End of the Road: LA?

Los Angeles is every bit as strange and sunny as everyone says it is. It also happens to look exactly the same in real life as it does in photos and films, which I always tend to expect from everything, but this is one of the few places that has actually followed through. Turns out, when things are exactly the same in real life as they are on film, it's weird.

I think the fact that I definitely was not in Kansas (Massachusetts) anymore really started to set in immediately upon arrival at our hotel, whose age (81 years old) was a major bragging point for everyone and where all of the employees were ridiculously good looking. After Liz informed them that we were from Boston and that she had cereal older than 81 we ascended to our room where we were greeted with the World's Scariest Hotel Art plastered boldly across the main section of wall, between the beds. We later learned from the bellman that it was a photo of two David Bowie superfans taken at one of his concerts and that all of the rooms had similar photos but ours was by far the scariest. We dealt with this by throwing a sweater over the photo, which was of two bawling women with 'B's carved into their chest and weird welts on their foreheads and managed to fall asleep despite their presence.

Anyway, I've been in L.A. for 48 hours and I think I've caught that strange form of exhaustion that everyone here gets hospitalized for. In an effort to save precious energy, I'm just going to convey my immediate, pre-Oakwoods L.A. observations in list form.

1. The "characters" that saunter around Grauman's Chinese Theater are, in a word, whack. Initially I assumed that they were actors set up there by, I don't know, the city or the theater or SOMETHING, but no. Apparently they are just self employed and earn their livings independently by pretending to be random people/superheroes. Strange as this is, it kind of makes sense because the quality of their outfits is way inconsistent. Some of them are significantly better than others and all of this came together when we saw a really haggard looking man in Spiderman pajamas trudge across the street towards the theater to start working.

2. Equally whack is the illustrious California Freeway, whose name, I'm assuming, derives from the complete and utter freedom as far as speed limits are concerned. That is to say, there are none. Huh. My defensive driving answer to the freeway is to just close my eyes and scream as I merge and hope to God that everyone will avoid me. It seems to be working. I have yet to sit in real traffic, but I can only imagine what a treat that will be. I'm going to have to find something to multitask the idle sitting with so that I don't go completely nuts with all of the time wasting.

3. The sheer volume of name dropping that I have observed in the last couple of days is staggering. People REALLY love it. "Oh, buy this Hello Kitty luggage, Heidi Klum just bought one." Natalie did end up buying the suitcase, but that's beside the point. This morning we were getting the car at our hotel and some guy walked in, completely off all of our radar, and the valet came over to us and said, out of nowhere "That's not Lenny Kravitz." Um...neat. Nobody said ANYTHING about Lenny Kraviz, valet. I'm not Jessica Simpson either, in case you were wondering. As far as actual celebrity sighting, we're really not very good at it, but we have seen some broad who didn't NOT look like Paris Hilton and then we got in an elevator with some dude from Gossip Girl, whose chops immediately got busted by Natalie.

4. The variety of landscapes is also really impressive. We drove through some serious Hills, practically 90 degree angles with huge houses perched precariously on cliffs with really sharp turns throughout the neighborhoods. We also went to the Santa Monica pier because I promised Jack Dawson that I would right before he sank into the Northern Atlantic abyss and I had to follow through. People are also seem exceedingly friendly, and while I'm skeptical, I figure it's just easier to accept it, fake or not.

All in all, everything is rather lovely, if not completely foreign. Honestly, I felt like less of a tourista in France, but I think it's going to work out. Hopefully. Knock on wood.