My Move To LA

Please excuse my language but OH MY FUCK is West Hollywood crazy on Halloween. Nicole and I were invited to a house party just off of Santa Monica Blvd and Doheny on Halloween night. It was one of Nicole's coworkers so it was very mild mannered and I was only slightly uncomfortable with some of the completely over the top gayness (mainly a mummy asking me to take my shirt off even though I assured him my torso looks like Walter Matthau's face).

After being asked to leave the party by the host so it could get inappropriately gay we wandered down a few blocks to Santa Monica Blvd which had been closed for the occasion. We just happened to break into the crowd right in front of a fancy techno club where there were lots of gay men dressed in lingerie who seemed to have taken a lot of drugs. They were covered in sweat telling each other how pretty they were. We decided to march on to the other end of Santa Monica Blvd where the people we were with knew of a bar with no cover. Getting through the crowd proved to be a difficult task. Trying to avoid Egyptian Pharaohs, S & Ms, men as sexy women (complete with breast implants!) and guys wearing nothing but underwear and heels proved to be impossible while wearing my costume (will post pic soon); a perp from the show Cops. We managed to make it to the bar only to find it was so packed there were people hanging out the windows.

Not really being in the mood to drink Nicole and I decided to bid our friends adieu and head back to the scooter. On our way back we saw some of the best costumes of all time. One of our favorites was a guy dressed like a used car salesman with a loudspeaker asking ladies and gentlemen to step right up to witness the drunkest bear in the world. When we pushed our way through the crowd we saw a guy in a full bear costume just rolling around on the ground making terrible moaning noises. Another fun group were five guys all dressed up in perfect mummy costumes walking through the crowd saying, "Mummy! Muuuummy! Mummy!" and grabbing at people. We also saw Cheddar Bob (Evan something) from 8 Mile dressed in a child's skeleton costume and so drunk he couldn't light a cigarette.

I will definitely be going to witness the chaos again next year.

Koreatown in Los Angeles has its scary moments. A few weeks ago Nicole and I awoke to four gunshots at about 10:30 pm. We ran to the windows but didn't see anything. A week or so later, just as I had hopped on my scooter and rode around the corner there were five more. Luckily, no one was injured in any of these shootings. From what we can gather from the streetside gossip there's a rival gang that keeps coming into our part of the neighborhood that is apparently controlled by another gang.

I don't see drug deals or anything going on in the streets or alleys so I'm not exactly sure why the gangs are fighting over a shitty piece of the city. Just to claim it as their own? It's beyond me. I think they fight just to fight. Good thing they've got terrible aim and I'm on the 4th floor.

Even though the neighborhood avoided gang war casualties it didn't escape casualty free. A few days ago we came home to see the coroner's van and three police cars parked in front of the building across the street (which is managed by the same company that manages ours and also owns another building on the street). We asked around but no one knew anything and we just assumed the gang violence had taken a life and everyone was too scared to talk. I even asked the property manager Azar and he said he didn't know anything but relayed to me that he had recently been promoted to corporate and he wouldn't be managing these three buildings anymore.

Then today, as Nicole was walking Oni, she ran into a very talkative woman who lives in the building across the street who seems to know everything about what's going down in the neighborhood. She told Nicole that the new property manager (Azar's replacement) had gone inside the elevator shaft (without shutting anything down) to see if he could determine why it wasn't working when someone on one of the upper floors hit the button, the elevator turned on and it crushed him. What a terrible tragedy. What's worse is that the management company didn't tell anyone what happened (nor did they shut down the elevator) leaving everyone to find out through word of mouth.

Koreatown has more good days than bad but since the bullets started flying Nicole and I have started looking for a new place to live. Hopefully this will all make for some riveting story to tell our children some day and we can get out of here before something really awful happens.

Los Angeles is well known for having crappy air. I think it's part of the reason so few people drive with their windows down. Recently there have been huge fires burning both south and west of the city bringing the air quality to completely hazardous levels. On the way to work in the morning Nicole and I often see people out jogging along the side of the road. Now, I'm not sure exactly what's wrong with these people as I'm pretty sure the damage they're doing to their lungs negates the benefit of jogging. Since the fires began I haven't seen anyone jogging (and there have been warnings on the news to stay inside as much as possible) but today I saw some knucklehead running through the haze on 3rd in West Hollywood, during morning rush hour! What a retard. I wanted to get out and shake some sense into him.

I haven't been posting enough pictures so I'll close with a picture I took today of a very hazy view from the balcony of a mansion in Beverly Hills.

Not having company health insurance or really benefits of any kind (other than getting to rub elbows with the rich and famous) isn't my least favorite part of my job here in LA. My least favorite part of the job is having to lie for everyone here in the office. Since I'm the only one who answers the damn phone anymore I get to lie for everyone. I get to lie about my coworker's whereabouts, lie about the progress of the projects to the clients and lie about how much we do or don't know. The really terrible part about it all is that I'm a crappy liar and I worry it damages the company reputation. It's true that what people don't know won't hurt them but when I tell a lie they know.

Stupid dishonesty. I don't like it.

In these tough economic times I often get up in the middle of the night to fret a little about how this whole country in going down the toilette and so many unfortunate people with it. It's during these nighttime romps around my glamorous 500 square foot apartment that I see all the creatures living off of me (a testament to just how glamorous my place really is). Tonight while staring at a cockroach stuck in the dog bowl I remembered a show I saw on the Discovery channel about a year back.

In the show they talked about the world without people and they touched on the issue that most would think that roaches (along with rats and mice) would be set to inherit the earth should our species pass on. In the segment they pointed out that since these critters live off of people, once we're gone, there is going to be a whole lot less of them. So, in fact, the creatures most likely to actually inherit the earth and experience a population boom are plain little house cats. Yes, cats. Meow! They're highly adaptable, scrappy, cunning, breed easily and really have no natural predators.

Laugh now, but one day they'll be in charge.