Scenes from a Saturday in Hollywood
posted at 3:41 pm
on May. 22, 2010
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Ultimate Season Has Started Again
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I’m in a lovely cafe on Hollywood Blvd, and I’ve just seen Yoda, Marilyn Monroe and Freddy Kruger pose for pictures while a rainbow-hair-dyed Chewbacca stands in back of the awed crowd, sadly neglected.
Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum is next door, and it attracts a lot of stand-arounders, too, as does the Gap store, and the man selling the strap-on rollerskate wheels, for kids! (Can you think of a worse idea than giving your kid new rollerskates at the corner of Hollywood and Highland? Time’s up! No, you cannot.)
There’s something fascinating about so many people trying to get attention at once, in a place where so many other people are looking for something out of the ordinary to pay attention to. It’s like the most successful swap meet of attention ever.
And now here I am, about 10 blocks away, and things are so calm and peaceful and bright. I’d forgotten how bright L.A. is. Not just the reflection from people’s teeth and sunglasses, but the sky itself. The light bleaches you out; it tans your skin and makes your hair pale and your soul fade, and it makes you smile, and you breath more deeply of the air, and you realize it’s not as polluted as people joke it is, if the wind is blowing east.
My pale hair doesn’t need any help. Since I colored—I mean coloured, wow, am I reacclimatizing fast!—my hair grey last week, it’s already faded out to a brighter white/grey/blonde, and now I look less like Billy Idol and more like Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner. But while this doo might stand out in Calgary, in L.A. I’m still audience here, not part of the street show.
And what a show: On the Red Line, there is a school outing in front of me. What group? The Harry Potter club, preparing to take the “train” all dressed in their house/wizard robes. Mostly Gryffendors for some reason, I note quickly as they passed.
And then on the subway itself, where they haven’t figured out how to deliver cell phone service underground (hint: wires and antennae!), first a family of African-American musicians playing “All You Need Is Love” for donations until they get in a BIG fight with the mentally disabled girl loudly selling buttons, who yells “This is *MY* fucking train!” at them until they get off. For the record, The Black Beatles were there first.
I’m in town for another week; Susie went back today. In addition to dropping her off at the airport today, I also dropped off the rental car and I’m trying a week car-less in Los Angeles. GASP. It’s strangely liberating, like going for a spacewalk from the space shuttle with an untethered EVA suit. “I’m free! I’m free! I hope I can make it back….”
The project at Foursquare Church is going quite well, as are several other projects, but while I definitely feel like we’re on top of many things, and that the work we’re doing is extremely interesting and high quality, there’s also this feeling of not enough hours in the day and not every loose end being wrapped up.
It was my 14th anniversary last week. As with most years, some people remembered and some forgot—but this year, both Susie and I remembered, so it’s going down as an overall win in my books.
I’m spending a lot of today thinking about people who aren’t in L.A. now, past and present. Standing outside the Gap store where Staci used to work. Walking past the Lucky Strike bowling alley. Remembering my commute to Variety and the people I worked with. There are a lot of places here with ghosts, and a lot of places I wish I shared with new friends, too.
