4 days in LA

not my neighbors 

         If I’ve learned only one thing from my wife it’s that when she has her heart set on doing something it will eventually happen.  Maybe not right away, it may take years but I’ve come to accept grudgingly that it will happen somehow some way.

Eight years ago when my wife and I first met she told me that when she graduated from college she wanted to move to Los Angeles.  At the time I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but Seattle and my answer to her was “We’ll see.  That’s three years away, anything can happen.”  A year later we moved into our first apartment together and a year after that we adopted a cat together and the following year we graduated college.  Not long after that she began discussing Los Angeles again and I did my best to ignore it and hope that I could put off the discussion for another year.

The July after we graduated I had a three week internship with the Sundance Theater Institute in Utah which would be the longest we’d spent apart in three years.  After a week and a half she called me up and told me that she and her friend would be renting a car and driving down to spend a day with me.  This was that moment that I realized that we were bonded closer than I thought, if she couldn’t spend three weeks away from me then if she was going to LA I was going to LA too. 

For the next year it was brought up and ignored a dozen times until the spring of 2007 when our college friends Joel and Annika moved to Los Angeles and at their going away party my wife Jaime expressed to them her desire to move there as well and in return they urged her and me to do the same.  I resisted and I resisted and then in July something changed I can’t pinpoint exactly what day or why, if I’d kept an honest journal I may have been able to determine what it was that changed in me but looking back on it now nearly four years later it is still a mystery to me.

By August we were definitely moving and were beginning to plan a trip to Los Angeles to look at apartments and figure out how exactly we would move our lives from the only city we’d ever known to one we’d collectively spent less than 72 hours in.  Then in September the weekend of my 24th birthday we took a trip down to LA to get a layout of the city and find an apartment.

We flew out of Seattle early on a Wednesday morning and upon arriving at LAX we rented a car and drove from the airport to Los Feliz a little area just east of Hollywood.  We avoided the freeways and instead took Western avenue all the way and looking out the window of the car at this old dirty city I wondered what exactly we were getting ourselves into.  The rumors are absolutely true, LA is a dirty, dirty city.  Driving up Western you pass dozens of oil wells, dilapidated buildings and Mexican dollar stores.  Litter clogs gutters and dots the hills, grass has been replaced by dirt, and there are no trees.  Seattle is by far the most beautiful city in the continental United States if you stand in the middle of downtown you have Mt. Baker to the North, the Cascades Mountains to the East, Mr. Rainer to the South, and the Olympic mountains to the west.  Then You have Puget sound Elliot Bay, Lake Union and Lake Washington surrounding you as well, the beauty is staggering but surprisingly easy to overlook that is until you lay your eyes upon the dirty smoggy city of LA.

Fear was filling me up as we drove to Los Feliz and I was afraid to see what our future home might look like.  However as soon as we crossed Franklin avenue and Western turned into Los Feliz boulevard everything changed suddenly there was grass and the streets were clean and to the north was Griffith park and it was green and full of trees.  This is a trademark of LA where one street will look like a third world country and the next will look like a lush tropical garden, without warning everything changes at the turn of a corner.

We were staying with Joel and Annika and upon first seeing their apartment our great search began.  Their apartment was the envy of our eye until the day we moved away from LA.  It was large about 1,000 spare feet with a large kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom, even a place for a dining room.  Immediately we were imagining what our life would be like there, to top it all off they only paid $1,000 a month in rent.  In my mind I though that surely if they were able to find this great apartment then we should be able to find something similar and if they pay $1,000 then something smaller should go for less.

Immediately lessons were learned, to start with this was the end of September and we weren’t moving in until November first.  In Seattle this is not a problem as apartments can stay on the market for moths and often landlords will often be aware of a tenants departure a month in advance.  This is not the case is Los Angeles where we were told that it was going to be nearly impossible to find an apartment a month before we were willing to move in and it also became apparent that Joel and Annika were getting a steal on their apartment and that unless we got incredibly lucky we were definitely going to be paying more than $1,000 a month.

That night we looked at our first LA apartment, a older little unit which cost considerably more than $1,000 a month.  The building featured a pool and according to the sign posted on the fence surrounding it had been closed for hygienic reasons by the city. The building included such tenants as the Dury, Benson and Eat Shit residence.  We didn’t even fill out a application hoping that in the light of day things might get a little better.  Afterwards Joel and Annika to us to a show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and then to dinner for our first In-N-Out burger.

We woke up early the following morning rejuvenated and looking to put the miserable apartment from the night before us far behind us.  The first place we looked at was on Tamarind avenue across the street from the Manor Hotel and the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre. The apartment was small and the rent was over $1200 a month but boasted a view of the Hollywood sign and hideous carpeting the color of dried blood.  We also visited an apartment listed as Los Feliz adjacent but in actuality they should have just said “located in Mexico city” as the local grocery store and street signs were all in Spanish.  We saw the exteriour of an apartment in Silverlake which seemed incredibly far away even though it was less then two miles from where we were staying, we never even saw that apartment as the manager was late to show it to us and when we called to check that we were at the right place it seemed that we were inconveniencing her by wanting to fill her vacant apartment with warm bodies.  We went to bed that night feeling that we had gotten in way over our heads and that we were never going to find anything and after making this trip down all that was left was to go home and write the whole thing off.

That following day we went to see another apartment very near by and after looking at it it seemed that we’d found some place both nice and affordable but during the application process things began to get strange.  The landlord informed us that the building did not accept pets but that we should just lie on the application, we’d not expected to find anyplace so close and did not have our information on us and left large portions of the paperwork blank.  About two-thirds of the way through I decided that I didn’t care how nice and affordable this place was something just was not right about this place and that in the end things possibly would go horribly wrong.  We finished the application and handed it to the landlord knowing that we did not want the apartment even if we got it, as it turns out we never heard from the landlord again and I still feel confident that it would have been a horrible mistake.

Things were going horribly we had a day left in which to find a place to live and we were not any closer to find that then when we first arrived.  We were just getting in the car and leaving the apartment we didn’t want when the rental agent who showed us the apartment with the view called us and told us that there was another unit in the building on the opposite side which did not have a view but did have a balcony and even better it wouldn’t be ready until November 1st.  We met her at the building again and she took us up the three fights of stairs and showed us into the apartment which was being remodeled.  When I say it was being remodeled what I mean is that the only thing in the apartment was the walls, the floor had been torn up and gathered into a heaping pile in the middle of the living room.  There was no plumbing or appliances but as was explained to us they were going to be putting in new hardwood floors a glass shower and all new appliances.  The apartment was within our price range and would be ready on the exact date we planned to move, so we filled out an application.

It was late in the day and we had no other leads and so putting all our eggs in this basket we headed off to the grocery store to buy dinner.  That evening we got the call that we did get the apartment and that we could sign the lease the following day just hours before heading  back to Seattle.  Over the last three days despite all the horrible apartments we’d seen we fell in love with this little corner of Los Angeles and couldn’t wait to pack up our life and begin again in a whole new city. 

On our last day in LA we woke up and had breakfast at what would become our favorite breakfast spot, the Mustard Seed where we had our first celebrity sighting Adrian Grenier.  It was fitting for me as Los Angeles had seemed like an enormous mystery to before I began watching Entourage and after watching the first three seasons I began to see the city differently it became a little more tangible to me, more of a possibility maybe not exactly as they lived in it through the show but a general idea of the landscape.

       We left Los Feliz and dove back down Western through this dirty city that now I couldn’t wait to move to.  Just as we were getting on the airplane I sat back in the window seat my hand gripping Jaime’s tightly and I looked out the window my heart pounding as I looked at this enormous city before more.  As we took off I looked back and thought how impossible it all seemed that I would ever find my way through this city that I would ever get my bearings but mostly that November 1st would ever get here.

christmas mediocrity

   The thing is... I love Christmas!  I love everything about it, giving and receiving gifts, the lights, the decorations and decorated trees, getting together with family, stockings hung by the chimney with care, visions of sugar plumbs... but there is another very big part of Christmas which may be my absolute favorite.  Christmas movies and music.

  What other holiday has it’s own section at the music or movie store?  They’re so incredibly marketable that they require they’re own section, though this may have less to do with trying to find the most accurate way of classifying them and more to do with the fact that most often a Christmas album or film is just not held to the same standard, instead they lean on something that I call “the Holiday Effect” by which a mediocre song or movie gets played on television and the radio not because it has any good qualities but rather because it is Christmas.

  

Can anyone name the last Christmas album to win a Grammy? As far as I can tell it was Stephen Colbert for best comedy album.  What was the last Christmas movie to win an Academy award?  Apparently when it comes time to hand out awards this genre gets forgotten, but not because they can’t be enjoyed for what they are but rather because they are intended to get you into the Christmas spirit and the Christmas spirit knows very little of good art.

Every year just after Thanksgiving I put “Christmas Vacation” into my DVD player and watch it with the same joy, laughing at the same points as I do every year.  I will continue to watch this movie at least four more times during the holidays including Christmas Eve.  For me Christmas isn’t Christmas without it and this is exactly why Hollywood continues to make these movies.  For most of us we all have these movies that we are compelled to watch during the holidays.  Some are good some are okay and some are just bad but as long at they contain at lease three of these five elements we forgive all their flaws in service to the holiday spirit.

1. Movie must contain at lease one miracle that we normally would gag at in any other movie but cry at in a Christmas movie.
2. Movie must contain snow.
3. Movie must contain some sort of fatal disease preferably Cancer which may or may not be cured by the conclusion and will depend on what kind of movie it is.
4. Movie must contain at lease one appearance by Santa Clause.
5. Movie must contain a man and a woman divorced or not getting back together or together for the first time.

  While some holiday movies may not contain three or any and those often are the stand out’s, snow often is a fail safe to get any Christmas movie in the right mood and I think you would be hard pressed to find just one which doesn’t at the very least have snow.  To sum up these movies the fact is that some are good and some are bad but I will literally watch any Christmas movie during the holidays including “The Christmas Clause”  Starring Leah Thompson in what must be one of the most cliched movies ever contrived and yet somehow amid the thousands of stories and scripts that are passing through the hands of Hollywood executives this is what gets made, and I promise you that the only reason this thing airs every year on the Hallmark channel is because as horribly awful as it might be we can’t get enough of the Holiday themed films.

Who doesn’t have a Christmas album out?  I understand why they make them, 90% of the songs on a Christmas album are classics and require no song writing at all, and all the religious hymns are public domain and require no rights to be secured.  Because we all know these songs the albums hold little surprise and make us say, “Sure I love Jingle Bells, but I haven’t heard Justin Bieber sing it,” and so he makes a Christmas album which could easily have been recorded over the course of an evening they take a picture of him wearing a Santa hat put it on the cover and print up a couple million copies.  While I couldn’t tell you a thing about any Justin Bieber song other than he sounds like a little girl, I can say I would probably listen to it, just in the same way that I can’t stand to listen to Mariah Cary but love, love, love “All I want for Christmas is you.”

There are also the so bad they’re great songs one example being Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” take all the Christmas out of that and you just have a really skull numbing jingle which is almost enough to make you forget the Paul McCartney was a member of the Beatles the most popular band of the 20th century.

All of that said we should not forget that there is great Christmas music and great Christmas movies which don’t lean on the “holiday effect” and sure we eat those up just as much as the terrible ones but there is something really festive about watching “elf” or “Prancer” or “the Santa Clause” and basking in the Christmasness of it all.

Then once in a great while something comes along which leans so perfectly on the “Holiday effect” that it should be celebrated as a true Christmas miracle.  That of course is “The Christmas shoes” originally a song by New Song it has also been made into a horrible movie starring Rob Lowe.  This movie song combination is perfect in it’s Holiday spirit, about a man who meet a dirty little boy in line at a department store who is trying to buy some shoes for his sick mother who could die at any moment.  The little boy goes so far as to ask this gentleman for help purchasing said shoes which he then does.  It may come to no surprise that the nice man and the the ailing mother get together in the movie version.  It hits on all the Christmas movie and song themes that it is almost meta christmas.

  Yes, I love all Christmas movies and music no matter how bad or good they may be.  I don’t love them equally but I will enjoy them all, even though I know that most are all marketing and that Hollywood is fully aware of the “Hollywood Effect.”  I won’t be celebrating any high art but rather will be basking in the glow of Christmas mediocrity.

the end of LA LA land

On Halloween of 2007 I was awake at 5:30 am loading my girlfriend, myself and a wailing cat into the cab of a seventeen foot U-haul bound for Los Angeles, just like the millions of naive 24 year olds before me.  On Halloween 2010 I was again awake at 5:30 am a 10 foot U-haul parked in the driveway of my apartment stuffed with boxes a few pieces of furniture and random treasures like a Millenium Falcon, a stuffed Pink Panther and the head of a bull Pinata from my 27th birthday party.  I my wife, my two cats and my dog loaded up bound for Seattle.

The trip is 1,100 miles and takes around 21 hours depending if I or my wife is driving.  When we were moving to LA it seemed like 11,000 miles and 41 hours,  I spent the whole time bouncing in my chair my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel trying to control this 17 foot behemoth behind me I couldn’t wait for this incredible unknown before me, I would have driven straight through to LA if I could have.  A new apartment, a new city I’d spent less than seventy-two hours in, no job, no family and everything was an exciting mystery.

Now moving back to Seattle things could hardly have been less similar, the trip seemed like a handful of hours and felt like we were just driving to Santa Barbara.  I was full of reservations and I spent the entire drive looking back at where I spent exactly three years of my life where I spent the bulk of my non college  adult life.  It was where I learned to live without family and all the ways in which they can be there to protect you.  It was in LA where I learned how to make new friends from scratch and make them my family away from my family.

 
I’m a nostalgic person and as we left Los Feliz (definitely the coolest place in Los Angeles) and drove through Glendale and Burbank and Valencia our truck pointed due north on I-5 a course we would not deviate from until we reached a crossroads in the Kent Valley and take the 405 for the last 10 miles of our trek home.  I found it surprisingly easy to forget things like the shitty overpriced food, the insane drivers, the completely narcissistic culture and smog.  Instead I lamented the loss of my neighborhood, the sun, my friends and the thought that just around the next corner could be something completely new and surprising.

  Seattle is still full of unknowns but they are less thrilling and honestly a little less unknown.  Seattle is home and is full of friends and family and despite having no jobs it was safe and quaint.  

I lived in Seattle for 26 years before I packed up and left it for three and a new beginning in Los Angeles, now I am moving back to Seattle for a new beginning again.  There were plans and there were goals I’m finding that rarely I follow either.