The sky above the valley was the color of a television set tuned to a dead station, and that my friends is a perfect sky blue hue. Technology has changed since William Gibson wrote Neuromancer back in 1983. The sky directly overhead, that is, was blue. If you looked out towards the mountains, through a thicker slice of sky, the sky had that orange-brown attitude that makes the air so fragrant.

My Olds 98 is covered in a blanket of filth. It has 2,000+ miles of road dust, sap from a tree back in Madison, and a nice basteing of L.A. pollutants turning my car from white to grey. I hopped in my dirty jalopy and drove her south to Westwood to meet Kirsten for lunch. Sound easy: wake up, drive to Westwood, park, eat, go for stroll, and drive back to the valley? Well, it wasn't easy.

For starters, I needed gas. No big ordeal. All you do is pull into the gas station, wait for a vacant pump, pre-pay inside, dispense the product, and manuever through the obstacle course of cars, pump islands, and vacant Los Angeleans back onto the road. I hit the san Diego freeway going south, smooth ride, no complaints. Traffic did back up a little, but just a little, mostly I suppose, do to the mountain side being on fire. Two helicopters had been dispatched to dutifully dump their fire extinguishing payloads all over the blaze. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Parked the car on the ramp behind the Saban building (this is significant, wait), and walked around front to meet Kirsten.
we dined at Spikes. Spikes got Kirsten's order wrong. After a few minutes the confused Russians and Chinese began to understand our strange moon-man blither and corrected the order. The difficulty was in understanding the complicated Wittgensteinian preposition, "chicken does not go in vegie bowl, replace."
After lunch we walked down to the UCLA campus where we talked about friends back in Madison, and considered our future enrollments. Alas, we had to walk back since the bastardos at Saban only give an hour for lunch hour. saban is, incidentally, the Fox subsidiary responcible for the 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.'

O.K., back to the parking ramp. Elapsed time with car in lot: one hour, fifteen minutes. Cash due: $8.00. My reaction: shit.

This time traffic on the 405 was congested. Rubber neckers gawking at the mountain side, now overrun with yellow clad men with hoses, had slowed traffic to a crawl, but I'm clever, so I exited and wound up in even slower moving traffic. My reaction: fuck.

Found my way to Ventura Blvd. From the beginning of 19,000 block to the end of the 15,000, that's 4,998 blocks total, traffic moved at a jerk and go five to fifteen mile per hour pace. My reaction: fucking shit.

After escaping Ventura, my world returned to normal. Swung by the post office to drop off a letter and then returned home. I'm feeling better now, but in the car with the heat, the traffic, the jack-asses in their BMWs, bitchy princesses on cell phone, blaring horns, glare of the sun sweat on my brow, smog in the air, and thoughts of bad service, high priced parking, and gas wasted being lost all rumba-ing through my head, well, I was downright set to blow.
Ahh, L.A.
Ahh, fuck.

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