You know how they say that people with sensory disabilities (blindness...deafness...bad taste in clothes) often compensate by having their other senses heightened? Well, I'm practially blind (my vision is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20/400 without my contacts), and I've pretty much destroyed my hearing through years of standing right by the speakers at concerts (I'm short. It's the only way I can see the band). But my sense of smell rivals a bloodhound. I can tell when someone has opened a bag of potato chips or a chocolate bar from three rooms away; and the minute someone microwaves their lunch in my office, I can Name That Lean Cuisine Dinner with startling accuracy.
I grew up in New Jersey near a Nestles factory, and on rainy or overcast days, you could smell the coffee from miles away (of course I could also smell the toxic waste on the Turnpike from a similar distance, so this was a mixed blessing). I sort of got used to driving and sniffing the air for a hint of java, so I tend to notice the many smells of our nation's roadways.
The LA freeways stink. Not always in a bad way, but someone with my olfactory skills picks up on hints of scents, and I find it entertaining enough to want to write about it. Thus, I introduce to you my ongoing "Freeway Smells Report".
12/19: 6 pm - The 405 Freeway South smells like basil.
12/20: 7:45 am - The 405 North smells like toast. And like a roadside diner at breakfast time. It's not the smell of a particular food, but it's that whole mish-mash of breakfasty smells.
12/20: 5:35 pm - 405 North. Scrambled Eggs.
Oh god. Now I want a mediterranean omelette in the worst way.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
A Study in Contradictions
When I was four, I swallowed an entire bottle of aspirin. It was the orange-flavored baby aspirin that you can probably find in the house of any family with young children. I guess it was in the days before they really childproofed the hell out of all medications, or else I was particularly clever and dexterous for my age. The drama queen in me likes to say it was my first (and last) suicide attempt. In reality, it was more my attempt to be a drama queen: I was reenacting an aspirin commercial I saw, and I was putting myself through many "takes" until I got it right.
When I was uncharacteristically quiet for more than an hour, my parents knew something was wrong and came to investigate. They found me peacefully sleeping it off in grandma's bedroom. There was no lasting damage (though that early dexterity seems to have faded alarmingly — I drop just about everything I hold for more than a minute), but to this day, I can't stomach artificial orange flavoring. I love oranges, and orange juice, but the taste of orange candy or Tang still makes me shudder.
But that's the way it is with me. There has never been much consistency in my tastes. I love tomatoes and tomato sauce, but loathe tomato juice. I love most forms of music and am a big film buff, but I hate movie musicals. I love to argue with people, but I hate being around, or involved in, real fights. As a kid I ate nothing but baloney sandwiches and fast-food hamburgers (and aspirin, I suppose) and now I'm a vegetarian who wouldn't set foot in a McDonalds for coffee, let alone a meal.
When I moved to Cali, I was excited that my first job was going to be in Long Beach, because I love the ocean and have never lived more than 1/2 hour from the beach. And yet, I'm not really fond of sand, and sitting in the sun bores me, so I actually haven't set foot on a beach or in the ocean since I've gotten here.
There's a theory that the things we don't like about other people are the qualities of ourselves that we see in them (and don't always recogniaze in ourselves). So what does it say about me that I find something to dislike in everything I love? That I'm ultracritical? Probably, but I like that about me ;)
Maybe it's time to spend less time focusing on the things I hate and more time discovering what I like about new things. Maybe the glass isn't half empty or half full as much as it's still got a bit of tasty beverage left inside and I should start slugging it down. And maybe tomorrow I'll head to McDonalds, grab an orangina, and lay on the sand and see what happens.
Or I could just lay on my couch, drink a Pepsi and curse at the idiots on reality TV. That sounds like more fun.
When I was uncharacteristically quiet for more than an hour, my parents knew something was wrong and came to investigate. They found me peacefully sleeping it off in grandma's bedroom. There was no lasting damage (though that early dexterity seems to have faded alarmingly — I drop just about everything I hold for more than a minute), but to this day, I can't stomach artificial orange flavoring. I love oranges, and orange juice, but the taste of orange candy or Tang still makes me shudder.
But that's the way it is with me. There has never been much consistency in my tastes. I love tomatoes and tomato sauce, but loathe tomato juice. I love most forms of music and am a big film buff, but I hate movie musicals. I love to argue with people, but I hate being around, or involved in, real fights. As a kid I ate nothing but baloney sandwiches and fast-food hamburgers (and aspirin, I suppose) and now I'm a vegetarian who wouldn't set foot in a McDonalds for coffee, let alone a meal.
When I moved to Cali, I was excited that my first job was going to be in Long Beach, because I love the ocean and have never lived more than 1/2 hour from the beach. And yet, I'm not really fond of sand, and sitting in the sun bores me, so I actually haven't set foot on a beach or in the ocean since I've gotten here.
There's a theory that the things we don't like about other people are the qualities of ourselves that we see in them (and don't always recogniaze in ourselves). So what does it say about me that I find something to dislike in everything I love? That I'm ultracritical? Probably, but I like that about me ;)
Maybe it's time to spend less time focusing on the things I hate and more time discovering what I like about new things. Maybe the glass isn't half empty or half full as much as it's still got a bit of tasty beverage left inside and I should start slugging it down. And maybe tomorrow I'll head to McDonalds, grab an orangina, and lay on the sand and see what happens.
Or I could just lay on my couch, drink a Pepsi and curse at the idiots on reality TV. That sounds like more fun.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Another Helping of Stupidity, Please
Thanksgiving, or The Great American Gorge-a-Thon, is the time when we reflect on our lives and the things we are most thankful for. For most people, that is. I, on the other hand, view this particular holiday in light of stupidity. Mine, mostly, but occasionally others’ poor judgment, oversights and plain old bad luck factor in as well.
The combination of family, friends and the familiar comforts of home align strangely for me each and every year, culminating in a single act that generally defines the holiday weekend. Some years, it’s something minor: my drivers license, accidentally thrown away a few days earlier, is discovered after a frantic search the day before having to use it as ID to board a plane; or my car dies, stranding me at my parents’ house before another plane trip. Other times, it’s convenience that is lost: After a domestic “accident”, I sprained my ankle on Thanksgiving eve, two days before my first real business trip. Said accident was caused by an ill-advised regression to childhood — my sister, Dana, and I were jumping on my mom’s new couch and I fell off. Not so uncommon, I suppose. Children often get hurt while roughhousing. Except that I was 26 years old at the time. As a result, my first shot at proving my business savvy and overall maturity became more of a comic punchline than a success.
Another time, my boyfriend’s romantic gesture of driving onto a beach in Florida for a private afternoon stroll resulted in our getting stuck in wet sand. After trying to dig and force our way out, a passing tow truck pulled us to safety, only to have its grappling hook get stuck in our bumper. We had to wait for someone to arrive with a crowbar to pry it off, nearly taking off the bumper in the effort.
But the epitome of Thanksgiving Doom has to be the year my family got locked out of our house after returning from dinner at my cousins’ house. A freak power failure rendered the electric garage door — our standard entry point — useless, and since we never use the front door, no one had thought to bring a house key. After two hours of sitting in the car waiting for the power to come on, we got tired of family togetherness and decided to take matters into our own hands. My dad dislodged a patio brick and smashed in the glass door in the backyard, setting off our blaring home alarm system and scaring the bejesus out of me. We walked into the house, turned off the security system, called our monitoring service to report the false alarm, and then collapsed in tears and laughter as the power immediately came back on.
This year was my first Thanksgiving as a Californian, and since my journey so far had already been mired in bad luck and stupidity, I thought maybe it would be best to spend the weekend in controlled isolation, in the safety of my bed. But my sister had planned a small gathering and a large dinner, so I decided to try and beat the odds and venture out. I didn’t hit any traffic on the drive from Long Beach to LA, dinner was prepared to perfection and mutual enjoyment, and everyone was having a good time. Then the call came in.
My sister’s friend Alicia had been planning to drive to Arizona to meet her husband and in-laws for the holiday. She was en-route when she noticed her car was acting a little wonky. She decided to turn around and head home, rather than risk the car breaking down in the middle of the desert somewhere. Not long after she did her about face, some other cars were signaling to her that her tires weren’t right. She was pulling over to the side of the freeway, when her tire shot right off her car, across four lanes of traffic, jumped the divider, and lodged itself under a Winnebago going in the other direction. Miraculously, no one was hurt and there was no major damage to either of the vehicles (except for the obvious lack of tire on her car).
Alicia got home and called us to say she would be joining us for dinner, once her heart started beating at a more regular pace. I was floored. This seemed like the sort of thing that could only happen to me and my family on Thanksgiving. It had all the classic signs: random events that cause stress, but no permanent damage; bizarre and unlikely circumstances; and the resulting story to share for the entertainment of holiday guests…once the adrenaline had dissipated enough for speech to resume.
At this point, I thought of The Thanksgiving Stupidity Curse, and I was going to mention to my sister that maybe Alicia took a bullet for us this year, sparing us from experiencing the curse for ourselves. Just then, Dana burst into the yard to tell me that the love of her life, her eight-pound dog, Nemo, was missing.
Nemo is a funny little love of a dog who never lets his one gimpy leg get in the way of a good romp. And just because he leads the most loved and spoiled life possible for any dog, doesn’t mean he won’t jump at the chance to escape out an open door and explore a bit of the big world. Since he’s so small, it’s easy to overlook him if you’re not watching, and with all the party guests coming in and out, he must have slipped out at some point.
Our guests were all drinking and talking in the yard, but Dana has an uncanny sense for knowing when Nemo’s in trouble, and somehow she just felt that he wasn’t in the house. She went in from the back yard to look for him, and immediately panicked when he wasn’t in his usual spots. She came out to get me, and we both went flying through the house and out the front door to look for him.
It only took one or two calls from his mama to get Nemo to come prancing home from his neighborhood adventure, tail wagging and tags jangling. He was scooped up and smothered with hugs and kisses from a near hysterical Dana, while I calmed her with the knowledge that he was home and was safe and that all is well that ends well, especially on Thanksgiving…until next year.
The combination of family, friends and the familiar comforts of home align strangely for me each and every year, culminating in a single act that generally defines the holiday weekend. Some years, it’s something minor: my drivers license, accidentally thrown away a few days earlier, is discovered after a frantic search the day before having to use it as ID to board a plane; or my car dies, stranding me at my parents’ house before another plane trip. Other times, it’s convenience that is lost: After a domestic “accident”, I sprained my ankle on Thanksgiving eve, two days before my first real business trip. Said accident was caused by an ill-advised regression to childhood — my sister, Dana, and I were jumping on my mom’s new couch and I fell off. Not so uncommon, I suppose. Children often get hurt while roughhousing. Except that I was 26 years old at the time. As a result, my first shot at proving my business savvy and overall maturity became more of a comic punchline than a success.
Another time, my boyfriend’s romantic gesture of driving onto a beach in Florida for a private afternoon stroll resulted in our getting stuck in wet sand. After trying to dig and force our way out, a passing tow truck pulled us to safety, only to have its grappling hook get stuck in our bumper. We had to wait for someone to arrive with a crowbar to pry it off, nearly taking off the bumper in the effort.
But the epitome of Thanksgiving Doom has to be the year my family got locked out of our house after returning from dinner at my cousins’ house. A freak power failure rendered the electric garage door — our standard entry point — useless, and since we never use the front door, no one had thought to bring a house key. After two hours of sitting in the car waiting for the power to come on, we got tired of family togetherness and decided to take matters into our own hands. My dad dislodged a patio brick and smashed in the glass door in the backyard, setting off our blaring home alarm system and scaring the bejesus out of me. We walked into the house, turned off the security system, called our monitoring service to report the false alarm, and then collapsed in tears and laughter as the power immediately came back on.
This year was my first Thanksgiving as a Californian, and since my journey so far had already been mired in bad luck and stupidity, I thought maybe it would be best to spend the weekend in controlled isolation, in the safety of my bed. But my sister had planned a small gathering and a large dinner, so I decided to try and beat the odds and venture out. I didn’t hit any traffic on the drive from Long Beach to LA, dinner was prepared to perfection and mutual enjoyment, and everyone was having a good time. Then the call came in.
My sister’s friend Alicia had been planning to drive to Arizona to meet her husband and in-laws for the holiday. She was en-route when she noticed her car was acting a little wonky. She decided to turn around and head home, rather than risk the car breaking down in the middle of the desert somewhere. Not long after she did her about face, some other cars were signaling to her that her tires weren’t right. She was pulling over to the side of the freeway, when her tire shot right off her car, across four lanes of traffic, jumped the divider, and lodged itself under a Winnebago going in the other direction. Miraculously, no one was hurt and there was no major damage to either of the vehicles (except for the obvious lack of tire on her car).
Alicia got home and called us to say she would be joining us for dinner, once her heart started beating at a more regular pace. I was floored. This seemed like the sort of thing that could only happen to me and my family on Thanksgiving. It had all the classic signs: random events that cause stress, but no permanent damage; bizarre and unlikely circumstances; and the resulting story to share for the entertainment of holiday guests…once the adrenaline had dissipated enough for speech to resume.
At this point, I thought of The Thanksgiving Stupidity Curse, and I was going to mention to my sister that maybe Alicia took a bullet for us this year, sparing us from experiencing the curse for ourselves. Just then, Dana burst into the yard to tell me that the love of her life, her eight-pound dog, Nemo, was missing.
Nemo is a funny little love of a dog who never lets his one gimpy leg get in the way of a good romp. And just because he leads the most loved and spoiled life possible for any dog, doesn’t mean he won’t jump at the chance to escape out an open door and explore a bit of the big world. Since he’s so small, it’s easy to overlook him if you’re not watching, and with all the party guests coming in and out, he must have slipped out at some point.
Our guests were all drinking and talking in the yard, but Dana has an uncanny sense for knowing when Nemo’s in trouble, and somehow she just felt that he wasn’t in the house. She went in from the back yard to look for him, and immediately panicked when he wasn’t in his usual spots. She came out to get me, and we both went flying through the house and out the front door to look for him.
It only took one or two calls from his mama to get Nemo to come prancing home from his neighborhood adventure, tail wagging and tags jangling. He was scooped up and smothered with hugs and kisses from a near hysterical Dana, while I calmed her with the knowledge that he was home and was safe and that all is well that ends well, especially on Thanksgiving…until next year.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Omigod! I think I'm Bi-Coastal
So why did I leave the East Coast? I always say that it was because I hate the cold. And I do. Passionately. I hate wearing 10 layers of clothing to get the mail. And every morning that I froze my ass off to scrape and brush and warm the car before it would splutter to life and shake off the icicles that encapsulated it in the morning dew, I promised myself it was the last year I would put myself through that. But though I’ve always hated cold weather, I never seriously entertained the idea that I would follow through on my threats to leave New Jersey (the whirling vortex of doom).
This time it was different.
The signs were there that it was time to trade in most of my existing life for what's behind Door Number Two. My sister, the lifelong Manhattan-a-phile, had made the move a year before and was no worse for the wear. Sure she professed her difficulties in finding friends and constructing a social circle that rivaled the one that thrived for her in New York. But she did that in between attending parties at the Playboy Mansion and learning to snowboard. It was different for me. I never had problems making friends, but I also never held being social in too high a regard. One or two close friends were enough companionship, and with my boyfriend making the move with me, I expected that he would keep me in sufficient company. Or charm his way into friendships that he would then share with me. Besides, my friends were all starting to settle into their lives, starting new families, making great strides in their careers. For me, all of these things seemed stagnant and in need of an infusion of NEW.
I thought I was ready to leave my old life behind and start all over in California. In LaLaLand, I could reinvent myself. Maybe do all the things that my Jersey rut seemed to keep me from remembering I wanted to do. I packed my things, said my goodbyes to friends and family, prepared myself to find new apartments, discover new roads and new scenes, meet new people. Find a new job to sustain me, and complain about. And it all seemed to be coming together at an alarming pace — more signs that I was making the right decision and that luck would be on my side, for the first time ever.
But little by little those signs started blinking yellow and waiting for someone to direct the traffic in my mind. I had taken a New Job in a New Field. Yet almost immediately I found myself in the old familiar scene of working in a place where everyone was miserable, and for good reason.
And then the lights suddenly turned red, and it was too late for me to put on the brakes. My boyfriend, it seemed, was also a bit overwhelmed by all the change. He couldn’t stop me from leaving, and wouldn’t break up with me, so instead, he broke up with his sanity and sobriety. Maybe he’ll get himself back together and will join me in the Golden State of Confusion. Maybe it will happen soon. Maybe it won't happen at all.
So for now, I’ve teamed up with the virtue of solitude and a lot of second guessing. But fuck it, at least the weather is damn near perfect, and there have only been 6 earthquakes since I got here. Things are looking up already, and I’m sure I’ll find lots of things about LA that make me glad to be here.
This time it was different.
The signs were there that it was time to trade in most of my existing life for what's behind Door Number Two. My sister, the lifelong Manhattan-a-phile, had made the move a year before and was no worse for the wear. Sure she professed her difficulties in finding friends and constructing a social circle that rivaled the one that thrived for her in New York. But she did that in between attending parties at the Playboy Mansion and learning to snowboard. It was different for me. I never had problems making friends, but I also never held being social in too high a regard. One or two close friends were enough companionship, and with my boyfriend making the move with me, I expected that he would keep me in sufficient company. Or charm his way into friendships that he would then share with me. Besides, my friends were all starting to settle into their lives, starting new families, making great strides in their careers. For me, all of these things seemed stagnant and in need of an infusion of NEW.
I thought I was ready to leave my old life behind and start all over in California. In LaLaLand, I could reinvent myself. Maybe do all the things that my Jersey rut seemed to keep me from remembering I wanted to do. I packed my things, said my goodbyes to friends and family, prepared myself to find new apartments, discover new roads and new scenes, meet new people. Find a new job to sustain me, and complain about. And it all seemed to be coming together at an alarming pace — more signs that I was making the right decision and that luck would be on my side, for the first time ever.
But little by little those signs started blinking yellow and waiting for someone to direct the traffic in my mind. I had taken a New Job in a New Field. Yet almost immediately I found myself in the old familiar scene of working in a place where everyone was miserable, and for good reason.
And then the lights suddenly turned red, and it was too late for me to put on the brakes. My boyfriend, it seemed, was also a bit overwhelmed by all the change. He couldn’t stop me from leaving, and wouldn’t break up with me, so instead, he broke up with his sanity and sobriety. Maybe he’ll get himself back together and will join me in the Golden State of Confusion. Maybe it will happen soon. Maybe it won't happen at all.
So for now, I’ve teamed up with the virtue of solitude and a lot of second guessing. But fuck it, at least the weather is damn near perfect, and there have only been 6 earthquakes since I got here. Things are looking up already, and I’m sure I’ll find lots of things about LA that make me glad to be here.
LA-LA-Love Ya
Six months ago, I moved to Southern California. It’s taking a lot of getting used to. And it’s more than just the weather (damn near perfect. All the time), the traffic (yes, it’s as bad as everyone says. Even at 2 a.m. it can be worse than Manhattan traffic at rush hour), and the fact that the ocean is on the wrong side. The people, and their priorities, seem to be collectively skewed — which is strange for a location where a large portion of its residents are non-native to the state (or the country, or this planet, as it sometimes seems). It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing — it just gives more fuel to my theory that the world is a parade of oddities, here for me to gawk at.
For example, our Governor, recently passed a law to protect the “famous people” from other people who want to take their pictures. I now live in a state where such people kill their wives (and their wives lovers), build private backyard theme parks (where they can molest children), swap their dogs — and their noses — for something smaller (and swap other parts for the larger models…), and spend their lives trying to be recognized and admired by as many people as possible, only to spend just as much time distancing themselves and fencing themselves off from those same masses. You would think our elected leaders would want to rise above the idiocy and spend their time on the more pressing issues that plague this diverse and damaged state. But they don’t, and that’s what makes this such a fascinating and fulfilling place for people like me, who thrive on complication; and live to point out life’s discrepancies and notable inanities.
For example, our Governor, recently passed a law to protect the “famous people” from other people who want to take their pictures. I now live in a state where such people kill their wives (and their wives lovers), build private backyard theme parks (where they can molest children), swap their dogs — and their noses — for something smaller (and swap other parts for the larger models…), and spend their lives trying to be recognized and admired by as many people as possible, only to spend just as much time distancing themselves and fencing themselves off from those same masses. You would think our elected leaders would want to rise above the idiocy and spend their time on the more pressing issues that plague this diverse and damaged state. But they don’t, and that’s what makes this such a fascinating and fulfilling place for people like me, who thrive on complication; and live to point out life’s discrepancies and notable inanities.
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