Sunday, May 23, 2004

 
We've got stars, directing our fate
And we're praying it's not too late, Because we know we're falling from grace. . .

I had to attend this seminar thing at The Century Plaza off of the Avenue of the Stars across from the Century City Mall. Anyway, if you find yourself on the Avenue of the Stars heading towards Santa Monica and are stopped at the light on CONSTELLATION take a look at the street sign on the left, it's spelled COSTELLATION. Can you believe that shit, they misspelled it. I hear those signs are really expensive and I guess I expected someone to pay more attention to detail when it comes to huge blunders of that kind.

For those of you who don't know anything about The Century Plaza know this, it consistently ranks as one of L.A.'s Top 10 for Spa/Resorts. Whether it's true or not I can't say, I will say however that I didn't think it was all that. The facilities are just okay, the meal they served me at the seminar was mediocre (and I'm being generous when I use that term), and the parking was typical for the area (hello $18.00 dollars a day seems a bit expensive but I was in Century City). My seminar was 2 days of boring lectures.

That's wasn't the bad part, the bad part was that for my profession I am very young and I'm sick of people asking me "Did you just get out of school?" I've been out of school for a while folks, have you ever considered the fact that hey maybe I'm not young and that you are just a jurassic geezer? There was one guy at the seminar who I swear looked like the Orville Redenbacher, he even wore a bow-tie. These people are OLD and presumably very rich considering the fact that most of them were attorneys, why don't they retire? I don't get it, maybe it's the whole wanting to stay active thing, but still maybe if a few of them retired their would be some jobs for new graduates.

Anyway, then I started thinking maybe it's me, maybe it's my outlook on life. Maybe I have been tainted by L.A. values. For instance, take the subject of age. People get old, but in L.A. getting old is such a no-no. When people ask my age, I'm honest. There's no getting around it, I was born a certain year and that's that. I'm getting older. However, when I ask a person in return how old they are it never ceases to amaze me how people try to dodge the issue, it's always "How old do you THINK I am?" I always feel like saying some smart ass thing like "Ordinarily, I tend to look for tell-tale signs of age such as crow's feet, but your question to my question is a dead giveaway signaling to me that you are OLD." Most of the time the people who I am asking aren't that much older (early 30s) or younger (late 20s) than me, but feel this need to protect their actual age. Since when has early 30s and lates 20s been considered old?

Superficial things like that bother me about L.A. If you want to really have a taste of L.A. culture spend a day at Century City. I used to love going to Century City back when I was in college, now I'm not too keen on it. For starters, just getting there is a test of patience. When the 405 is clear I can get from the South Bay to there in 20 minutes (no joke I've timed myself), but when there is traffic forget it (one time it took me an hour and a half and it was a SATURDAY!).

Once I get to the West Side there is the added aggravation of construction on Santa Monica (will that thing EVER be finished). Then there's having to deal with all the shitty drivers (presumably most of whom are tourists looking for the Peach Pit from Beverly Hills 90210). By the time I make it to the Century City mall, there is the typical hunt for a parking space. On the weekends the movie theater is pretty packed and again if I'm not sitting in traffic, I'm standing in a line such as the ticket booth at the AMC theater. Add to my indignity the fact that everytime I go to Century City I feel underdressed. Everybody's dressed like their going clubbing or about to walk down some runway in a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show.

Even after the movie, there is the inevitable line at the parking validation machine, followed by the wait at the parking exit to get out. Evertime this happens to me, I think to myself I have to get the hell out of this city. I still think about this quite a bit, but the question I have not yet answered for myself is where I want to go. For all my L.A. gripes there is a certain entertainment value I get from living here that I don't think I would find anywhere else, but doesn't mean I won't stop looking for another equally as fascinating, crazy city. Some people fear change or so they claim, I actually think they're afraid of change but what do I know. Whenever I meet someone who went to college in the same city where they were born and raised, I think to myself poor sucker you were too afraid to leave your safety net, then I meet other people who can never settle in one place and have travelled all over the world and think to myself goddamn you are one brave mofo or somecrazy ass hippy.

I would like to think I'm somewhere inbetween, I guess I still have a bit of wanderlust left in me to the point that I still don't feel settled enough to call L.A. home. God forbid that I should be here 10 years from now doing what I'm doing now. At that point I anticipate I'll be so morally bankrupt I'll probably be able to refer you to my plastic surgeon or at least take you for a ride in my Mercedes-Benz or some equally bougie car. If that happens, shoot me.




Figgy 8:48 AM |