learn About California, or Maybe Just LA

- that there are tarantulas in the wild here. Have I seen them? Sure. Seen 'em on the internet. That's the only reason I'm not on the slow boat back to England right now.

- that if you take the 8 to Westwood and the 302 to Hollywood and push your way to the front of a crowd of people at a star-unveiling ceremony, you may 'accidentally' run into Colin Firth. He will be wearing more make-up than you. What are the odds?

- that eventually, and much to everyone's relief, you will be able to say 'Santa Monica Boulevard' without taking 10 seconds to sing '...Until the su-un co-omes up over San-na-Mon-ica Boulevard'. Ditto for omitting 'Straight Outta' when referring to 'Compton', saying 'LAPD' without the urge to shout 'FREEZE' afterwards, and not appending 'Inglewood' with 'In da hood, up to no good': all verbal tics likely to get a white British girl punched off the bus.

- that you should never put your zipcode into the LA Times Homicide Report. 

(Back in Europe, you are strangely comfortable with a farmhouse where multiple generations of your family have breathed their first and last, a college room adjacent to the site of historic burnings-at-the-stake, and a German residence which was possibly bombed by your own grandfather...

...Here, you will become hysterical upon learning that someone was stabbed to death in your apartment building several years ago. In the early hours, you will imagine his ghost wandering the communal corridors, as translucent blue as the night-lit swimming pool.)

- that people will compliment you on your charming accent and then be unable to understand anything you say; also, that bringing back your Somerset accent will improve comprehensibility 90%:

"Oh waitress, may I have a glahs of wahtuh?"
"What?"
"I mean, oilav a glasss'o'waderr, moy love."
"Sure."

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Miss Manners at the Mall

- Acne Thrives On Your Indecision

- Reinvent the 5 pocket pant!

- GIVE freely with a mall gift card

After two years of incomprehension in Germany, American signs bully me; apart from this, the Westside Pavilion shopping mall is as anodyne as a hotel bathroom, and an ideal antidote to LAX.  As it's only a mile away through a toytown suburb, and Los Angeles has been blue-skied for twenty-five consecutive days, I walk. This surprises several side-road-turning drivers, including one with the vanity plate AH0Y M8E and another whose car is decorated with red handprints. Maybe when the Big Bumper finally gets me, this'll be it: palm trees, roses and astroturf-perfect lawns. Except for a mock-Tudor two-storey with a Zen garden, nothing rises higher than a bungalow. By the freeway underpass I surprise a transient taking a leak in a miniature hedge. We're the only pedestrians.

It's only a shame that by the time I get to the mall I look like an extra on Miami Vice -- rolled up jacket sleeves, slicked back hair, suspiciously sweaty. The typical American mall always makes me feel shabby and apologetic, especially when it's nearly empty on a Friday afternoon and everyone wants to be your friend. Two women in Victoria's Secret enquire about my feelings on lingerie. Someone at a concession stall tries to sell me $9 soap. I buy nothing, as per instructions to lay low -- belly-on-the-floor low -- until Dr Strangename's paycheck clears on Tuesday, and scutter guiltily through the neon gelato and colour-coded Gap shirts to Barnes and Noble, where I read a book about ballerinas. Then I walk home. The transient is now sitting on the low wall outside Winchell's Donuts, eating a cruller. He calls me Hey Babydoll, and I don't reply.

- You got no manners,

he observes, correctly, as the Big Blue Bus comes through the underpass. I get onboard, reflecting that accomplishments today have been limited to a ten-minute phone conversation with our dental plan provider. When we arrive at my stop, a woman calls me sister and asks for bus fare, so I give her $2; around here that's enough to get you there and back.

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Origins of the Blue Busrider

- GO BACK TO CHINA

said an old man on the bus today, his eyes glittering.

The only time I've been to China was changing planes: Osaka, Beijing, Beijing, London.

- Osaka? Okay, GO BACK TO JAPAN.

Although I lived in Japan, I'm not Japanese. Please don't feel you have to sit any closer, but I'm actually Caucasian, which is why I look so confused right now.

- We're on the bus in LA. Everyone's confused. Where do you come from?

Are you demanding zat I show you my papers? I did just move here from Germany. But I'm British.

- What are you, some kind of international hobo?

When I met my husband, a decade ago, he won my heart by declaring his ambition to be a bearded drifter. Mind you, at the time he was clean-shaven, I was very drunk, and we were in the university bar.

- So the pair of you wander the world with your life in a bindle?

We've pared it down to ten boxes, two large suitcases, and wearing all our clothes to the airport. Oh, and a couple of crates marked LIVE ANIMAL.

- How the hell did you get into the USA?

We had visas. My husband, Dr Strangename, is an academic.

- But you don't have a work permit?

Not yet. My current visa authorizes me to be here for ornamental purposes only.

- Are you a rich housewife of Beverly Hills?

Yes. I just enjoy taking the bus with lunatics.

- Really?

No. We don't have enough money for a car, and we don't live in Beverly Hills. We live close enough to the 405 Freeway that the back wall of our bedroom vibrates.

- So what do you do all day?

Ride the Blue Bus, ponder what to microwave for dinner, and pretend that I'm only pretending to be a housewife.

- And who is Ped Xing? Sure sounds Chinese to me.

Ped Xing is invisible to the populace of Los Angeles, judging by the number of times she's nearly been mown down by Escalades turning right on a red light. In her mission to traverse the City of Angels safely and at a reasonable cost, she becomes... the Blue Busrider.    

- I wish I'd never started this conversation now.

I'm sorry. Please go back to clipping your toenails and shouting about the albatross.