Oscars Road

We are here in Los Angeles coping already with the Academy Awards preparations, though the show is not to happen until Sunday. They shut down a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard a week in advance, which is naturally an inconvenience to people who live, work and recreate in that area. it's not a horrible problem for me, though the buses must detour just as the private cars do. Still, it's not a big deal for me except for if I should have an audition at one of the casting facilities south of there.

A problem on the day of the ceremony for me is that they shut down the subway station that falls within the security perimeter. Trains pass through in both directions without stopping. That is, I should say, only a problem if I actually need to be somewhere around that station. The odds are that I won't. I could need to be in Hollywood, but it would be to visit iO West nearer to the Hollywood and Vine station.That shouldn't be a problem.

Of Personal Interest

Los Angeles can be a difficult place at the best of times. I love it here, but one who has achieved maturity loves with full knowledge of the good and the bad in something. There's plenty of bad in Los Angeles, and I managed to experience a lot of the bad points in the midst of what was really a good day the other day. Because it's in my nature, I'm going to focus on the bad things. Why is it that so many of the good things in life are things you can't talk about?

Naturally it was raining. I expect it's raining here today, although as you know I often write in advance of weather making good on the weatherman's promises. When it's raining, I am like most Angelenos in that I prefer to hole up at home until it's over. I have always enjoyed the rain's peculiar beauty from the inside of a window. Growing up in a desert, I valued the rain's preservation of our fragile existence, but woe betide the rain that fell on me.

Close Enough Call

A friend of mine, in whose car I was riding, expressed his regret that he had neglected to buy gas in the area we had just left. This was the other night, and I was naturally eager to get home. I had a full day facing me the next day, and while there's no good time to run out of gas, this was for me at least as bad a time as any. I asked whether he was in fact close to running out, and he confirmed that. I glanced over at the needle and saw that it was at or below the "E".

I don't know that I've ever run out in a really ruinous place. An LA freeway is a bad place to run out of gas, although I guess a remote spot on a rural highway could be worse. I did come close to a thing like that. Years ago when I was working at a summer camp, I somehow got back to camp from the town around thirty minutes away with very little gas. There was probably not enough to get back to tow. I was lucky that the camp ranger allowed me use of his pump.

Job And A Half

You see very interesting things if you linger where people are to be found. The other night, I had just finished doing some grocery shopping. I hit my limit for being in a store just minutes in due to the crowds, but soldiered on and got my food. On my way out, I noticed a truck pulling into the parking lot. I resolved to stay for a moment and watch the truck pull into the loading dock. I think it's a remarkable thing to see done, which I'm sure sounds odd.

It's tough to maneuver a truck, taking a skilled driver under the best of conditions, which these were not. At this grocery store, the loading dock is in the front, right by the entrance. Ideally it would be in the back, far from customer parking. Well, that building seems to have no back, making things harder on the truck drivers. I knew it would be a sight to see this truck pull in, and what I saw over the next minutes was that for sure.

Down There

There is an element of life in this apartment building that I am not a part of and I do not see that changing terribly soon. On the ground floor there is a parking garage. Our unit is granted two parking spaces, neither of which do I use myself. Not having a car, it's easy to leave those spaces to the two who do. As a consequence, I have very little reason to go down there to the garage. Still, I sometimes wind up passing through.

That is where the garbage is, and I occasionally am the one to bring recycling down there (with the trash just going down the garbage chute). I also sometimes duck through the garage when I see someone lingering around the main entrance that leads through the lobby. Letting in strangers is generally discouraged, and so the easiest thing to do is to take the passive-aggressive path of least resistance. It works.

The Useless Feature

I have an inveterate jerk roaming the streets out there to thank for my inspiration today (but let me come back to him). If I understand correctly, the car horn was not invented as the abusive cudgel we know it to be today. At the dawn of the automobile age, it was a benevolent invention meant to send out a happy 'Hello' to other motorists encountered on the road. It seems probable that there were so few that any meeting was a celebrated occasion, akin to two Englishmen crossing paths someplace far from home.

Today the horn is at best a jarring but well-intentioned spur to get going at a light. At worst, it is everything else a driver does in response to the vicious, despicable other drivers populating the roads. Now, as to that jerk: Looking out my bedroom window produces a view of the adjacent building and beyond that, the next side street. Off in the distance is the next major cross street. Somewhere out there is a man who saw fit to lean on his horn for an uninterrupted period of some minutes.

Car Watch

Something we did our first full day in Sarasota, my father and I, was to do some driving around town. It was marked substantially by awe at how little there was left in that area of town, and this got us into some discussion of partisan economic policies, but we were not entirely in the doldrums. In addition to locating the area where he and his family had often vacationed during the 60s, we came upon a modest car museum. The reality is that whenever you spot a building with cars on the roof, you have to stop.

We wandered in seeing no one in particular appearing to be in charge. It was a bit musty and dark apart from light entering through windows. The cars to be seen were to my eyes an uneven bag, but Dad had some appreciation for or awareness of about everything there. Most important to him were restored models of his own project car, but also of great interest were a variety of classic American, British, German and Italian cars of various vintage. The thing I can't stop thinking about was this diminutive yellow and green monstrosity which looked to me something like the car which would have brought Oakland A's relievers out to the mound in the '70s.

Bump Or Stick Her

I ride in a lot of people's cars, and they seem to blend together in my memory. You'd think I would know everyone's cars, but I don't. I'm always walking strategically behind the driver of whatever car so that hopefully they don't notice my ignorance. I am quicker to observe details about the cars of strangers, be they parked or in motion. Something interesting is bumper stickers. I may not be the first person to comment on them, but I will have my say in any case.

To me, bumper stickers are a lot like cats. The more you have, the more cause there is for people to worry about you. It seems like all of them out there now are of a political nature, when once they were strictly humorous. One is probably fine, especially if it is for an active election campaign, but each one after that is more reflective of an unhinged mind. Worse still, each one increases the odds of your car being defaced in your absence as an answer to your political expression. I don't think it's worth it.