Showing posts with label Dr Strangename. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr Strangename. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Return of the Blue Busrider
The Blue Busrider had English visitors.
That's not a euphemism -- there were two visitors, and they rented a car.
[pause for reverent silence]
Yes, a car. I've been cruising around LA in a car, betraying the very ideals that founded this blog. We went to Venice and Malibu and Westwood -- on the same day. We drove out to Pasadena. We got lost on the freeway, confusing east with west and the 101 with the 110 and the 10. It was splendid.
It was also like being on holiday in another city. Our local area -- of which I know every pavement crack, fig tree and psychic readings sign -- suddenly shrank to nothing more than a convenient junction. Left or right? We're already gone. Instead of viewing the LA metropolis as a tangled, fraying circuit-board of bus lines, it was long straight roads and freeways and parking lots.
I didn't hoard dollar bills for busfare, although I was expected to remember that we were parked in level p4, area B, space 313. Certain things faded from vision, somehow filtered by our windscreen -- homeless people, crazy people, anyone waiting on a street corner in the rain. The bus itself was no longer a glorious steamship, bearing down and rescuing us from the desert island bus stops; it was more like a dangerously decrepit old supertanker, edging up the road in a tide of traffic, foundering over to the sidewalk every block to disgorge sloppy passengers. We drove past, thought no more about it.
On Saturday, our visitors returned to England, and our Honda to Alamo. They are all greatly missed.
- We really have to get a car,
remarks Dr Strangename, a sage observation we have only made a couple of thousand times in the last six months. I nod. But not too emphatically -- we're on dangerous ground.
That's not a euphemism -- there were two visitors, and they rented a car.
[pause for reverent silence]
Yes, a car. I've been cruising around LA in a car, betraying the very ideals that founded this blog. We went to Venice and Malibu and Westwood -- on the same day. We drove out to Pasadena. We got lost on the freeway, confusing east with west and the 101 with the 110 and the 10. It was splendid.
It was also like being on holiday in another city. Our local area -- of which I know every pavement crack, fig tree and psychic readings sign -- suddenly shrank to nothing more than a convenient junction. Left or right? We're already gone. Instead of viewing the LA metropolis as a tangled, fraying circuit-board of bus lines, it was long straight roads and freeways and parking lots.
I didn't hoard dollar bills for busfare, although I was expected to remember that we were parked in level p4, area B, space 313. Certain things faded from vision, somehow filtered by our windscreen -- homeless people, crazy people, anyone waiting on a street corner in the rain. The bus itself was no longer a glorious steamship, bearing down and rescuing us from the desert island bus stops; it was more like a dangerously decrepit old supertanker, edging up the road in a tide of traffic, foundering over to the sidewalk every block to disgorge sloppy passengers. We drove past, thought no more about it.
On Saturday, our visitors returned to England, and our Honda to Alamo. They are all greatly missed.
- We really have to get a car,
remarks Dr Strangename, a sage observation we have only made a couple of thousand times in the last six months. I nod. But not too emphatically -- we're on dangerous ground.
Contrary to the tagline on this blog, I am now in possession of a work permit. Oh, yes. It says DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY on it, and it's very useful when I'm being IDed buying liquor. Since the cashier at Vons often has doubts about the validity of my namby pink EU driving license, and I don't want to carry around my passport, I feel that this function of the work permit is very nearly worth the $400 application fee. Dr Strangename has more traditional views, i.e. that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a legal alien in possession of a work permit must be in want of a job.
Frequency of blog posts will increase in direct proportion to the amount of time I should be spending on my CV, which needs to be translated into American. Power verbs! Superlatives! Give me a job so I can buy a car!
Frequency of blog posts will increase in direct proportion to the amount of time I should be spending on my CV, which needs to be translated into American. Power verbs! Superlatives! Give me a job so I can buy a car!
.
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Monday, February 28, 2011
Wake Me Up
I make some guacamole, buy a radioactive flagon of mojitos, and we sit down to watch the 83rd Academy Awards.
- What's wrong with James Franco's face?
asks my husband, thirty minutes in.
I don't know.
I thought Franco was behaving oddly during the pre-show interviews, but assumed -- he's a clever sort -- that it was some sort of hilarious bit that I was just too slow to understand.
Perhaps I am slow, because Franco's performance throughout the whole show is similarly enigmatic. His expression defies description. A statistical analysis:
80% nonplussed Keanu Reeves
15% the peevish face my cat pulls when you put something too close to his nose
5% the half-smirk Rhett Butler makes during Scarlett O'Hara's violent tempers
It really is the Mona Lisa of awards show performances. Anne Hathaway isn't too bad, albeit very GO TEAM GO perky-shrieky-yay in a way that sees me topping up my drink frequently.
Google 'James Franco Oscars' now, and the second most popular option is 'James Franco Oscars High'. Or is it a case of Occam's Razor -- simple nerves, an over-tight truss?
Monday is dull enough as it is. I give you five drug-free explanations for the James Franco Oscars Face:
- hacked teleprompter screen full of obscenities so vile they make a Mel Gibson rant look like a Charlie Sheen rant, and a Charlie Sheen rant look like a Julie Andrews song
- sentient hologram of Bob Hope wandering backstage harvesting souls
- contractually-obliged colonic irrigation immediately prior to show (Franco told it was 'standard beauty treatment, kind of like a facial')
- at the dress rehearsal, Anne Hathaway baked a metaphorical cake of rainbows and smiles, sprinkled it with ground-up cheerleaders, Wolverine's nail-clippings and Zoloft, and stuffed the entire thing, whole, into her enormous maw. Nauseated and traumatised by this, Franco decides to go the other way, method-acting a mouthful of lye-flavoured sourpatch candy
- is that... is that Kim Basinger in the wings? She's not presenting, is she? Oh dear god, no -- this is still a dream within a dream within Alec Baldwin's dream, and it's about to get stabby. WAKE ME UP!
- What's wrong with James Franco's face?
asks my husband, thirty minutes in.
I don't know.
I thought Franco was behaving oddly during the pre-show interviews, but assumed -- he's a clever sort -- that it was some sort of hilarious bit that I was just too slow to understand.
Perhaps I am slow, because Franco's performance throughout the whole show is similarly enigmatic. His expression defies description. A statistical analysis:
80% nonplussed Keanu Reeves
15% the peevish face my cat pulls when you put something too close to his nose
5% the half-smirk Rhett Butler makes during Scarlett O'Hara's violent tempers
It really is the Mona Lisa of awards show performances. Anne Hathaway isn't too bad, albeit very GO TEAM GO perky-shrieky-yay in a way that sees me topping up my drink frequently.
Google 'James Franco Oscars' now, and the second most popular option is 'James Franco Oscars High'. Or is it a case of Occam's Razor -- simple nerves, an over-tight truss?
Monday is dull enough as it is. I give you five drug-free explanations for the James Franco Oscars Face:
- hacked teleprompter screen full of obscenities so vile they make a Mel Gibson rant look like a Charlie Sheen rant, and a Charlie Sheen rant look like a Julie Andrews song
- sentient hologram of Bob Hope wandering backstage harvesting souls
- contractually-obliged colonic irrigation immediately prior to show (Franco told it was 'standard beauty treatment, kind of like a facial')
- at the dress rehearsal, Anne Hathaway baked a metaphorical cake of rainbows and smiles, sprinkled it with ground-up cheerleaders, Wolverine's nail-clippings and Zoloft, and stuffed the entire thing, whole, into her enormous maw. Nauseated and traumatised by this, Franco decides to go the other way, method-acting a mouthful of lye-flavoured sourpatch candy
- is that... is that Kim Basinger in the wings? She's not presenting, is she? Oh dear god, no -- this is still a dream within a dream within Alec Baldwin's dream, and it's about to get stabby. WAKE ME UP!
.
.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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.
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.
.
.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Exposition Boulevard
I forgot to wash any clothes this weekend; really, my housewifing standards are getting very lax. Sometimes Dr Strangename is reduced to quark-wrangling in yesterday's socks. On Presidents' Day I leave the house dressed, for lack of any other choices, in United Nations blue: blue blazer from California, blue t-shirt from Germany, blue jeans from England and blue plaid scarf from Japan. In my handbag I have a blue beret in case it starts raining again, but the storms are over; our building's swimming pool is a bright aquamarine, rippling to koi-gold in the sun.
On the streets of Los Angeles, in the Westside, the walking wounded are out again. A tall, thin man in an old-school business suit -- pinstriped with matching waistcoat, and I'm sure there's a watch in those pockets -- comes along very slowly, more slowly than anyone with business. His face says nothing. Another middle-aged man pootles past on a mobility scooter, exercising a cheerful dog that is raw and pink with a skin condition.
Sepulveda Boulevard, as I walk northbound, gets dirtier and dustier.
Bungalows offering Psychic Readings and Garage Sales turn into construction warehouses and lumberyards, with a handful of South American laborours lingering outside. They're there every day, wearing trucker caps and thick jackets, leaning against the fence, not talking; I assume this is a bad day, as it's already mid-morning and work would have presented itself by now. Cornerstone Mantels has eight Stars-and-Stripes fluttering from its roof, and a FOR LEASE sign. Nearby, The Best Little Doorhouse in Town is doing brisk business.
At my destination, I wait in an empty, high-up, doctor's office. Its inland-facing picture windows show a city panorama -- more tall mirrored buildings, SunAmerica and MGM and the Die Hard tower, and glittering lines of traffic, and usually the snowy mountains beyond. Today, even though the sky is a clean arctic blue, the horizon fades into a white blur and the mountains are invisible.
(Last week, at my volunteer job in West Hollywood, I was enjoying a similar view from a picnic table in the playground while I waited for my student. A small boy came up, stood in the herb garden and -- kicking wildly at some lavender -- remarked
- I need someone to keep me SAFE I ate too much SUGAR and now I think of SCARY THINGS.
Then he ran off shouting
- BLEEEEEEUUUUUUU.)
After ten minutes with a laptop-tapping doctor, I'm walking back down Sepulveda. I have to pass under the freeway to get home; two freeways, actually, the north-south 405 and east-west 10 that meet here in a compass-pointed rose, forming one of those looping cloverleaf patterns so beloved of LA aerial views.
But, underneath the intersection, nothing is clear, and all you know is a terrible moaning cathedral of concrete joists, shade and strange detritus: a pair of trousers snagged on a tree, a water-bottle of piss, fluttering reams of toilet paper. Abandoned vehicles are parked at the curb, with cars full of stacked trash, and a duct-taped RV covered in hand-written signs.
YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE
says one, and I hurry past before the fat man sleeping at the wheel wakes up.
The only cheerful point around here is Exposition Boulevard, regarding which I've prepared a laboured witticism: I would take Exposition, but it's long, pretty dull, and I'm not sure if it leads anywhere particular.
(Except I do know, at least, that it passes the astonishingly shabby local Postal Depot -- but why let this ruin a bon mot?)
On the streets of Los Angeles, in the Westside, the walking wounded are out again. A tall, thin man in an old-school business suit -- pinstriped with matching waistcoat, and I'm sure there's a watch in those pockets -- comes along very slowly, more slowly than anyone with business. His face says nothing. Another middle-aged man pootles past on a mobility scooter, exercising a cheerful dog that is raw and pink with a skin condition.
Sepulveda Boulevard, as I walk northbound, gets dirtier and dustier.
Bungalows offering Psychic Readings and Garage Sales turn into construction warehouses and lumberyards, with a handful of South American laborours lingering outside. They're there every day, wearing trucker caps and thick jackets, leaning against the fence, not talking; I assume this is a bad day, as it's already mid-morning and work would have presented itself by now. Cornerstone Mantels has eight Stars-and-Stripes fluttering from its roof, and a FOR LEASE sign. Nearby, The Best Little Doorhouse in Town is doing brisk business.
At my destination, I wait in an empty, high-up, doctor's office. Its inland-facing picture windows show a city panorama -- more tall mirrored buildings, SunAmerica and MGM and the Die Hard tower, and glittering lines of traffic, and usually the snowy mountains beyond. Today, even though the sky is a clean arctic blue, the horizon fades into a white blur and the mountains are invisible.
(Last week, at my volunteer job in West Hollywood, I was enjoying a similar view from a picnic table in the playground while I waited for my student. A small boy came up, stood in the herb garden and -- kicking wildly at some lavender -- remarked
- I need someone to keep me SAFE I ate too much SUGAR and now I think of SCARY THINGS.
Then he ran off shouting
- BLEEEEEEUUUUUUU.)
After ten minutes with a laptop-tapping doctor, I'm walking back down Sepulveda. I have to pass under the freeway to get home; two freeways, actually, the north-south 405 and east-west 10 that meet here in a compass-pointed rose, forming one of those looping cloverleaf patterns so beloved of LA aerial views.
But, underneath the intersection, nothing is clear, and all you know is a terrible moaning cathedral of concrete joists, shade and strange detritus: a pair of trousers snagged on a tree, a water-bottle of piss, fluttering reams of toilet paper. Abandoned vehicles are parked at the curb, with cars full of stacked trash, and a duct-taped RV covered in hand-written signs.
YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE
says one, and I hurry past before the fat man sleeping at the wheel wakes up.
The only cheerful point around here is Exposition Boulevard, regarding which I've prepared a laboured witticism: I would take Exposition, but it's long, pretty dull, and I'm not sure if it leads anywhere particular.
(Except I do know, at least, that it passes the astonishingly shabby local Postal Depot -- but why let this ruin a bon mot?)
.
.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Conversations With My Mother
It's the fortnightly transatlantic phone-call to Mother Dearest. I'm updated on the latest news from Little Village Primary School, England, where my mother has taught for the past twenty-two years. The updates are less compelling now that nearly all the teachers I remember from my time as a pupil there have either died, retired or inexplicably retrained as carpenters.
Mother Dearest is mainly concerned with Younger Sister's upcoming wedding. 'Upcoming' is relative; it's still seventeen months away.
A little bit of backdrop: the glorious nuptials of Dr Strangename and myself were not that traditional. We got married in our college chapel (variously built and rebuilt according to taste in the 1300s, 1500s and 1800s), but without bridesmaids, hymns, or sugared almonds. It was winter, and the bride wore a red Armani-knockoff dress; 'marry in red, you'll wish yourself dead', they say, although they probably don't look like a corpse bride in white.
I somehow always assumed Younger Sister would go the other way; veil copied from a magazine picture of Maria Shriver's wedding, that sort of thing.
- What does the Mother-of-the-Bride wear to an open-air wedding ceremony?
wonders my mother, who wore a shift from Whistles and a large black hat to our day.
I'm greatly enjoying discussing the technicalities of wedding planning when a) it's not mine, b) I'm 6000 miles away and can't be asked to make bunting, and c) it's not mine.
Did I mention that the field chosen for the ceremony is also an ancient, pre-Druidic (possibly Neolithic) burial site? The barrows were opened in the 1700s, and the human remains moved to the British Museum. Wade and Wade (1929) describe it as:
a remarkably fine tumulus of masonry, said to have been one of the finest in Britain, in the chambers of which skeletons have been discovered. A few vestiges of it now only remain, the rest has been used as a lime-kiln.
Mother Dearest is mainly concerned with Younger Sister's upcoming wedding. 'Upcoming' is relative; it's still seventeen months away.
A little bit of backdrop: the glorious nuptials of Dr Strangename and myself were not that traditional. We got married in our college chapel (variously built and rebuilt according to taste in the 1300s, 1500s and 1800s), but without bridesmaids, hymns, or sugared almonds. It was winter, and the bride wore a red Armani-knockoff dress; 'marry in red, you'll wish yourself dead', they say, although they probably don't look like a corpse bride in white.
I somehow always assumed Younger Sister would go the other way; veil copied from a magazine picture of Maria Shriver's wedding, that sort of thing.
But Younger Sister is going the other other way, making mine look like the average Republican-Senator's-Daughter-Crabcakes-Yachts-and-Lilies bash. She's having a non-legally-binding open-air Humanist ceremony at our family's farm, with a hog-roast and teepees and bunting. She's already started on the bunting. She plans to wear a floaty white dress and flipflops and carry sunflowers.
- What does the Mother-of-the-Bride wear to an open-air wedding ceremony?
wonders my mother, who wore a shift from Whistles and a large black hat to our day.
I'm greatly enjoying discussing the technicalities of wedding planning when a) it's not mine, b) I'm 6000 miles away and can't be asked to make bunting, and c) it's not mine.
Did I mention that the field chosen for the ceremony is also an ancient, pre-Druidic (possibly Neolithic) burial site? The barrows were opened in the 1700s, and the human remains moved to the British Museum. Wade and Wade (1929) describe it as:
a remarkably fine tumulus of masonry, said to have been one of the finest in Britain, in the chambers of which skeletons have been discovered. A few vestiges of it now only remain, the rest has been used as a lime-kiln.
Well, perhaps as my ancestors have been using it to make quicklime for several hundred years, a wedding in the vicinity won't be too disrespectful. Still. The date's set for July 2012, and anyone who's ever spent a summer in England knows that actual sun is a privilege, not a right. Younger Sister is hazy about what we'll do should it rain.
- Everyone can go into the teepees,
she says, sketching floral wreathes for her five bridesmaids. The teepees have no windows. Nearly 150 people have been invited. If I were pitching this wedding as a concept, I would say: Age of Aquarius meets Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the Battle of the Somme, with a touch of The Shining and just a hint of Dancing With Wolves.
I can't wait.
- Everyone can go into the teepees,
she says, sketching floral wreathes for her five bridesmaids. The teepees have no windows. Nearly 150 people have been invited. If I were pitching this wedding as a concept, I would say: Age of Aquarius meets Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the Battle of the Somme, with a touch of The Shining and just a hint of Dancing With Wolves.
I can't wait.
.
.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
You Wake Up At LAX
Tyler Durden gave insomnia a bad name. It's really not that terrible if you don't have a job in the morning, or any father-issue-related latent aggressive tendencies which eventually lead you to develop an alter-ego who destroys your IKEA furniture.
(And Tyler 'your condominium is holding you back' Durden would get short shrift in this household, where any savings we might theoretically possess are eternally locked up in rental deposits. Sizeable rental deposits, because we didn't have Social Security numbers when we moved in, and had to put up extra cash to reassure everyone that we were real people. I bet even Tyler Durden had a Social Security number.)
Dr Strangename has retired to bed with all the moral righteousness of the recent convert -- he was notably nocturnal throughout his PhD, which was convenient, given that he was in England and I was in Japan. Now he's a functional adult who starts work at 9am, but he still has guilty little lapses at the weekend; staying up until 4am reading football blogs and dispatching lines of code to supercomputers, then concealing it the next morning like another sorry addict.
Insomnia in California beats insomnia in Germany, hands down, because we have cable TV. I feel perfectly entitled to watch as much TV as I like, since I own many leather-bound books and several college degrees. With my magical remote, I can study Organizing With Ease, Painless Hair Removal, or Summer Sexy Abs. I could be Discovering the Bible or Exploring Society or watching Southland whilst reading the LA Times Homicide Report online and having a panic attack.
Actually, I may just put on Entourage and feel mildly depressed that that LA, the sleazy/glamourous one, is still a different country, even if I do volunteer at a school that's convenient for the Viper Room. Speaking of which, Johnny Depp was in Westwood for a premiere last night, and owes many people an apology for causing utter gridlock throughout the area. Certain non-resident legal aliens were forty-five minutes late for their Valentine's dinners, which would have caused husbands to become apoplectic had they not consumed large bottles of Asahi whilst waiting. When I finally arrived, the waiter was rather short with us, but that's ok; we're European and still forget that tipping isn't optional.
(In Germany, one of my visiting friends mistook a 0 for a 6 on our restaurant bill and inadvertently left a huge tip, which led to the young waitress giving us a stern lecture on Teutonic gratuity etiquette and essentially making my friend feel as if he'd handed her an obscene proposal on a napkin).
Is traffic any more glamorous because Johnny Depp is causing it? No. Especially not when you're on the bus.
Insomnia in California doesn't beat insomnia in Japan, though. If you want to stay up all night in Japan you'll at least have a vending machine within slipper-walking distance, and the opportunity to make ridiculous amounts of money, without compromising too many morals, doing night-shift English classes. Teaching eight lessons, from eleven pm to seven am, you pass through interesting strata of Japanese society:
Before midnight your clients are overworked or drunk or both.
From midnight till two your clients are insane.
From two till four your clients are rice farmers.
From four till six your clients are retirees who like to get in at least ten self-improving activities before breakfast.
From six till seven your clients are school children who really wish you would drop dead.
At seven you walk home though all the daytime commuters, your tiredness simply a mirror-image of theirs.
Oh god. Another trailer for Battle: LA is on the television. I don't need to see dramatizations of local landmarks being reduced to rubble, thank you very much. I have a husband here tinkering with the fabric of the universe, and did I mention my security deposit?
(And Tyler 'your condominium is holding you back' Durden would get short shrift in this household, where any savings we might theoretically possess are eternally locked up in rental deposits. Sizeable rental deposits, because we didn't have Social Security numbers when we moved in, and had to put up extra cash to reassure everyone that we were real people. I bet even Tyler Durden had a Social Security number.)
Dr Strangename has retired to bed with all the moral righteousness of the recent convert -- he was notably nocturnal throughout his PhD, which was convenient, given that he was in England and I was in Japan. Now he's a functional adult who starts work at 9am, but he still has guilty little lapses at the weekend; staying up until 4am reading football blogs and dispatching lines of code to supercomputers, then concealing it the next morning like another sorry addict.
Insomnia in California beats insomnia in Germany, hands down, because we have cable TV. I feel perfectly entitled to watch as much TV as I like, since I own many leather-bound books and several college degrees. With my magical remote, I can study Organizing With Ease, Painless Hair Removal, or Summer Sexy Abs. I could be Discovering the Bible or Exploring Society or watching Southland whilst reading the LA Times Homicide Report online and having a panic attack.
Actually, I may just put on Entourage and feel mildly depressed that that LA, the sleazy/glamourous one, is still a different country, even if I do volunteer at a school that's convenient for the Viper Room. Speaking of which, Johnny Depp was in Westwood for a premiere last night, and owes many people an apology for causing utter gridlock throughout the area. Certain non-resident legal aliens were forty-five minutes late for their Valentine's dinners, which would have caused husbands to become apoplectic had they not consumed large bottles of Asahi whilst waiting. When I finally arrived, the waiter was rather short with us, but that's ok; we're European and still forget that tipping isn't optional.
(In Germany, one of my visiting friends mistook a 0 for a 6 on our restaurant bill and inadvertently left a huge tip, which led to the young waitress giving us a stern lecture on Teutonic gratuity etiquette and essentially making my friend feel as if he'd handed her an obscene proposal on a napkin).
Is traffic any more glamorous because Johnny Depp is causing it? No. Especially not when you're on the bus.
Insomnia in California doesn't beat insomnia in Japan, though. If you want to stay up all night in Japan you'll at least have a vending machine within slipper-walking distance, and the opportunity to make ridiculous amounts of money, without compromising too many morals, doing night-shift English classes. Teaching eight lessons, from eleven pm to seven am, you pass through interesting strata of Japanese society:
Before midnight your clients are overworked or drunk or both.
From midnight till two your clients are insane.
From two till four your clients are rice farmers.
From four till six your clients are retirees who like to get in at least ten self-improving activities before breakfast.
From six till seven your clients are school children who really wish you would drop dead.
At seven you walk home though all the daytime commuters, your tiredness simply a mirror-image of theirs.
Oh god. Another trailer for Battle: LA is on the television. I don't need to see dramatizations of local landmarks being reduced to rubble, thank you very much. I have a husband here tinkering with the fabric of the universe, and did I mention my security deposit?
.
.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Valentine's Day Massacre
Valentine's Day; the couple upstairs are jumping up and down and screaming at each other in Chinese, and my Facebook newsfeed is registering 33% lamentation, 33% smuggery, and 34% propositions we all 'jus get bollok drunk LOLz'.
In the spirit of this fine occasion:
Top 5 Least Appropriate and Yet Gratifyingly Memorable Gifts From My Husband
- a 30AA bra.
(a birthday; sadly, not my 14th. Still, doesn't every woman long to re-enact the classic romcom direction: girlfriend hesitantly unwraps present, holds up improbably slight item of lingerie: Uh... what is this?)
- a box of chocolates in a brown envelope, accompanied by an aggressive note that can be best summarized 'will this fucking do?'.
(a Valentine's Day which fell during a difficult period in our relationship)- before we married, a ring-oh-not-that-kind-of-ring. Nervous laughter; awkward silence.
(a Valentine's Day which precipitated a difficult period in our relationship)- a Richard Dawkins text, or any novel with 'death' in the title.
(various impromptu moments when my mind has seemed in need of improvement)
- a burgundy fedora that Huggy Bear would consider a tad too pimpish.
(a Christmas; now kindly donated to a men's shelter in Dusseldorf)
Top 5 Gifts Received By Prima Ballerina Margot Fonteyn;
Look, I Know I've Never Danced Swan Lake, But I'm Just Saying
- a pure white kitten lying on a velvet cushion, in a basket of white orchids.
(from Roland Petit, Paris)
- a little packet containing a beautifully simple diamond bracelet.
(from Tito Arias, New York)
- a silver spoon that once belonged to Taglioni.
(from Tamara Platonovna Karsavina, London)
- a cuff of rubies, diamonds, pearls and emeralds, in a green velvet box.
(from, oh dear, Imelda Marcos, Manila)
- an otter.
(from her mother, Penang)
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Pestilent Beasts
Recently, the cats have been interrupting their standard position (reclining manatee) to scratch vigorously. Fleas. Aside from this being disgusting, it’s really disgusting because both cats are indoors-only. This means either Dr Strangename or I brought in the pestilence. How horrible -- I blame Dr Strangename, of course, due to his recent predilection for hanging around Parisian flophouses and the Haight-Ashbury.
(*The only exceptions to the two-options rule are a) preserved meats and b) beers, because in Germany you cannot possibly have enough varietals of preserved meats and beers.)
In America, of course, it’s well documented that too much is never enough. I like this philosophy, despite its potential for ruining the character and waistline. But I cannot choose between forty brands/forms of flea zapper. Trying to pick a mid-price black mascara from thirty different types of mid-price black mascara makes me tearful, and I know something about mascara.
And, dear god, there’s all the other stuff, too. This Petco is bigger than our local supermarket in Germany. There’s kitten shampoo and dander-reducing serum, and I don’t know what a dander is. Maybe we do have too much. In the toy section they’re selling a thing in a bag called a Thing In A Bag©. I chance upon the Booda Dome Clean Step Litterbox©, reduced to $32.99: ‘Scoop Up The Savings!’ (not to mention the cat shit). Then there’s the Littermaid Elite©, an automatically self-cleaning tray, advertised at $60 as The World’s Greatest Litterbox©. But what about The Universe's Greatest Litterbox? Is it here? Is it in development? Can I get a discount coupon?
Eventually I come over all European, buy a $2 flea comb, and walk back down Westwood Boulevard. Because some of Dr Strangename’s European travel expenses have been reimbursed -- don’t get me started on the pyramid scheme that is academic travel, necessitating us to shell out for international flights and hotels then eat beans for months while we dream of the big payback -- I atone for the fifty hours a week I spend reading in Barnes and Noble, and actually stop in to buy two books. One is even full price. On the way out I’m discomforted to see that the ‘For Mom’ selection of the week is apparently ‘Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land)’, a self-help book about betrayal (including some pleasing intimations that adulterers, having broken the covenant of marriage, can be trusted with no further public duties and should presumably just be pushed out to sea on an ice-float). Recommended ‘For Dad’ is ‘It’s Not Really About The Hair’, the memoir of an gay Australian beautician turned American reality show star.
Maybe when my work permit arrives I’ll apply for a job at Barnes and Noble.
I go to Petco in search of pharmaceuticals: drops, sprays, tablets, flame-throwers. There is the usual Germany/USA retail culture shock. Here comes the national stereotyping.
In Germany, whenever you wish to purchase anything, there will invariably be two options*: the expensive one that costs a year's salary but can be bequeathed to your grandchildren, or the cheap one that is already broken. Both options will be hideous, and served to you with unconcealed disdain by a shop clerk who is operating secure in the knowledge that little, short of murder-suicide, can get you fired in the Socialist Republic. You must to hurry up and making your choose, schnell, because the shop is closing in half an hour and won’t reopen until Monday; the clerk is already deciding whether to spend his undeserved Sunday off Nordic walking, strolling around the city centre in a fur coat looking in the windows of closed department stores, or drinking Killepitsch in the local Schloss Schänke. Oh, and I suppose you want a bag for that, too? Prut.
(*The only exceptions to the two-options rule are a) preserved meats and b) beers, because in Germany you cannot possibly have enough varietals of preserved meats and beers.)
In America, of course, it’s well documented that too much is never enough. I like this philosophy, despite its potential for ruining the character and waistline. But I cannot choose between forty brands/forms of flea zapper. Trying to pick a mid-price black mascara from thirty different types of mid-price black mascara makes me tearful, and I know something about mascara.
And, dear god, there’s all the other stuff, too. This Petco is bigger than our local supermarket in Germany. There’s kitten shampoo and dander-reducing serum, and I don’t know what a dander is. Maybe we do have too much. In the toy section they’re selling a thing in a bag called a Thing In A Bag©. I chance upon the Booda Dome Clean Step Litterbox©, reduced to $32.99: ‘Scoop Up The Savings!’ (not to mention the cat shit). Then there’s the Littermaid Elite©, an automatically self-cleaning tray, advertised at $60 as The World’s Greatest Litterbox©. But what about The Universe's Greatest Litterbox? Is it here? Is it in development? Can I get a discount coupon?
Eventually I come over all European, buy a $2 flea comb, and walk back down Westwood Boulevard. Because some of Dr Strangename’s European travel expenses have been reimbursed -- don’t get me started on the pyramid scheme that is academic travel, necessitating us to shell out for international flights and hotels then eat beans for months while we dream of the big payback -- I atone for the fifty hours a week I spend reading in Barnes and Noble, and actually stop in to buy two books. One is even full price. On the way out I’m discomforted to see that the ‘For Mom’ selection of the week is apparently ‘Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land)’, a self-help book about betrayal (including some pleasing intimations that adulterers, having broken the covenant of marriage, can be trusted with no further public duties and should presumably just be pushed out to sea on an ice-float). Recommended ‘For Dad’ is ‘It’s Not Really About The Hair’, the memoir of an gay Australian beautician turned American reality show star.
Maybe when my work permit arrives I’ll apply for a job at Barnes and Noble.
.
.
Monday, January 31, 2011
On the Boardwalk
- You gotta dawg you can bring him in. We gotta dawg with five heads and you can PET him,
calls the Freakshow compere on Venice Beach boardwalk. I think I might like to see this, but my husband clarifies that it's a dog with five legs, not five heads. He also reminds me that seeing The Smallest Horse In The World at an Italian streetfair in New York was a disappointment. (Save your $5: it was a young Shetland pony viewed from a raised platform.)
Nearly everyone's gotta dawg on the boardwalk today, and crossed leashes and nose-to-nose greetings are slowing our progress to the pier. Dr Strangename has no patience with hot crowds and tries to drag me off to the sidestreets, but it's better to stay near the beach in Venice. The sidestreets are full of seediness they can't get away with on the tourist-and-loon-packed boardwalk, which is saying something, since pot, botox and piggy-faced vegan militants are openly tolerated. Amongst the foot-traffic and stalls there's the odd idling police car.
- They lookin for you, man,
says an old, skinny white guy to his doppelganger on a bicycle. Both are selling feather charms, sage and good vibes. Nearby, a man in a polo shirt pretends to study a vendor's tarantula paperweight while his bulldog craps profusely all over the sidewalk.
- Clean up after your dog,
says an enraged hippy, emboldened by the support of the crowd. There are Japanese tourists, kids on pink pushbikes, shirtless surfers, girls in hotpants, rastas on rollerblades, professional stoners and junior thugs all complaining as they step around the steaming patch. The bulldog looks embarrassed.
Dr Strangename and I conduct a pointless debate about some missing parcels as best we can, pausing every few steps to make way for a skateboarder or to split around a dawdling couple. It's the end of January, and two Christmas gifts sent to us from England still haven't arrived.
- It's not our fault,
calls the Freakshow compere on Venice Beach boardwalk. I think I might like to see this, but my husband clarifies that it's a dog with five legs, not five heads. He also reminds me that seeing The Smallest Horse In The World at an Italian streetfair in New York was a disappointment. (Save your $5: it was a young Shetland pony viewed from a raised platform.)
Nearly everyone's gotta dawg on the boardwalk today, and crossed leashes and nose-to-nose greetings are slowing our progress to the pier. Dr Strangename has no patience with hot crowds and tries to drag me off to the sidestreets, but it's better to stay near the beach in Venice. The sidestreets are full of seediness they can't get away with on the tourist-and-loon-packed boardwalk, which is saying something, since pot, botox and piggy-faced vegan militants are openly tolerated. Amongst the foot-traffic and stalls there's the odd idling police car.
- They lookin for you, man,
says an old, skinny white guy to his doppelganger on a bicycle. Both are selling feather charms, sage and good vibes. Nearby, a man in a polo shirt pretends to study a vendor's tarantula paperweight while his bulldog craps profusely all over the sidewalk.
- Clean up after your dog,
says an enraged hippy, emboldened by the support of the crowd. There are Japanese tourists, kids on pink pushbikes, shirtless surfers, girls in hotpants, rastas on rollerblades, professional stoners and junior thugs all complaining as they step around the steaming patch. The bulldog looks embarrassed.
Dr Strangename and I conduct a pointless debate about some missing parcels as best we can, pausing every few steps to make way for a skateboarder or to split around a dawdling couple. It's the end of January, and two Christmas gifts sent to us from England still haven't arrived.
- It's not our fault,
says Dr Strangename, inexplicably belligerent.
- I'm just saying that it's awkward.
- I don't see why it's awkward.
We debate whether people taking the time to send gifts you never receive is awkward. I mention Wrapit.com, the wedding list company that went bankrupt, leaving guests without their money and newlyweds without their gifts, and which presumably engendered some tricky thank you notes. Dr Strangename enquires, with apparent sincerity, whether we had a list with Wrapit.com. We didn't. Did you not notice we received wedding gifts?
- I wasn't sure whether you were using that as a comparison because it also happened for us. Or if it was just a general comparison,
says my husband, as a man with a THE KUSH DOCTOR IS IN sign tries to sell me some medical marijuana.
- There's a dude there with turtles,
says a girl beside me to her friend.
- Oh, ima get a turtle. Cute ones?
- Yeah, cute, but I don't know.
- No?
- Don't they have like diseases you can get?
- Salmonella?
- Well, I'm not gonna lick it.
We all skirt around a solitary woman doing a deranged, jerky dance to no music, everyone avoiding her eyes lest the Medusa gaze of insanity lock us in stone, or a difficult confrontation.
- ...fucking fuckers don't know me, fucking know me, fuck,
says the woman to no one, her fingers flickering to the sky, as the LAPD helicopter passes overhead.
Dr Strangename and go to Island Burger for bottomless Cokes and nachos, because we're classy like that. On the way back to the beach, fizzing on caffeine and aspartame, I rant for several minutes about the poor design of the restaurant's bathrooms.
- Well, don't let it get you down,
says my husband, sarcastically. This from a man whose passionate views on throw cushions* have ruined whole evenings (*that they have no place in civilized society, or on our sofa).
Twenty minutes to sunset. We walk down to the end of Venice Pier to watch the surfers. The water is a choppy black, and it's looking like the twenty-seven-day run of sunshine in LA is ending. But there are still scores of surfers, bobbing like seals in their wetsuits, waiting with apparently infinite patience for the right kind of wave.
- How does a seagull get that fat?
asks Dr Strangename, his attention elsewhere. He's a scientist, so, of course, this is not a rhetorical question, and we discuss the finer points of avian diet on our way back to the bus stop.
.
.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Return of Dr Strangename
Dr Strangename returned from San Francisco on Friday night, filled with the joys of all-expenses-paid taxi rides and Chinese dinners.
Why is your husband called Dr Strangename?
Because a) here, no one can spell it, and b) there, no one can pronounce it.
Why is your husband called Dr Strangename?
Because a) here, no one can spell it, and b) there, no one can pronounce it.
'Here' being America: there's a Z in Strangename (obviously), and I can never remember if it's a Zed or a Zee; by the time I've got it right, someone has already written it down wrong.
'There' being my rural hometown in England: the people prefer a surname that's been intermarrying in the neighbourhood for a few hundred years, and so, after a mere decade, my family still ask 'how's... how's... your feller?'. (In their defense, it took me a while to get it right, and two years ago I infamously spelt it wrong on our own doorbell.)
Although Dr Strangename claims his name is not at all strange back in his native Birmingham, it has tended towards creating various preconceptions about his nationality, religion, mother-tongue and skin colour. One of my former bosses in England once gave a confused Indonesian man an effusive greeting and tour of the facilities, under the impression that he was my exotic spouse, while my actual spouse waited politely in Reception reading the sports section.
Should you ever be called to fetch Dr Strangename from Reception, it may help to know that the genetic combination of Turkish, English and Irish ancestry has resulted in him looking inexplicably like a pre-Hare Krishna George Harrison. My own genetic combination of Anglo, Saxon and Farmer has resulted in me looking like a round-faced milkmaid type almost guaranteed to go sharply downhill after thirty. We are hoping my genes are the recessive type.
Should you ever be called to fetch Dr Strangename from Reception, it may help to know that the genetic combination of Turkish, English and Irish ancestry has resulted in him looking inexplicably like a pre-Hare Krishna George Harrison. My own genetic combination of Anglo, Saxon and Farmer has resulted in me looking like a round-faced milkmaid type almost guaranteed to go sharply downhill after thirty. We are hoping my genes are the recessive type.
.
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Thursday, January 27, 2011
Conversations With My Husband
In honour of Dr Strangename's recent departure to San Francisco:
5 Conversational Gambits to be Avoided with my Husband
- Amusing anecdotes relating to the cats.
[= husband is bored; feels increased desire to have affairs with sorority girls]
- The Calvin Klein dress in a Macy's garment bag hidden in the vacuum cupboard.
[= ever read Little Women/Good Wives? Remember when Meg rashly spent $50 on a violet silk and told her husband John Brooke she was tired of being poor, and then he couldn't afford to buy a winter coat? Like that, but with more cussing, and it doesn't end with me returning the dress]
- Comments about the Large Hadron Collider, as gleaned from magazine articles.
[= husband laughs long enough for me to take offense]
- Questions like 'why is the Predator attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger?'
[= husband laughs long enough for me to take offense, and won't acknowledge that having missed the first 90 minutes of the film makes this a valid question]
- What I did today.
[= husband reacts with pity or other unfavourable judgements when the answer turns out to be 'posted a letter', 'nothing', or 'rose at noon and then read Tennessee Williams plays aloud in hopes of perfecting Southern Belle accent']
Topics of Conversation my Husband Prefers
- What he ate for lunch.
- Someone knows someone whose wife's work permit application took just 6 weeks.
- The precise degree and nature of his tiredness and other maladies.
- Cake is on $1 sale at Vons.
- The BlackHat collaboration.
Conversation We Can Both Enjoy
- Any beginning "When we have a car..."
.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011
No Ped Xing
No Ped Xing
No Ped Xing
say the signs along the Howard Hughes parkway, as Dr Strangename and I head to LAX this morning. We take a Culver CityBus, even though the Culver CityBus is green and therefore beyond the remit of this blog. Inching south, its passengers a Venn diagram of the aged, deranged and down-at-heel, the 6 passes through a dilapidated series of Americana. It's like being on an abandoned Disney ride, lacking only mechanical hookers waving from the windows of the pastel motels.
Over here, disheveled beauty parlors offer Fine Hair Imports and Symple Grooming. Restaurant names come in three grades: classic (Johnnie's French Dip and Pastrami; Tito's Tacos; Dinah's Diner), unappetizing (Grinders, Sizzlers, Shakers) and inexplicable (the Edelweis Chalet). After dinner you can choose between being robbed and beaten at the Tattle Tale Cocktail Lounge, or beaten and robbed at the Scarlet Lady Saloon.
While I wonder why an EZ Lube and a Jiffy Lube would set up shop within a block of each other, and which sounds ruder, Dr Strangename vacillates over the talk he must give in San Francisco and makes ill-advisedly loud comments about the welfare of his wife being alone in the city for three days. The man in front of us wakes, coughs onto the window, and folds up again. The bus runs a giddying set of circlets at the Culver City Bus Terminal, where the driver kicks down the access ramp and helps on a patron in a wheelchair, remarking
- Ain't nothing change but the date, Kenny.
Kenny laughs and laughs and laughs, and waves at the hard-luck Debbie Reynolds boarding behind him. Outside, a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty and holding a sandwich board advertising tax services walks by. You can tell we're near the airport when jumbo jets begin slaloming a hundred feet overhead.
- El Lay Eggs,
sings the driver, making Kenny laugh again, and drops us off in a dirty parking lot. The duller the city, the nicer the airport; hence, Düsseldorf airport is cold steel, white lines and has a Skytrain, and the LAX transit hub smells like piss and hobos. Blank-windowed Radisson, Sheraton and Marriots stand by it like well-dressed strangers ignoring a streetcrime. We take a shuttle to the terminal. LAX itself feels more edgy than a civilized Western airport should; perpetually lit by the slow amber tones of 1970s cop drama, its stained concrete and palm trees lend it the air of a South American dictatorship run to ruin.
Dr Strangename checks in. I go back to catch the bus home. This is the fifth time I've been to the airport since Christmas, without having once left LA; there was the Texan arrival and departure of my good friend Rodeo Girl, and then Dr Strangename had to go to France. The moment I realized that my husband's career had taken him to the Other Side -- the side where all the successful people are, networking and drinking freely from the minibar -- was when he said, with a straight face, that although it sounded like fun, it was work, and he wouldn't see much of Paris beyond hotel and conference rooms.
(His being right about this makes no real difference.)
I catch exactly the same bus for the return trip. Same seat; same sleeping man; same driver, who asks
- Didn't I just see you?
and I nod.
- Ain't nothing change but the date,
he says. Quite.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
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.
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