emotional letdown

i love change

I don’t like change, I resist until it is literally forced upon me.  Even when that change is a positive one, it can be both time consuming and laborious, I, am lazy and sentimental, and am known to spend long hours thinking about the way things were.  This probably explains why I spent long hours recently reminiscing about life in Los Angeles.

Before Jaime and I moved to LA we lived in the University District in Seattle.  The U-District is the area surrounding the University of Washington and we loved living there.  Everything was within walking distance, there were dozens of great restaurants, three bookstores, two grocery stores, a farmers market across the street from us, and best of all the rent was cheap.  The upsides to the area made it possible to deal with the annoying downsides; the drunk college students, drunk homeless people, and the Ave Rats (drunk high school students who pretended to be homeless).

Then we moved to LA and missed our neighborhood, I spent long hours reminiscing about our life in Seattle.  When we returned to the U-District three years later it was like returning to a war ravaged Bosnia, only instead of bombed out buildings we found that everything had been gentrified by the Yuppie army.  Many of our favorite restaurants had been forced out of business by the rising costs doing business in a developing neighborhood.  What hit Jaime and I the hardest was finding out that our favorite restaurant had moved.

Mamma Melina’s was a little Italian family restaurant on Roosevelt and 50th just beneath the 7 Gables theater.  The first time we ate there Jaime and I fell deeply in love.    The building was old with authentic cracked walls, antique tables and chairs complete with the red and white checked table cloths.  It was like a dark little hole, perfect for a romantic evening lit almost only by candle light.  This was the kind of place where you could find pictures of the owner and his sons posing with the restaurants most famous patrons, Paul Sorvino, Jack Nicholson, Detlef Schrempf.

Tucked away in a secluded corner was a small piano and on many evenings an Elvis Costello look alike could be found pounding away at the keys. On one occasion I remember an accordion player who squeezed out requested songs while dancing between the tables.

To describe the atmosphere alone is to sell Mamma Melina’s severely short.  Their food was spectacular, like a hearty home cooked meal made by the Italian grandmother I never had.  My favorite dishes were the Veal Saltimbocca and the Ricotta Cheese Gnocchi, both were an explosion of flavor and texture.  The bread was truly unique and absolutely unmatched, Jaime and I would have to insist the waiter not bring us another warm basket.  Their wine selection was wonderful and poured with such delicate grace it made me feel like I was eating at a five star restaurant.

The prices were so reasonable that there was no need for it to be a special occasion restaurant, soon we were eating dinner there once a week.  Jaime and I both had our twenty-third  birthdays there, our third and fifth anniversaries, on Valentines Day and New Years Eve they had a fixed four course dinner.  Jaime and her girlfriends met there on Wednesdays for food and bottle after bottle of wine.  When they began serving lunch I could often be found sitting in the window enjoying pasta and writing in my notebook.

After a while the son who ran the restaurant began to recognize us and always made a point of stopping by our table and chatting, before we moved he told us how much we would be missed.  It was a wonderful feeling to be able to go some place we already loved so dearly and be treated like a family member.  The week of our wedding Jamie and I made reservations for a date night (our last as a non-married couple) we ended up inviting my parents and brother, it felt right to have my real family there.  Had I known this would be the last meal I would enjoy at that location I would have given the whole meal more appropriate reverence.

This last November we drove by saying to ourselves, “I can’t wait to go back,” only to find the windows covered with yellowed newspaper.  Later we were told they’d moved a few miles away, in a newly constructed building.  While people tried to convince us they were still the same great restaurant just in a new location, we were skeptical.  I wanted to believe them but just like the latest Star Wars trilogy or the Disney channel version of Doug, the original was better.

For five months I resisted the change not wanting to eat there wishing to remember it as it was.  Until this past Saturday when Jaime mentioned it as a dinner choice.  Neither of us were truly ready, we talked about Mamma Melina’s like she was an ex-girlfriend we hadn’t seen in public since the break up.  Not wanting to see her new sexy body or her new lovers who knew nothing of the incredible evenings we’d spent with her.

We bit the bullet, knowing that we couldn’t avoid it forever, knowing that she was still out there without having partaken in what she had to offer would just fill us with sadness.

Driving by her new location the changes were already appearing exceptionally dramatic.  Jaime leaned over and asked me if I was sure I was ready, she asked me but she was also asking herself.  I wasn’t, but truth be told, I would never be ready.

It was hard not to notice first how large she was, you could fit a dozen of the old location inside and still have room for the kitchen.  She was also sexier, with big white classic looking chandeliers, modern tables and chairs, and sterile gray walls.  It could have been one of a million restaurants anywhere in the country.  The only hint of her former self was the big Italian paintings which were now strapped to the ceiling tiles.

We sat down and I could literally feel my heart breaking.  Jaime who was trying to be positive about the whole situation could see my discomfort and asked if I wanted to just get a glass of wine and go.  I was determined to show that I could be accepting of change and go with the flow and declined her offer.

The menu had changed and fittingly my two favorite dishes got the axe.  Perhaps the most sacrilegious change was the bread which was generic and unremarkable.  I could almost feel tears welling up in my eyes, I expected and was prepared for change, just not this much of it.  The staff wore matching uniforms and moved about like well oiled machines, a far cry from the chaotic dance required to serve food in the old location.

Jaime and I reminisced about the old Mamma Melina’s, the wonderful times we’d had there and how absolutely nothing was the same, when a thought crossed my mind.  After we got to LA we missed our Seattle restaurants and left most places saying, “it was good, but no Mamma Melina’s.”  Over our three years there we found a new group of restaurants we frequented and began to love as much as those in Seattle.  Upon returning home we discovered that the world had changed around us, our old favorites now gone and ironically I was sitting in what once was my favorite restaurant missing places in LA like Birds, the Kitchen, Il Capriccio, and the Mustard Seed.

After the food arrived and we got some wine in us, my heart began to hurt a little less.  The dishes were still excellent, the service was very good and if I could separate the old location from the new, I found the atmosphere, while different, to be enjoyable.

When we’d finished eating Jaime and I agreed that while this new place could never be the same to us emotionally, I still could not think of better Italian food with better prices or service.

On our way out we ran into the son who runs the restaurant, he still recognized us and immediately I began to forgive the restaurant for all the disappointing changes.  I knew I needed to get over my feelings of loss and accept things as they were.  Our girlfriend had moved on, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy this new restaurant she’d become, build new experiences and enjoy her for what she was.  It seemed that the heart beating in this body was still the same.

the first year is the hardest part ii

this is a thanksgiving dinner for two

            Often I would meet people in LA who seemed to be making their dreams happen,  be it acting, directing, writing or working in some capacity for a production company.  I would stare at them like they were a mechanic working on a car engine or a complex math problem, something I wanted desperately to understand but could not begin to wrap my mind around.  I was curious to know just how they seemed to be making this happen, nine times out of ten what I would find out is that they were one of three kinds of people.  A.  There was family money which was paying for their living expenses leaving them with wide open days to audition.  B. They had a relative involved in the business who was advancing their career regardless of their talent.  C. While appearing to do well for themselves they were actually quietly drowning in debt which will eventually swallow them up.  That one out of ten is a real rarity, yet this is the type of person whose story the media glorifies over and over.  Everyone else that isn’t one of those ten is just hustling, trying to make it.

The week before Thanksgiving Jaime applied to a stylish new restaurant in the heart of Hollywood, called Citizen Smith.  This was one of those restaurants where it was you along with 1000 other actors/writers/directors hopefully applying for 5-10 jobs.  It seemed like a long shot but when the interview went well things were looking promising.  The initial interview was designed to weed out the completely incompetent, so Jaime was called back for a second interview.

The writers strike was still going strong, we had to dodge protests to get to the restaurant.  Despite this Hollywood shutdown Jaime and I traveled deep into the Valley to an agency which claimed to help actors get agents.  This is basically like going to someone who promises to find you a temp agency, not a job, your paying them to talk to agents who may or may not be interested in you.  Best case scenario is that you sign with a talent agent who then still will need to find you an audition.  At the interview which lasted two hours they told Jaime something we would hear a lot over the next year and a half.  “Your great!  But with the writers strike there’s just no work.”  Even reality shows employ writers and so many of them had stopped production as well.

Trying to find a balance between accessing auditions, getting jobs and having actual consistent work which pays you enough to cover your bills is the biggest hurdle to overcome by far, harder than any audition you will go on.  Most former actors I met left acting exactly for that reason, they were busily working to find that balance when they landed a good day job and never went back.  You’ll eventually learn what your truly passionate about (even if it takes you 15 years) you’ll either stay passionate about acting or find something else you enjoy doing just as much.  There’s no shame in that it’s just the reality of the business, many great actors have found jobs they were much happier at.

Jaime wasn’t anywhere near that point, she was still full of hope and willing to make huge sacrifices to make her dream happen.  During her “call back” interview with Citizen Smith Jaime really hit it off with the manager and his suggestion to her was to come back that night and have dinner, get a feel for the restaurant.  Citizen Smith is a swanky place and there is nothing cheap about it, but in the hopes of getting Jaime this job we sucked it up opened our wallets and went in for a few drinks and appetizers. 

Like most of the trendy Hollywood clubs and restaurants, Citizen Smith looked like nothing from the outside but on the inside it was a sight to behold.  The design could best be described as the offspring of an Andy Warhol painting and a TexMex family restaurant.  If there was ever a place that screamed out “HOLLYWOOD” this was it.  The seat cushions were cow hide and the tables looked like (and for all I know were,” enormous slabs of sliced Redwood trees.

It was early about 6:30 and Hollywood doesn’t come to life until 9:00 or 10:00 so the place was mostly empty.  At the bar we ordered two $15 drinks a $20 Macaroni and Cheese and something else which I found so memorable that I cannot remember it now.  We watched Easy Rider on the t.v. and when are bill came the total was $60, which for two kids with no income was pretty steep.  We never met with the manager and I just hoped that somehow he would know that we’d been there.

On our way back to our car we saw the most adorable black and white cat sitting lonely in an empty parking lot.  It was the spitting image of our cat at home only about fifteen pounds lighter.  He sat looking mournfully as if asking me to come and take him home.  We watched each other for a long moment and I crouched low and slowly moved to pick him up.  I’m sure he was covered in flees and his intestines were full of worms but I just had to see how close he would let me get to him.  I was right on top of him when he darted away and under a car on the opposite side of the street.

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving, our first away from friends and family.  Often the week before a big holiday you would run into someone you knew and start talking.  The subject of Thanksgiving would be brought up and they would mention some orphan dinner that was taking place at a friends place or a friend of a friends place.  You would either show up with a dish or you find an excuse to decline.

Since the only two people we knew were going to be out of town we held our own Thanksgiving dinner in our apartment.  We got dressed up and spent the day watching t.v. and snacking as if company was going to arrive any minute.  For dinner we made enough food to feed eight people and then preceded to make ourselves sick trying to eat it all.  It was lonely knowing that 1,100 miles away our families were laughing, catching up, and getting full together without us.  On the other hand doing this all by ourselves made me feel more like an adult then I’d ever felt before.

The following week Jaime waited patiently to hear from Citizen Smith, after two days she gave them a call, only to be told that they were going to need another week to decide.  This was their way of saying “sorry we didn’t hire you.”

It was upsetting for her not to get the job but infuriating that we went down there and dropped $60 on mediocre drinks and appetizers with money we really didn’t have.

By the end of the week I got a call from Borders bookstore to schedule an interview.  I had applied for it two weeks previous and had forgotten all about it.  I would be going in Monday for an interview at their Century City store.  

To be continued...

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.