It’s Friday, and in about an hour, I’m off to OAK to catch a flight to LAX and spend a weekend celebrating my birthday.  No real plans, except for a quick trip, and probably a lot of nostalgia for the time five years ago when I lived down there.  I really do love LA, even if it’s trendy to hate it; I probably like it more than any of the other places I’ve lived, which makes it seem silly that I own a house in the dreary north part of the state, but that’s another discussion.

I was thinking about the first time I’d ever visited LA, and then realized that I wrote about it in the early days of this site, as one of my very first entries ever.  It’s funny to read it after having lived there, and it seems like it happened a million years and several lifetimes ago.  Like, I remember having to stop and fill up the car near LAX, and pulling into a neighborhood that at the time seemed like some kind of Tarantino-esque inner city gang nightmare.  Now, I realize I was probably in Hawthorne or something, which isn’t far from where I lived in 2008 and is a fairly sedate place to be.

I always divide my life into these discrete eras, like my Seattle era, or my K era when I dated her, or whatever.  And all of the eras are very compartmentalized from each other.  So it’s always interesting to me when different eras have these hyperlinks to each other, like when we visited the place where, ten eras later, I’d live.  Or another example: I lived in New York, and went to this conference in San Diego for a week, back when big companies actually paid for tech writers to go to conferences.  And one night, I drove up to LA to see a friend of mine.  And on the way, I swung through Anaheim, and stopped to eat a late lunch.  There was this McDonald’s right off the main drag by the Disney property, and it was a huge version, designed for giant lunch rushes of tourist busses dumping off scores of kids.  I remember eating there once in 1997, only because at that time, they had the McPizza, and only the highest-volume stores had the pizza, because the prep time of the pizza was longer than the holding time, so you had to move serious units to get it on the menu.  I didn’t get one, and for whatever stupid reason, went back to that specific McDonald’s in 2000 to see if I could get one, but by then, the McPizza was McHistory.

So that one visit for a Quarter Pounder meal deal knitted together at least three eras:  The Seattle/K era, the New York era, and the future 2008 living in LA era.  I did not visit the same McDonald’s in 2008, although I did go to Anaheim and see it when I went to an Angels game.  I was on Weight Watchers and off McDonald’s by then, though.

Another thing I remember from 2000: I was sitting there, reading a newspaper and picking at my fries, when this lady was mopping the floor.  It was an off hour, like maybe 2 or 3, so nobody was in the dining room but me.  This was a redneck woman, maybe someone who was working there either because it was all she could get or it was part of the terms of her parole or rehab.  And she started talking to me about the nomination of George W. Bush as the Republican candidate.  She told me “well, I’ll probably vote for him.  He probably knows the most about the job, since he already was President.”  I did not correct her.  This was the beginning of the next era.

I watched Pulp Fiction for the millionth time last night. We’re trying to get through that AFI 100 films thing, starting with all of the ones I have on DVD at the house. I haven’t seen Pulp Fiction in maybe ten years though, so it was interesting to see it with some distance. I think the big thing I realized is how much of a big chunk of my past has to do with that movie, and how much it influenced my writing.

When Pulp Fiction came out in the fall of 1994, I was living with Simms, and that movie wrapped around his brain in a big way.  I don’t remember if I was with him the first time I saw it, but it absolutely obsessed him.  I think a big part of it was the soundtrack, which was all of this old surf music, a big thing with Simms at that point.  He had this band, a rotating cast of characters, called The Surfing Richards, and they were essentially this ever-changing group of music theory PhDs obsessed with Frank Zappa.  Their music was a mashup of Dick Dale, Devo, and Zappa.  So the Tarantino soundtrack really clicked with him, and our house was filled with it for months.

Simms became this prophet of Tarantino.  We’d be record shopping or walking around Bloomington, and he’d run into someone at the store he hadn’t seen in a semester or two, and ask them if they’d seen the movie.  If not, he’d immediately drag all of us out to the mall to see the next showing.  I think I saw the movie at least a dozen times because of this, and he really got off on seeing people’s reaction to the film.  We pretty much memorized the film, and it got worse when I got a tape of it.  Back then, there was usually a year between a theatrical release and the home video release.  But I found some guy on usenet that made a pirated copy; he worked in a theater, and set up a camcorder in the booth to record the whole thing, with the audio jacked into the booth sound.  I think I traded him something for it, and got a VHS copy months before it was available in stores.  This meant we watched the movie constantly, even running it in the background while doing other stuff. So in the back of my head, I’ve still got the film memorized.

This was the first time I’d seen the film since I lived in LA.  I remember when I first visited Los Angeles in 1997, the Tarantino-verse very much molded my preconceptions of the city, and the feel that I had for the city reminded me of what he caught in his films.  When I lived in LA in 2008, I worked from home and spent most of my time in Playa Del Rey, which is not really LA, but I’d have to wander around Hollywood or Culver City or El Segundo on various errands and doctor’s appointments.  And I also remember the week or so I spent driving all over the city trying to find us an apartment, going to all of these little places during the day to meet with realtors that never showed up for their appointments.

There’s one scene that really captured a specific feeling for me, and that was when Butch went back to his apartment to get his watch.  The scene is very quiet, nothing but ambient noise of the North Hollywood neighborhood, as he cuts through an apartment complex and then a vacant lot on the way to his apartment building.  That eerie silence, aside from the Mexican families cooking or babysitting kids in the background, and the sight of those old Bukowski-looking walled compound apartments captures a certain LA that I always felt when I was driving through side streets or walking from my car to various doctor’s appointments or whatever else I was doing back then.  The film itself is not an LA film in many ways; he captures bits and pieces in the background, but a crime film could be filmed almost anywhere.  What he does is use those background pieces to fill out the film and give it a vibrancy that transcends what a typical TV crime drama usually is.

I also found that there was a lot of dialogue that I picked up on that bled into some of my early writing.  When I was hacking out Summer Rain, there were so many exchanges and bumpers and pieces of wording that came out of Pulp Fiction without even thinking about it.  Tarantino’s dialogue can be corny, and tries too hard to be hip, and I think that rubbed off on me a bit.  One of the advantages of spending so many years rewriting that book is that I had many opportunities to kill my darlings, and beat the hell out of the dialogue until it shook any of those references.  But while I was watching the movie, little lines would jump out at me, things that I know got morphed into my character’s words at some point, and then cut.

Tarantino also relies heavily on cross-references through his work, little things like Fruit Brute cereal or Jackrabbit Slim’s (which also appears in an almost inaudible radio commercial in the background during the aforementioned scene with Butch.)  Simms, being a Zappa nut, was really big on conceptual continuity, which I assumed, being a literary idiot with about six credits of literary theory that I barely passed at that point, was some kind of common term, although now I find out that it’s something only used in the context of Zappa.  But Tarantino has all of these little recurring things that appear in all of his films, like Red Apple cigarettes.  And I never thought about it in the context of his influence, but I constantly do the same thing.

I think the biggest influence of Pulp Fiction to me was the idea of a non-linear narrative.  I spent a lot of time in my first couple of years of writing trying to figure out plot, trying to think of how to twist together a huge, linear story, and Tarantino’s films were one of the first things that really sent me sideways on that, and challenged me to think in other terms.  Rumored to Exist started at the end of 1995 because of a perfect storm of a few things swimming in my mind, all of which were consumed over a long and boring holiday break: the book Catch-22, and the movies Naked Lunch, Pulp Fiction, and Slacker. Put those in a blender, give me too much free time without an internet connection, and that’s what happens.

I’m almost done with my next book, and I’ve got a todo list a million things long.  But now I really want to watch Jackie Brown.  Let’s see which one wins.

I went to LA this weekend.  It was a quick mission - we flew out Saturday afternoon, flew back Sunday night.  Just long enough to get a taste, and to get the cats pissed off that we abandoned them (although we had someone feed them; it’s entirely a psychological game to show us who’s boss.)

So we stayed in Santa Monica, which is probably one of my favorite parts of LA.  I know a lot of people hate LA, especially New York people that feel that paying far too much for the privilege of bedbugs and living in garbage somehow defines character.  New York has its points, and I’m glad I did my time there.  But I really do love LA, and just seeing the people and walking around in the sunshine and looking at that crazy mix of old neon signs faded by the barrage of UV rays mixed with the modern glass and steel architecture.

We were at a hotel right off of the beach, and yesterday morning, I got to take a nice walk and snap some pictures and see a bunch of stuff I recognized mostly from playing Grand Theft Auto.  It’s always weird to have that geographical reference in your head, where you know “hey, you can walk under this pier here, because sometimes I hide under there with a shotgun and kill hookers, and the cops take forever to get here.”

I took this picture of Hot Dog on a Stick, which for some reason showed up in the two posts previous to the trip, so there’s some weird synchronicity/conspiracy thing going on.  This is the original location, on Muscle Beach, and it’s missing the “on a” on its sign, but the cashier is wearing that weird rainbow uniform and fez hat.  I didn’t stop and get one, since I had just finished a giant breakfast at the hotel, but maybe I should have.  I try to limit my consumption of hot dogs to when I’m at baseball games, and corn dogs, from a nutrition point of view, are absolutely evil.  But sometimes, you have to.

HDoaS is primarily a west coast phenomenon, although there are some locations scattered across the country in malls.  I first remember seeing them in a Beavis and Butthead video, where some emo punk band was wearing the rainbow uniforms.  Years later, I remember seeing one at the Lloyd Center mall in Portland, which is one of those weird mid-century malls built in the early 60s when indoor malls were a new thing, and this was built to be the biggest mall in the country.  I think Simon owned it when I was going there (mid-90s) and I always liked it because I was really into shopping malls at the time and it reminded me of all of the Simon malls of the midwest.  (I never liked to shop, never bought clothes, and the record and book stores in malls have always sucked, so I’m not sure why I was so damn fascinated with malls at this period in my life, but I was.)

Later, when I lived in New York, I found it damn near impossible to find a good corn dog, frozen or fresh.  I think since then, it’s become easier, but I spent many an hour scouring the poor excuses for grocery stores in Queens, trying to find one that had any corn dogs in their freezer case.  And a frozen corn dog is always crap, because you microwave them and they split and the casing gets all moist and soggy, or you bake them, which takes forever, especially if you have a piece of shit oven that doesn’t work because you’re renting your apartment from the mafia and they don’t even keep the hot water on half the time, let alone service the appliances.  So when I was coming out to Vegas two or three times a year, I was happy as hell when a Hot Dog on a Stick opened at the Fashion Mall and I could go to their food court and eat them until I got sick and swear off cased meat products entirely, until my next visit of course.

But LA, man I missed LA.  I went back two years ago for a trade show, but spent all of my time answering stupid questions under fluorescent lights, and didn’t get to wander around.  This time, we had a car, and drove all over the place, up PCH and around the twists of Sunset and through Bel Air and the giant gated communities and houses where billionaires still had lawn jockeys, and into the strip where we passed the Comedy Store and the Rainbow and the House of Blues and the Whisky and all of those places memorialized by big hair bands of the 80s.  And we drove through our old neighborhood in Playa Del Rey, and through the Bellona Wetlands, and past my old Ralph’s and my old Pavillions and my old Fatburger and my old gas station and all of this stuff that made me miss 2008 and the summer I lived there.

So now I am back to 52 and rainy, and wish I had two million dollars to buy a nice beach house and watch the joggers and eternally fit rollerblade past, and peck at writing all day.  But it’s Monday and time to work, and go find the 2011 baseball schedule and figure out when I can catch the Rockies down at Chavez Ravine, although they are something like 2 and 22 at Dodger Stadium in the last couple of seasons.  But their horrible road record against LA is outweighed by Dodger Dogs and Vin Scully and a chance to spend another weekend down there, so it’s on.

Another week is done, and all of our stuff arrived in mostly one piece. After a few more days (or months) of rearranging, it will be business as usual here. Which brings me to thoughts about what I like, what is good, and what’s odd about this place. Rather than try to write some prose, I will start with a big bulleted list.

• • I am in awe anytime I drive past something and realize it was in movie XYZ or some recent TV show. I had this to the point of overload in NYC, especially with all of the Law and Order shows, but I think moving to Denver knocked that out of my head, and now it’s all amazing to me again.
    • I’m always reminded of Bukowski. There are old dive bars that still have their signs from the 60s, the styleized cursive words in neon, dull after 40 years of dirt and smog, and I always wonder if that was a bar where he hung out. This is further confused by the fact that a lot of brand new bars and restaurants have similar signs that were made to conform with the whole Swingers retro craze.
    • (As an aside, I want to make a google map of all Bukowski stuff. I have heard there is a bus trip that makes this route, so maybe I better get off my ass.)
    • I forget if I mentioned Fry’s, the electronics store. There’s one down in Manhattan beach, and I think I’ve been maybe once or twice. I don’t know how I missed out on this all of my geek life (probably because I didn’t live in California) but that place is off the hook in a very major way. Basically you start with a Best Buy or Circuit City, but instead of, say, only three types of computer keyboard in stock, they have an entire aisle, like three dozen types. And they aren’t all from one manufacturer, they hit all of the bases, and even have the el cheapo Taiwan junk you can only get in mail order. It’s the same way in every section. Like in Best Buy, if you need a USB cable, they have the Belkin 3-foot or the Belkin 9-foot, end of story. At Fry’s, they have 863 different USB cables, half of them things you’ve never heard of before. And the place even has resistors and oscilloscopes and soldering irons and computer parts at the level the big boxes would not. The customer service can be a little surly, and the ambience is Costco meets a room in the MIT computer science freshman dorm. But yeah, very dangerous to the wallet.
    • I’ve spent very little time in what most people would think of when they envision LA, because Playa Del Rey is isolated. With the ocean to the west, LAX to the south, the LMU campus west, and the Marina Del Rey channel and Ballona wetlands to the north, there’s a pretty decent buffer zone on all sides.
    • That buffer also includes smog, which seems to be broken up by the ocean. And the temps are about five degrees cooler here, which is weird, because I put forecasts for both here and LA in my dashboard.
    • When I drive to/from anything north, I have to drive on Culver (which just got repaved last weekend) and through the Ballona wetlands. It’s strange to be in LA and be driving down a road in which nothing but swamps are on either side of you. It sort of reminds me of the farming in the middle of Oahu, if you drive the back roads to the North Shore. And at night, you hear very loudly the sound of frogs out in the swamp.
    • (Yesterday I determined that the best song to listen to while driving there is Lynard Skynard’s “Swamp Music”.
    • I still hear and see the jets from LAX southeast of us. The jets aren’t that loud, and the sound is almost soothing. I am sure when I go on vacation and I’m not near an airport, I won’t be able to sleep.
    • We were driving around, and south of LAX (at Imperial and Main) is this little observation park, where you can see jets taking off and landing. There was a small group of dudes with gigantic camera lenses the size of tallboy beer cans taking pictures. I guess before 9/11, you could park and go inside the terminal to a roof-top restaurant and see the jets close up, but that ended quickly.
    • There are a ton of old cars on the road here. I always thought the draconian emissions laws kept cars older than a decade or two from geting plates. But with no salt and no rust, cars last forever here. There are fuckloads of old classic Beetles still rolling here, with perfect sheet metal. And at least once a trip, I see some completely cherry car from the 50s or 60s, like an ancient Packard or a topless GTO with three twos. And I’ve seen many classic Camaros, the early 70s models that are my favorite. For a fan of old cars, it’s a phenomenal place to be.
    • The best food in LA tends to be in strip malls. I don’t know if that’s because all of southern California is a strip mall, or if just one of those backward things, like that the best doctors don’t take insurance, or the best clubs in NYC don’t have signs outside. We went to this soul food restaurant, which was like next to a TCBY or Vons or Rite Aid or something, and it had been there forever. They had the signed photos on the wall, and I’m looking and there’s a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. - personally signed to the owner. Their fried chicken was also like the best I’ve ever had. I need to forget about that place if I want to make it to 40, though.
    • Hughes Aircraft had a huge facility just up the road in what’s now called Playa Vista. They built the Spruce Goose there, then disassembled it into chunks and trucked it to Long Beach for its maiden flight.
    • Prices of almost everything here is back to about what I was used to in New York, with a few odd exceptions. For some reason, the McDonald’s closest to me is very cheap. My usual (#2, no pickles, coke) cost $5.95 in Denver, and now it’s $4.84. Other cheaper things: car washes, housecleaning, lawn care and landscaping, and anything related to fresh fruits and vegetables. (See a pattern?)

And I am now in bachelor mode, as Sarah goes to Atlanta to visit Mitsubishi. This will largely consist of playing the now-connected PS3 and trying to write this game I am working on. So I better get to work on that.

The ocean isn’t two miles away, as I previously thought. I went for a walk yesterday, heading west, and up this huge hill. At the top of it were all strangely shaped houses of the sort you’d only see on a shoreline, with impossibly-sized windows and turrets and none of the right angles you find on a straight-up ranch house in the suburbs. And just past that, the ocean. And it’s the full-on ocean, not a canal connected to a sound connected to an inlet that eventually dumps into a sea. I walked around a bit, trudged through the sand, watched the sailboats in the distance and the huge planes jetting off from LAX to all points west (i.e. Asia) It’s not a bad walk at all, although the hill part really taxes out my fucked up knee, but maybe doing it more will help.

In a couple of hours, I get into one of those big tin cans at LAX and head east, back to Denver, to rescue the furniture. This will be a weird trip - in today, back Wednesday night. The weird stuff has to do with driving a rental car into the space where I’d normally park a car; having to stay in a hotel for a night because all of my stuff will be boxed or shrinkwrapped; said hotel is less than a mile from my old place, and I used to pass it every day on my way to work. Basically all of the tourist in my own town stuff will be in effect. Not to mention that I will have but a few hours to somehow condense down my Denver experience and eat my last three or four meals at places I will probably never see again. (And in reality, all of those will probably end up at McDonald’s.)

I think the one thing that I will truly, truly miss is Coors Field and the Rockies. I was thinking about this last night, about how I am not one who has ever had some great belonging, especially one full of rituals. Some people have religion, and I tried that and it didn’t work out. But the closest I came to religion was getting to Coors Field an hour and a half before a game, watching the opposing team take batting practice, getting a hot dog, looking out at the field in front of me and the mountains in the distance, hearing the same soundtrack of crappy music they play before every game, hearing Reed Saunders read off the same safety information and where you can buy food and all of that other crap the PA announcers read before the game. I guess having Coors Field right next door was like having a major league ball park in my family room, where I could go down there any time I wanted and catch a game. So I’ll miss that, a lot. I can get stuck in traffic for two hours and go to a Dodgers game, but it won’t be the same. No matter how much you hate some place, there’s always one thing you miss. Seattle: mountains. New York: best subways ever. Elkhart: you always have a new car stereo, because yours gets stolen every month.

I went to a movie at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on Saturday. We went out with four of Sarah’s old friends, and it’s really damn nice to finally have friends to go out with. (And one was a baseball guy who said we have to go to a game in Anaheim, so there you go.) We saw Jumper, which was forgettable, but it was hilarious to be down in Hollywood on a Saturday night. There was some kind of cheerleading contest that night, so there were all of these 14-year-old girls in cheerleader costumes running around, which was a pedo’s wet dream. There was also a very large hoochie mama contingent bussed in from Orange County or something, and all of the clubber types going to clubs in that area. And Grauman’s is completely over the top, with all of the handprints in concrete out front, and all of the hollywood stars in the sidewalk, and the people dressed up as various famous iconic stars. The vibe of the place was very Times Square, which means don’t act like a fucking tourist, but it was pretty overwhelming.

I finished the last episode of The Sopranos, and that has to be the stupidest ending ever for a TV series, aside from making the whole thing a dream of an autistic kid in a coma or whatever the hell. Bleh.

Gotta shower, eat lunch, pack, get to the airport. This will be a fun one.