Population of the city during the day (left) and night (right)

To get the fuck out of New York.

I went to North Carolina to see Keri’s brother get married last week.  It was just about as far from the West Side of Los Angeles you can get, and a great deal further than I am totally comfortable being.  I don’t even like going to the second furthest convenience store down the block from my house.

How do I put this?  I think an illustrative, architectural metaphor is appropriate.  The wedding was held at this beautiful, historic beach mansion.  They’ve moved the entire house three times because the beach has been receeding, but there’s just too much history to let it be eaten up by the ocean.  Franklin Roosevelt stayed there, and the scrapbook in the living room has a personal letter from him.  It’s one of many beach mansions referred to as “cottages” which are pretty well illustrated through this photo set.

Down the street from the mansion, though, is one of several, franchised “Brew Thru” stores which are basically drive-through carwashes. Except that instead of cleaning your car, they just sell you booze.

This sort of weird tension was also pretty clear (opaque? plaid? seersucker?) from the fashion choices of the natives.  Suffice it to say my toe ring was not a big hit.  I packed every polo shirt I owned and barely scraped by.  But it was cool.  Frankly I had a lot of fun in the polo club atmosphere over there.

The drive to and from the wedding was excellent, too.  I forgot what plants smell like in the time I’ve been in L.A., and I can assure you, reader, that there were tons of radical, powerful, sexy things to do to break up the monotony of driving. 

I think the best anecdote from the trip (for this blog) occurred when we were playing drinking games the first night.  I was sitting next to a kid in law school that got all his shorts tailored because he didn’t want to look like “an angry 14 year old.”  They were short.  Like…way short. He had the tannest knee caps.  

Anyway, he and I were kind ribbing each other good naturedly, but we finally bonded was when he said, “That was just an abortion,” regarding an unsatisfactory answer to a question in whatever drinking game we were playing.  And, in one inappropriate swoop, I bonded everybody at the table by saying, “That’s what she said.” 

Yeah, girl.  This is a Danger Cake.  It’s shaped like a bomb and filled with chicken wings and tater tots.  Go fuck yourself.  

Ingredients: 

Some Cake Mix

Some cake frosting

A bomb-shaped cake pan

A delicous cupcake or a muffin 

A candle shaped like the fuse to a bomb

A shit ton of tater tots and buffalo wings

Ingrediatns for Danger Cake include lowball of whiskey and root beer.

Use that second part of the pan to effect a hollow for tastesplosive devices.

Go ahead and order boneless chicken wings and W-shaped tots from Wing Street.

Fill that cake with fried meat and fried potatoes.

Flip that shit onto a green plate and get yourself some muffins.

Muffin on top. Frosting on everything. Fuse in the muffin. Locked and loaded.

It rained all weekend. This city fucking shuts down when it rains.  And I love it.  I love the shutting down part, but I especially love the rain. 

Everybody at my place of work commutes 40 min. a day.  That doubles when it rains and they get grumpy which is pretty funny.  I commute about 10 and it stays the same, and I get the bonus of getting to sleep listening to the rain. 

I also love rain for its inherent drama.  Everything seems more desperate and bluesy in the rain.  “I’m going to go buy a Snickers-” (dramatic pause) “-in this godforsaken town.” Even just brooding like Hand Moody at home is infinitely more pleasurable in a steady downpour.

But probably the best thing about rain in L.A. is that L.A. never gets rain.  This is great because 1. It cleanses the air of fog and the streets of both human-made and human litter and 2. Because of a principle of classic Epicureanism. 

People tend to think of Epicureanism as being synonymous with hedonism – and it pretty much has come to mean that in our language.  But originally, it was a philosophy of pleasure that necessarily included self-denial.  Wait a long time for rain, JESUS it feels good when that rain comes.  

This is part of my fundamental nature, I’m thinking, because I love it when it rains in L.A. and it gets mildly boring fucking your mom every day. 

It’s pretty arrogant to be apartment and/or job hunting in the current economic climate. 

Me and my friends are, like, super arrogant. 

For my part, I’m mostly obsessed with apartment hunting since I haven’t been laid off (yet).  And I’ve come to some realizations about the habitations of 20-somethings in the City of Angeles. 

1. For, maybe another $200 you can get a kitchen.  Fuck that. Save your money for more important things like fire extinguishers. 

2. Minimalism is minimal.  I don’t know very many dudes or ladies that don’t have their shelves and walls completely covered in crap.  I’m the most guilty person I know - on one shelf is a card of Lance Armstrong, a turtle skull in a bell jar (available here), and an alligator head.  Also: I miss King Slut. 

3.  Living by the ocean is so phenomenal.  Me and Danger used to live in Beverly Hills/Hollywood.  There’s a lot of shit to do there (emphasis on shit).  Being able to walk to the beach every single day is, without a doubt, the lynchpin of my sanity.

4.  Probably the most important thing is I will never be satisfied with my life in general until I live in a god damn jungle tree house with a monkey butler. 

5. And, it’s gotta have a sleeping loft like in Barn 1.0. 

There’s probably something to take away from this - something about being disastisfied with one’s self and looking to fulfill said disatisfaction with a totally rad loft.  But come on.  Totally rad loft!  

2. Babysit. We all know the age-old parting parental exit phrase, “Help yourself to anything in the fridge.” Well nowadays, assume that by “anything,” they meant everything. Once you tuck the rugrats into Dreamland, eat enough to ensure you’re satiated for a week.

3. Donate blood and/or plasma. Use the blood money to buy a six pack of Pabst. Surprise bonus? Your tolerance will be at an all-time low. CHA-CHING. Now that’s economical.

I’ll make this as brief as possible.  For a more detailed description of what went down, buy me a drink at Finn McCool’s you selfish prick.  

First we were in Osaka.  It was kinda a big, cement-y city so we only stayed one night.  I got in around 4, so by the time we got checked into and got back out of the hotel, we didn’t have time for much but snacks and drinks.  

Good thing we accidentally stumbled on an ancient, secret, ninja sushi restaurant.  It had an automated, sliding steel door and we ate a bunch of nom-able sushi. We had a few drinks called “chu hi” that’re basically like jungle juice in order to deal with the fact it was all served on an entire, live fish.

The next day we road the biggest ferris wheel in the world that overlooked the Osaka harbor and also went to an aquarium with the largest single tank in the world.  It housed two whale sharks which are like normal sharks but totally fucking huge.  It also housed the largest species of crab in the world which were, you guessed it, totally fucking huge. 

Then we went to Kyoto and it was so totally better.  We were there for 3 nights, and a few highlights were this temple with “over 10,000” of these red gates.  It took us 2 hours to hike through them all. The crazy part is that this feat was accomplished because businesses were buying each of the gates to ensure financial luckiness in the future. It made me want to buy a shit-ton of rice. Also there were shrines throughout the hike with “ghost houses” that looked like Japanese bird houses.  Except one thing was different: ghosts lived in them. 

We also had New Years at an underground cave club there, which was awesome except that Little Boots lost her cell phone, but at least she liked my totally awesome New Years surprised because I kick so much ass at present-giving.  

Then we stayed two nights in the bestest of places.  It was a coastal, resort town called Shirihama. It was allegedly a tourist town, but it was off season so we pretty much had the run of this beach resort community.

There, (no joke) we saw fucking ancient pirate caves.  One Japanese pirate was like “Yo, after we pirate things, we should probably have a totally fucking rad cave to sail our boats into, live in, defend, and generally perform piratical duties in.”  The other pirates were like “totally,” so they did it. Here’s what their lair looked like from the outside. The cave is on the left side of that bay.   This is the inside.

Also, we had the best hotel of the whole trip which was 3 times the size of my apartment in Venice and had an ocean view with 2 flatscreen televisions.  The Japanese way is a simple one of graceful plenty.  And also: flatscreen televisions.  And a rice-papered breakfast nook that looks over the Pacific. Also in Shirahama were foot baths from natural hotsprings.  Our little hotel had its own private batch, but the public ones were almost as good.  Especially the one with a bar built over it.

After leaving Shirahama we spent one more lazy day in Osaka just hanging out because there just isn’t much that interested us in the big cement-y city.  

Then I took the train to the airpot, missed my plane, and spent a bonus night in the Kansai Airport Hotel where I watched a documentary on the BBC about the history of American Rock and Roll (especially its roots in the blues) that was partially narrated in Japanese. 

Fuck yourself.  

I heard some monumental news today.

Again, for those of you who follow me in real life (my, uh, friends), you’re aware of my obsession with Doctor Sanjay Gupta - the ubiquitous, brainy neurosurgeon that CNN calls upon for input regarding every medical news story. Ways to fight the common cold? He’s there. Brain surgery techniques? He’s informed. Obesity in America? He’s ready with input. The nutritional value of yams? PAGING DOCTOR GUPTA!

I bet you’re thinking, “That’s a little strange. If I were a doctor, there’s no way I could know this much about everything. Even if I were a summa cum laude med school braniac, I wouldn’t be able to speak eloquently about every medical topic that crosses the CNN news desk!” Well, friend, you’re no Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

So imagine my surprise and unequovical GLEE when my coworkers informed me that S.J. is going to be the next Surgeon General under the Obama Administration.

EEEEEE!!!!! Um … PAGING SURGEON GENERAL GUPTA!

ANY-way. Since the economy is getting the best of me and you and everyone we know, I’m scouring the job boards. But everything looks dull. Why is no one seeking a part-time, freelance, location-based SUPERHERO?

It makes me want to:
a) Throw a celebration for my famous bloggernaut companion.
b) Thank the baby Jesus that I know/share a blog with a celebtastic rising star.
c) Grow a moustache.

Answer? All of the above.