Scenes from the LA lifestyle
Apropos to the location, I offer a few vignettes of recent days, in the theme of screenplay.
EXT. STREET - SUNSET BOULEVARD, NEAR THE STRIP - DUSK
ANDREW, late-20s stocky Aussie, and 30-something SIMON wander down the Strip, on their way to find The Viper Room. A haggard-looking YOUNG MAN idles by, with a battered guitar in his hand and a dirty military-surplus backpack. He stops in front of our wanderers.
- Woah... some lady just gave me this change, but I don't like know what it is?
He hold out his hand, in which three coins lie. Simon looks at them curiously, turning one over.
- Those are British coins. You've got... one pound twenty-five. About a buck seventy-five US.
- Oh, wow. Ok, so, like where can I use these?
- England. Or you could try to find a Brit and see if they'll exchange them for a dollar.
- Awesome. Thanks! Um, so do you know Brit?
More Scenes from LA
ANDREW and SIMON sit at a well-lit, modern bus stop, waiting.
Next to them sits a YOUNG BLACK MAN with a white pullover and hood. He has a long scraggly beard, holds a paperback with Hebrew on the front and a tube, gift-wrapped in African-designs.
An overweight MIDDLE-AGED MAN approaches. His head is shaven, and he sports a small mustache, a single loop earring, white t-shirt and denim shorts.
- Do any of you have any cigarettes?
- Sorry, we don't smoke.
- Nobody smokes any more. The whole country's changing!
He sighs and turns to survey the black man.
- You look like a foreigner-- where are you from?
- I am Egyptian.
- Oh. The only Egypt person I know is that king... Tutanko...uh...komeni?
- Tut Ankh Amon.
(aside, to Middle-Aged Man)
- I think he's a different kind of Egyptian.
(in clear American English)
- NO!
He pulls back his hood to reveal hair styled like an Egyptian head-dress, and slides his left sleeve up to show an arm tattooed to the wrist with intricate, full-colored hieroglyphic-like designs.
(cont.)
- I am a direct descendant of the Pharoahs. My bloodline goes back five thousand years!
- What's your name?
- Tut Ankh Mose
- Well, have a happy holiday. Maybe we'll meet again!
- Oh, yes, we will.
Blogging from Microsoft
So I'm in the Seattle-area over the Thanksgiving holiday... when the big snowy thing hits, and we're stuck 30 miles from my relatives' home right at the start of rush-hour. The highway is going about a mile an hour, and the minivan I'm driving is rapidly running out of gas. Fortunately, after an excruciating 1.2 miles, we make it to an exit. A fill-up and we take to the backroads- finally arriving a mere four hours after we started. My cousin and his wife, heading out of Redmond half an hour behind us, aren't so lucky - they end up staying the night with some family friends, getting in at six in the morning.
The next day, we're all stuck at the house, where I snap some snow laden trees, which explains the new wintery theme. Today, I fly back. But at the moment, I am sitting in my cousin's office at Microsoft, using his Toshiba tablet with hand writing recognition. It's geek-tabulous. It may be slower than typing, but it's oh-so Star Trek.
Of travel journals
Back when I first started my globetrotting adventures, I kept a cliched travel journal. Actually, journals. A different one for each trip. My preference was for slim volumes with blank pages (never lined!) which would allow for drawing, when so moved, as well as the occasional taped-in momento. As part of the pre-trip rituals, each one was chosen to be better than the last: the earliest was just a sketchpad, while the last was French-made, black leather-bound, with a smart clasp. (There's perhaps something Freudian here, which I fear to delve into.) These, like the journeys themselves, I began with great enthusiasm, making interesting and sometimes silly observations. Here's a bit I wrote the last time I was in Paris, for the Y2K:
Contrary to international myth, Parisians have a limited sense of fashion, much of it seemingly derived—nay, devolved—from American standards. In particular, their sense of color is confused— although this may be a general European problem: they think nothing of wearing yellow Nikes with blue dress socks, and all this with gray slacks. They like jeans, especially Levis, even in odd colors like green and fuscia, but will wear ones named "Devis" in a snap.
But mostly, they appear to prefer black, perhaps because it shows less dirt, which is the next topic...
Paris—while a beautiful city in its historical, monumental way— is on the whole, filthy. In the States, littering is considered rude, if not outright illegal; here, it's a national pastime. The streets are covered in the debris of everyday life and tourists follow suit... The French seem to think nothing of piling used undergarments onto streetcorners, letting their little Fifi dogs shit on the sidewalks, spitting in your path, then finishing up by pissing on an available tree. And that's just the women.
Some things I wrote were for My Eyes Only, while others became anecdotes I'd share with friends (over and over, to their annoyance and my embarrassment). Typically, as the trips progressed and got sidetracked from their original itinerary, so did my journal entries, getting filled with the detritus of museum tickets and tour brochures, and scribbled contacts for fellow travelers (often of the female persuasion). Yet, even though the specific day-to-day remembrances faded, I could flip through my written record, to relive those memories.
On my last trip, I carried no journal; instead, I dragged an iBook around. I traded the convenience and comfort of a small, low-tech instrument for the whiz-bang of a personal distraction gadget. I ended up with just as much paper, but a lot less writing.
So while blogs may be the modern-day equivalent of the travelogue, I'm finding it a bit harder to make the digital transition. Someday— probably not that far off— people will speak nostagically of paper diaries, the same way we now remember LP records and video tapes. (Those have disappeared, haven't they?)
