Madness of the 21st Century, Los Angeles Edition
On an escape from an erupting society that’s exploding and imploding simultaneously, I carefully step down a hill, table to table, disturbing fine diners. Unmemorable soulless mannequins are taking territory, non-complicit weapons are branded, so I temporarily hide. Forced into fight or flight, I’m tired and wired and an airplane roars above. All the while the airline’s stock price is plummeting so I double down and buy like hell.
I had just left a legendary, secluded, sinfully-comfortable recording studio surrounded by palm trees, playing an expensive instrument on a soon-to-be-released album in which I had the task of replacing the bass player of an old, semi-famous band. I opted in to using my fingers rather than my pick.
Back to the escape, a morally questionable former pseudo-family member (unnamed for privacy, obviously) swings by the boulevard seeking my expertise and assistance in capturing and viewing an astronomical event. It absolutely must be a whistleblower, a rogue angel in the heavens pulling off an emergency drill for the big reveal of “Yes, we are real up here, you non-believing ingrates.” I capture it on video cinematically and beautifully, finding leverage and stability with my full body weight, burdening my shoulder as it’s forcefully pushed into a brick wall of a corner establishment, a business of unknown products or services with a welcoming non-urine-smelling exterior. The cool-turning breeze is bringing a pleasant ocean-fresh fragrance which is invigorating to every goosebump across my glorious skin that sits atop these veins and full-of-life muscles, deemed as “very, very sexy,” according to a credible source (of course). And trust me, this source is not one of these unreliable anonymous sources consistently being created out-of-thin-air in those mogul-owned rags that end up wet and soggy on the sidewalk or underneath some home-alone, depressed and distressed, pill-popping canine. Wet newspaper’s bleeding ink just makes the “exclusive” content look more artistic and easier to ingest. In “fact,” this moist Rorschach is now admittedly reminding me of an honest-looking, smiling grizzly bear, arms open and ready to cuddle anyone willing to cuddle a non-threatening, non-ferocious, warm blooded furry. It is definitely written by a non-manipulative, non-ill-intending, well-acclaimed land animal. So hell, by all means, let’s please just go ahead and give them a Pulitzer C.O.D. for their hot-off-the-press fictional account of the fish-smelly, hypocritically-slanted spinach soufflé that — come on, nobody wants to eat. It’s been in that freezer for over two years and no one has ever been remotely tempted, let alone lured into eating that red-boxed culinary phenomenon no matter how hungry they got in desperate times or not. I digress.
Back to the sky. It erupts into its attention-grabbing scare tactics. The traffic slams to a stop. The humans chaotically flee the automobiles, then flee the freeways. Damnit. Damn, there are endless details and descriptions to describe and denounce and pounce upon right now … now that I have finally achieved your elusive near-impossible-to-gain attention, but in my exhausted state, all I can muster is the following serious question. If you know the answer, directly tell me. If you don’t, direct me to someone who can. Who do I have to sleep with to get a little sleep around here?
