When I moved out to Los Angeles... I didn't realize that there was some devious agreement made between the people of the Pacific Northwest and the Devil to swap the weather with Southern California. I mean seriously! For a half of December, it rained in Tinsel Town... and I gotta say, it isn't a pretty sight. Just try and imagine cruisin' down Sunset Boulevard: a million multi-colored lights radiating defiantly in the night sky as distant spot lights offer guidance to some off-limits social event. People dressed in clothing three sizes too small strutting down the sidewalks acting as if they were better than everyone else, and quizzically placed palm trees resting like comatose giraffes. Now add six inches of oily, highly acidic rain water drumming down, making all those beautiful people look like soaked raccoons. Rivers of tepid and semi-viscous waters propel In'N'Out soda cups and and crumpled newspapers and discarded condoms along like some sort of pulp-influenced David Lynch nightmare regatta. It is indeed a horrifying sight.
And from bad to worse... I was in the heart of darkness: Los Angeles International Airport. In a rain storm after the holiday season, to boot! Driving at LAX is like dating a two-face. At times, it can be a leisurely experience lacking any sort of difficulty what so ever. You pull up to the curb, jump out or deposit your passengers, and drive off back to whatever snake pit you originated from. But then the ugly side rears its nasty little head. Traffic comes to an abrupt halt at a "SECURITY CHECKPOINT" long before even getting near the terminals. This checkpoint generally consists of four police officers who are so preoccupied with chit chatting that they wouldn't notice Hunter S. Thompson's disembodied ghost riding the Woody Woodpecker balloon from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But they stop the cars one by one nonetheless. So A+ for efficiency!
If you are lucky to make it past this first obstacle... you are still in for a miserable experience. I have found in my time out west that Angelinos do NOT know the first thing about sensible driving. They make four-lane changes without even looking, stop abruptly to answer cell phones, run red lights... and stop at the greens. I have seen more order in a Moroccan bazaar that I have on the streets of Los Angeles. While the departure sections are bad... the arrivals are even worse. Stuck in the semi-subterranean canals lined with gargantuan concrete pillars, it is a honeycomb of sorrow. It was within these sado-masochistic tunnels last night, after a grueling 7 hour flight from Boston (containing a narcoleptic Hassidic woman, a screaming baby, and an angry woman who had 4 LAPD officers waiting for her when we landed) that I had these psychotic epiphanies... which immediately invoked rage. That or my taxi driver who made absolutely no attempt to get out of the airport, hiking the meter to $10.25 before I even saw the highway.
For all of this anguish... I blame the rain. Because apparently in Los Angeles, people don't know how to handle inclement weather. Sure, there were mudslides up in Malibu... but really, people! It's goddamn rain! Back in the days of Moses and his desert-trekking menagerie, they would have danced themselves stupid if it rained like this. Yet here, in 2011... the simple act of rain has destroyed social order in the City of Angels. Good grief...
-s/j.@
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