Do you have the time?

Well, I finally have DSL.. this will be a short post, but I'll post something long tomorrow or late tonight.

I arrived in Los Angeles on the 8th. The first two nights I spent at hotels. The first night was at the Holiday Inn in downtown LA. A shitty area and they charged an arm and a leg for parking.. I was so beat that day. I had a meeting at 3pm to do the lease signing for the office and a bunch of stuff at the bank as well. By 6pm, I was completely dead. I ate some crazy chicken (En Pollo Loco (sp)), drank some beer, and went to bed. Things got off to a slow/frustrating beginning.

Anyway, on day #3, I got my keys to my apartment.. but no electricity. Fortunately I was planning on going up to the bay area for the weekend anyway. Because of the long weekend, they werent going to give me electricity until the next Tuesday. I came back down from Preacherman's Monday evening, and spent the night in a dark apartment on an air mattress with a single flashlight (that ran out of batteries pretty quickly).

The next week and a half was spent on that air mattress. I had electricity, but no internet access or furniture. I gave in and bought a chair at Ikea, and I got a TV at a local auction. I added cable a week ago. Adelphia. I had hoped for satellite, but I can't see south-east from my balcony. I face west and can see directly south and north (left and right).

So, after spending many many hours at a cybercafe, I now have DSL. I still can't work out of the office because the bastards are still not fucking done renovating. They're awefully slow.

But I like LA a lot. A lot of people think I'm crazy for wanting to move here. I don't mean locals, I mean other folks. The locals seem to like it here, although they all have some complaints (as do I).

The smog situation isn't what I expected. It isn't a dirty brown smog like I imagined. It just looks like haze... like its near the ocean (and it is). So whatever.

The traffic situation isn't too bad. I am located well so I don't hit as much traffic as those commuting from San Fernando or Santa Clarita. My biggest complaint about the road situation is that they shut down too many for movies. The number of times I end up in a detour through some alley because some movie company shut down a hunk of downtown LA so that they can have some guy in a mask run around with a fake M-16. I spent 15 minutes not moving today because of this idiot. And it probably wasn't even for a cool movie. Anybody and their mother can get the streets shutdown here. You just need money.. and bad indy films can find that money too.

Also, the stars that live around here create other traffic. Crowds of people. I was out in Valencia (nice movie theatre out there btw) and I was trying to get back to my car, and there was just this wall of people at the entrance of the parking garage. I tried to go around, but just found a locked door.. so I had to push my way through. What was the crowd watching? A couple kissing on camera. Neither the guy or gal I could recognize. The camera had a round lense hood, so I doubt it was 16:9/widescreen. Makes me think that if I get some portable lights and a pair of people to do something stupid, I too can generate that size crowd. People seem to be willing to crowd around anything here.. they are very interested in the drama of other things that don't directly involve them. Car wrecks, chases.. also great crowd pleasers.

That's my only complaint about LA right now. I am developing another complaint, but I'll elaborate on that another time.