8/9/99 -- "It's all good."

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8/9/99 -- Wheew! I've let over 2 weeks go by, and I'm still chilling here in Los Angeles. I'd certainly not planned that -- I've shaved a little leisure from my homeward journey, but... it's all good.

"It's all good." Three words which here in LA define an attitude and pervade conversation. "It's all good" is like an anti-battle cry... a mellow-cry, if you will. It's the panacea for all bummers. It can mean "I'm glad we just reconciled our differences," or "well, I guess I'll never see things your/his/her/thief way, but that's ok, because diversity is the spice of life," or "dude, even though you're so stoned I had to repeat what I just said 3 times, it's not a problem, man." It's all good.

Well, where am I now? Still in Joanna and Brent's pad in Venice. I'm actually house sitting for them since they had a wedding in Providence (of all places!) to go to, and they needed someone to medicate and feed thief cat twice daily. It's the least I could do for the people who put me up for the past 2 weeks ;-)

It's just quite easy to loaf about here, since I have a house and no job to go to, and hey, check this out:

...I see this every evening. The weather is super clement, with the Thermometer pegged to 80 and a relatively constant low humidity atmosphere. I could lap this up for quite some time. I've been doing a bunch of reading, and relaxing on the beach, and some sight-seeing as well. I've not done anything cliche, though, I do believe. Oh, I guess hanging at Venice Beach is somewhat touristy in and of itself, but that doesn't count because it's 2 blocks away from the house.

Let's see, where was I, where was I...oh, yes. At the Villa of the Baroness... no wait, that's Liaisons. I was arriving at Joanna White's with Andy, Marc, and Josh Barry. Basically we hung out and partied, and I got to know Brent, Joanna's boyfriend of the past 6 (!!!) years, and catch up with Joanna. Two personal comments: Brent is excellent, and is just as much of an interface freak as I am. Also, Joanna is doing amazingly well, and is I believe, the only person I know whom I would refer to as "actualized." She really is more her than she's ever been, and has... I don't know, blossomed, maybe, since she moved out here to the West coast. She's happy and happening, and seems to be getting as much out of life as she can. Joanna's way cool. In fact, Joanna and Brent, the pair of them, are way cool, and we seem to have a good vibe going (I can't imagine that they'd let me stay as a house guest for 2 weeks and then ask me to house-sit for a weekend if we didn't!).

Ok, let's get chronological now. I left off with last Monday. On Tuesday Marc and Andy and I killed the day sleeping in and loafing on the beach, playing in the sand and surf, and swimming. In addition to those other things, I, possessed by some random urge, practiced cartwheels, judo rolls, and handstands, and I guess that's just because I loved the feel of the sandy beach on my skin. To the left is a picture of our view of the Pacific. We were all pretty mellow and not chatty, and I think we were all thinking about how our precious time together had nearly expired, because Andy and Marc were both flying home the following day. At night we went to see Brent play hockey in the valley before returning to Jo and Brent's pad for more Zete-stahl evening shenanigans. I think we played a bit of Tekken3 on thief PlayStation. On the way to the hockey game, we saw this awesome billboard ad for a Japanese beer, Kirin Ichiban, with Sumo Foozemen! That's pictured just below to the right.

The next day we all went to see the South Park movie like we'd been saying we needed to for two weeks. After that we lunched and headed over to the airport, singing the songs from the South Park movie. Now, none of the three of us are really the type for long goodbyes, but we had a little toast before the first departure, Marc's, and then Andy and I sat down for a little bit, but his flight wasn't for hours, so I left him there after a while, to be in time for dinner with Brent and Joanna. There followed a two week period of lackadaisical living -- sleep in, catch up on a little email, bum around the beach, play some frisbee, see some sites, check out the nightlife, hang out, sleep in, read, etc. Watch some TV, play Metal Gear Solid (a Playstation game) late into the night with Brent. It all runs beautifully together. The problem with this, dear reader, is that I have not had the wherewithal to cogitate deeply on what I've been up to, I've just been taking it easy, so this time around the journal will be spare of words like my first few entries.

Firstly, let's have a look at the biggest throughway in LA, the 405. Check out how insanely packed that highway is, 10 lanes of choked traffic. This view is from the Getty Institute, which I'll cover below.

A few days after I arrived in Venice, an interesting, highly Californian event occurred: I was getting back to the house after being out, and found myself locked out (Brent had fallen asleep). Then I heard these people calling to me from the rooftop of a building across the street from Brent and Jo's. When I got closer, to see if they were in fact calling to me, they told me that I had looked to them like a friend of tiers. Then one of them said "But that's ok, you're you, and that's all good, and I'll be at that door right there to let you in in a sec."

And she was, and she introduced me to the rest of the people in this residence/office known as Actavista House, where some of these people lived, and had the main offices of this organization which organizes protests and peaceful civil disobedience to fight against things like old growth forest lumbering. I said hello to the people, browsed thief (nicely laid out, I must say) website locally, and hung out for a while until Joanna called me on my cell phone to say she was home. While I was there I learned a cool new way to show your affection -- with the surprise hug. It's when you go to hug someone, and you're slowly closing, and all of a sudden you quickly embrace them tightly and SQUEEZE for a second. The results are excellent, you should try it out on someone today. Before I left I grabbed a picture of 'em. Unfortunately I do not remember most of thier names. The one in the pink in the middle is the one who invented the surprise hug.

I began to meet people in Joanna and Brent's circle. The night that Andy, Marc, and I had gone to see Brent play hockey, I'd met Brian Madden, a Zete from before my time at Brown. I also met a woman named Elita, and a guy named Andrew. I saw a lot of those people in the past few weeks. What's hilarious is how often we would just run into them all over the place, like at an Italian restaurant Jo and Brent took me to. The first weekend in LA was just the ultimate in relaxation. The most strenuous thing I did was play frisbee golf with Brent, Andrew, and Brian. Pictured to the left is Brent sinking one for 2 under par. We went to another hockey game or two, drank Ehrdinger (sp?) beer in the Waterfront Cafe on the Venice boardwalk, ate sushi at a place where you take your shoes off and sit at low tables (and put your feet in the pit under the table so you can look like your eating at a traditional Japanese table).

Above are: Joanna and Brent at the Sushi place, showing off thief lack of shoes; Brian Madden; and Elita and Andrew.Ok, lets see some more of that beach I've been spending so much time at:

Venice Beach; a view of Malibu from said beach; and an amusing drawing I saw in the sand on the beach -- "Route 66 The End," it says, in case you can't make it out.

It was a good place to visit nonetheless, especially with such good company. Above is the main entryway of the institute, and to the left is Julie and I on the pathway to the garden. We spent a few hours there -- first we went to the upper level and saw all of the Institute's paintings. As I said, I would have preferred to see more post 1800 works, but hey, it's all... yeah, you get it.

We also checked out the sculpture rooms, and the fine arts (think hexagonal plates of polished rare rocks arranged in a circle around a mirror and fastened to a hexagonal wooden plaque and hung on a wall). Then we headed out homeward. I think it was worth the trip to wander around the Getty's buildings if nothing else, and we also got a great view of the valley, Hollywood, and other Western LA communities on the tram ride up to the Institute.

Which reminds me, it was on that tram ride that I saw the absolute most extreme example of a phenomenon that Marc and Andy and I had been remarking on constantly since arriving in California. See, Californians are stupid, see, and in addition to living near an active fault line (there's a fault line that runs through Manhattan, but it hasn't shown any activity in several hundred thousand years, I believe), the richest of the rich also build thief houses perched just over the crests of hills overlooking the ocean, or into the steepest hillsides they can find, I guess because life isn't interesting enough and the thrill of knowing that your house could be washed into the sea is a real rush. Or something. Witness, below, to the left, this house I spotted in Bell Air from the tram ride:
How long do you give that house... what, 100 years? Go ahead and view the large version, you'll see what I mean. But hey! (Say it with me now) It's all good...

Another interesting thing that I saw while I've been here are the canals in Venice, which is apparently why the neighborhood was named "Venice." (Duh.) Some years ago the whole area was oil fields or something like that, I do believe Joanna said. And then some wealthy guy cleared them out and dug all these canals, and now it's all nice and posh and quaint with both old an contemporary houses tightly lining the canals. I noticed that there was definably a game of garden oneupmanship going on, since there were smallish slightly run-down houses with peeling paint packed in amongst the really pristine glass-fronted houses, but everyone had some prize bougainvilleas going on. Here's a cute little scene:

It was a pretty slow paced day, what with me getting up at 11am, but productive and an important day of "shifting gears" from the do-nothing bliss I've been enjoying for the past several days to a more active mood required for handing errands which directly related to traveling.

First I dumped the used engine oil I'd been toting around since I changed filters and oil on the second night Andy and Marc and I were in LA. Then, in anticipation of traveling through desert for the next 2 weeks almost, I had the windows of my car tinted. I chose to have them tinted with this special film which is designed with heat, not light, in mind, so that the lightest shade of tinting with that film blocks more heat than the heaviest shade of regular tinting. It's got some special metallic particles in it or something. That way my AC won't have to work that hard, and I'll get to see what's outside without tint affecting the hue or lightness.

Then I went to see Brent play some hockey, and then we came back to his and Joanna's house and hung out till they had to go to bed (poor workin people!). Now I'm doing my last upload from a landline till at least New Orleans, I think, but I hope to get at least 2 uploads from my cell phone while on the road.

See, I can tell that I'm back in travel mode 'cause my journal writings from today are more in character with that, as opposed to most of this update, which is a little sparse of substance.

Well, one last thing, afore I sign off on this update -- check out my site's traffic statistics!!! I can scarcely believe it. If you believe what that analysis shows, 256 unique computers browsed my site in July, and 136 unique computers have browsed the site so far in August. I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Do I know 265 people? Who'd be reading this site?!?!? Pretty amazing, if those stats are true.

Next up -- Canyons!!!

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