My impressions of LA are slightly skewed by the fact that I was staying in a really nice private room and getting a guided tour through oriental cuisine. I had a pretty good time in LA but you could have about 20 different types of experience ranging from fun to dead. It is a really spread-out place which you realise when you look at a map and see that although you have walked for two hours, in city terms you have barely moved. I have never seen the attraction in LA. Most people seem to come for Disneyland and Universal Studios but things like that don’t interest me very much. We were staying in a hostel in West Hollywood which was within walking distance of the avenue of stars. Some people lie on the ground next to a famous star to get their picture taken which makes about as much sense to me as shitting on it. The stars don’t just go down the main street but have branched off into side streets where they place the worthy but unknown.
In general, LA is a very ugly city. If you have a lot of dough you can buy your way into the nice parts but for the masses it is a vast expanse of concrete and freeways. The car is king here. If you don’t have a car you are left to contemplate the pavement as everyone else drives by. Not having a car makes it difficult for me to comment on the place as a whole as I only saw a tiny fraction of it. I wanted to take a tour of South Central and Compton but if there ever were any tour buses going down there they took too many bullet holes to keep going. It’s hard to tell whether people are being nice out of friendliness or because they are afraid of being shot. Another LA cliché, the smog, is ever present, some days being worse rather than any days being good. It’s hard to see places that are five miles away and the atmosphere is of a place permanently shrouded in mist.
After a couple of nights near Hollywood we headed down to alternative digs on the beach. Santa Monica is just north of Venice Beach but is more of a Beverley Hills on the beach. On the bus trip down there it was so misty that you couldn’t see the tops of buildings but it may be that it was actually foggy that morning. The fact that you wonder about it at all is a statement about the pollution levels. Santa Monica is the nice part of LA with palm-tree dotted main streets, expensive restaurants and nice shops. Shopping seems to be the main pastime, narrowly beating walking around looking good. There are more fake tits than you can poke a stick at. It’s a giveaway when a little Asian girl walks by with 38DD’s.
I didn’t form any strong impressions of LA. It was all a haze and I was trying to stay awake long enough not to miss my plane. I turned up at the airport about six hours early just in case. When I went through security they confiscated a pair of scissors from me which I was planning to utilise in stabbing the pilot in the eye so that I could take control of the plane and crash it into Disneyland. I got tagged as a security risk and on boarding the plane got a very gentle frisking and my possessions thoroughly searched. It certainly made me feel safer. I am back in Canberra now which is a lot nicer than I remember. I must have being remembering the boredom without the lovely clean air and flourishing flora. I don’t want to come across as too parochial but I haven’t seen anywhere as lovely as Australia.
Dave out.
– Well, I’m glad that’s over. I was getting sick of reading those long winded excuses for travel writing.
– What should we do now? Watch TV?
– That would be lovely. You know, I don’t understand why young people go travelling at all these days when you can sit in the comfort of your easy recliner and learn about the world that way.
– I totally agree. When TV hadn’t been invented yet I went on safari to Africa but do you think I saw any animals? Not on your life. I saw a lot of grass and got bothered by flies.
– Young people seem to think that before we had TV we sat around and talked or played cards. Not in my household. We used to sit in silence and look at the window.
– As did we. I cried from boredom one time. Not sobbing, you understand, but a tear leaked out.
– The most exciting time I had was when a pigeon landed on the window sill.
– You lucky bastard!
– Yes, the neighbours were quite jealous.
– I used to dream of seeing a pigeon.
– People don’t appreciate the hardships we went through. They’ve been spoiled rotten.
– Not only that but they’ve become quite odd. You take that young David for instance. What was all that stuff about masturbating to keep warm and vomiting on cats in there for? I found it quite unnecessary.
– Did you get his email about toilets?
– No?
– It was horrid. He was droning on about how the German toilets have a shelf and the American toilets have a whirlpool action. Personally, I don’t even know what colour my toilet is. I have no desire to even look at the filthy thing.
– Quite right. There could be a portal to another dimension in my toilet and I wouldn’t know about it unless I fell in.
– I blame the parents for not being strict enough with him. That boy is crying out for a strapping.
– It’s too late now. You need to do it while they’re still young so that you get all the girly tears out of them nice and early.
– No. There’s no hope for that one. What’s on TV?
– McGyver.
– Which one is it?
– The one where he constructs a sex toy from a packet of marshmallows and the spare parts from a Buick and uses it to extract the confession from a nun gone bad.
– Oh yes. That one’s quite good. Switch it on.
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