Buffalo Nickel

Well, I got back from Los Angeles last night. Very interesting place.

I can't think of another place I've ever seen that can be so ugly and so beautiful at the same time. Malibu's beautiful, the rolling hills in central California are pretty astounding, the weather's reliably nice day after day, and the city has a crass sort ofmajesty at night. I didn't notice smog. Despite that, though, the city seemed fairly consistently dirty - and sort of yellowed, like an old paperback. The entire place is sprawl, like one of the five boroughs stretched out into an entire city. Highways are ugly. I couldn't feel any sort of palpable character, the sort of thing you notice in NYC, Boston, or London.

Nice women, very flirtatious. Not as attractive as the ones I saw in Phoenix during my flight transfers,though. I don't know if there was some sort of Hot Young Girls convention in Arizona going over the weekend or something, but goddamn. Must be something in the water, fluoride, I dunno.

The Chevy Malibu is a pretty good car. I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me, nice overall package. I wasn't sure if I was actually going to be able to do all the vicious irresponsible things to the rental car that I was hoping for, but early Monday Morning (3am), heading down from Monterrey back to Los Angeles, I was able to get the car going sideways a couple of times on Highway 1, fun stuff.

Not exactly smart though, Highway 1 is this long, long road that travels alongside the Pacific Ocean, often on cliffs a hundred or so feet above the water. No barriers, very, very curvy. No one was driving on it that night - the highway's probably about 80 miles long, and I saw about 3 cars, 1 that passed on the left, two that I overtook on the right side of the road. I saw about 10 cars just parked out on the side of the bluff, lights out.

The experience was odd, hurtling along this curvy road in the middle of the night - pitch black out, cloudy, no stars, so I couldn't exactly see the ocean - there was just this enormously inky well of, what, blackness covering up my right field of view.

I managed to almost strand myself in the middle of nowhere, also. I headed onto Highway 1 with about a quarter-tank of gas, expecting to find a gas station at some point. In fact, there weren't any 24 hour gas stations on the road. So, about a third of the way through the drive I hit empty, kept driving, seeing nothing around me, not knowing when I'd run out of gas. Eventually, after I had driven for what seemed an absurd amount of time on E, I stopped atthis little motel, figuring that it was better to stay there than to actually have the car stop 10 miles away from anything. I wanted to go ahead, but I guess, I dunno, common sense, fear, whatever, won out.The motel had a gas station, but it wouldn't open until 8am - by which time I would have waited too long to actually catch my flight. The motel's name, and the area in which it was in, was, get this, "Ragged Point". There were cars outside, but the place was completely dead, no lights on, no one in the lobby. http://www.raggedpointinn.net

Ah, yeah, I left Monterrey around 3am and had to make it to Long Beach by about 11am. Ended up calling a tow truck to come out and bring me gasoline, and while I waited, I got bored and decided to see how far I could get before actually running out of gas. Restarted the car, headed off, and somehow I made it another 12 miles and actually hit a gas station that, while still closed, had a pump that accepted credit cards and was operational. Odd little experience - I felt like kicking myself, though, for not attempting to go further.

On Saturday, I think it was, I got up early to go look for an americano (I couldn't sleep, guess it was jet lag). I drove around for what seemed like forever, and eventually ended up at a Starbucks in West Hollywood. West Hollywood is the gayest place on earth. Guys wearing leather vests and no shirts riding around on funny-looking bicycles, groups of Hispanic guys that would've looked like a gang (that sort of clothing) if not for the fact that they were giving each other backrubs in the middle of the store, I dunno. A guy in a pink suit with some sort of multi-colored fro. There was a theather that had a poster that said "Homo Sweet Alabama 2". A large African-American woman who was making the drinks who looked pretty angry until I came up to take the Americano - then she smiled and called me "sweetheart" or "honey" or something like that. Completely fucking absurd. There were a bunch of stores that sold seemingly normal things but had really gay names - like, I dunno, "Tools A'Plenty" or "The Oil Can" for a hardware store, that sort of stuff. I wonder if men and women act like that in the real world and I just don't notice it or something.

The fast food was terrific. In and Out is excellent, as good as it's supposed to be - lives up to the hype in a way Krispy Kreme doesn't. Very fresh ingredients, tasty, polite, solid milkshakes, so on. El Pollo Loco impressed me more than even In and Out, though - better, more interesting flavors, solid food, great. There was a place with Chili burgers that was good too.

Hm, what else. I was impressed by everyone's apartments there. Nice places, nice areas.

The job interview that got me out there in the first place went well, very well, in fact. The woman who arranged the whole thing called me today, left a message, asking me to return the call - I imagine she'll ask me to take the job, don't know if I will.

Anyways, I had a good time, and I appreciate the hospitality of everyone there. Fine place to visit.

Stone