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November 02, 2005
This is Los Angeles: they paved the river (2)
Bob Massey
I’ve been here about six weeks and in that time I’ve been on a serious cheeseburger bender. Specifically, Jack in the Box. I dunno what happened, I probably hadn’t eaten a bona fide cheeseburger in fifteen years. But when I was a kid in East Dallas, there were Jack in the Boxes on either side of our neighborhood. So my mom would take us there, on the way to or from things, probably twice a week. For years, even as an adult, I could still smell those cheeseburgers in my mind. They smell like feet.
Guess what? They still smell like feet. Mmmm, yummy feetburgers.
Yeah, so I’ve been running a lot more.
One vice I have not succumbed to is the roving ice cream pusher. Actually, there are two who work my neighborhood. They cruise by in the afternoon and you can hear the tinkly, muffled jingle from blocks away. Sometimes they blend to make some weird Tom Waits nightmare soundscape.
I love to watch these trucks because without fail I’ll see some Angeleno toughguy with neck tatts running down the street, shrieking like a little girl and waving a dollar. In the immortal words of one great American: “You’re bad now. But you were eating an ice cream cone! And I saw you! That’s the shit you can’t hide, you know? You got your fuckin shit, but you eat ice cream and everybody knows it. The whole fuckin’ place knows it. Ice cream eating motherfucker, that’s what you are.”
One thing Los Angeles does to make up for the lack of squirrels (as noted in the previously): snails. Real snails with curly shells. Not slugs. Man, I felt like I was seven years old the other day when I saw one crossing the driveway. You know, you only see them in cartoons if you come from anywhere east of Koosharem. They’re fucking cool.
There was this whole thing about the indignities of a DMV visit that I was gonna screed on, but it’s too exhausting. Maybe next time. I will say that California DMV is filled with angels and light compared to the DC DMV. The DC DMV makes a Calcutta slum seem pleasant and efficient.
[Here's the one that started them all: Los Angeles. Hell Yes]
Posted by Rock Heals at November 2, 2005 12:40 AM
