The Power of Prose: Or Why I Hate the Way You Write

In case you haven’t noticed, I like writing. My foray in the art has lasted consistently since my junior year of high school, or roughly eight years if we’re rounding up.

And I really do believe it is an art. And art just so happens to be a point where my tastes happen to piss off a great deal of people — including what may or may not have been my date last weekend.

Last weekend as I explored the halls of the Getty Museum with what might have been a date (Jacob has a social life!?! *Gasp* I will neither confirm nor deny that rumor), the lovely young lady I was with asked me what art I thought was the best. I replied, “I think it’s all good. Who are we to judge what’s good and what isn’t?” And so I continue that line of thought in believing that artists had/have certain intentions with their works at all times. They don’t strive to be the best; they strive for contentment — and fail most of the time with that even. That could be why Van Gough thought his ears were a little too ancillary.

Had she asked me what my favorite type of art was, I’d probably reply something Renaissance, something with so much depth and so much life that you wonder how an artist put brush to canvas and came up with it. However, if you ask me literal questions, you oftentimes get literal answers. That could explain why the enthusiasm for a third date has seemingly diminished over the past week on her part, much to my dismay, but I digress. Life doesn’t grant me enough time to worry about that which I cannot control.

Moving on, however, that example of literal simplicity in motion does translate very well to a conception of writing which I do have an opinion. I value relative simplicity. If I were a musician, I’d be a minimalist. I’m not a fan of adverbs in excess or flowery language. The strength of prose ought to stand on the pillars of every word put to paper, er, blog. It is, perhaps, why I hated most of my writing classes in college.

Imagine a class with about 40 percent of the people of the beatnik/hipster/over-intellectual facade/what-have-you variety. Imagine most of them love adverbs and overtly artsy-fartsy language. In such a class, things weren’t burgundy; they’re the deepest shade of passion glistening in a rose pedal. Give me a break.

As an objectivist on the art scene, what in particular compels me to loathe other English majors’ works? Perhaps that’s more a philosophical question than anything else.

Yes, prose is free-form poetry without a doubt. The written word is an art — more so now than ever because most people absolutely suck at it. However, English is still a language, and languages are meant to communicate information. Not that the gobbledygook of the vivid, detailed, poetic description isn’t doing just that; it’s just that it has a time and a place. More so than that, there is an optimal level to the getting the information that needs to be conveyed out along with the creativity. And most people abuse the latter.

Sometimes, people can’t go more than a sentence with a complex simile, a whimsical metaphor to whisk readers off into an allusion, a grand allusion — no wait, the grandest of allusions. And it wouldn’t be complete without a series of commas to mention, to mention its purity, its beauty, as if the writer is running out of breath, because, after all, the topic at hand is, well, breathtaking. *Inhales deeply. Grabs inhaler before moving onto the next paragraph.*

Many African languages, for reference, do not have adverbs (They repeat the accentuated noun several times for emphasis.). Mrs. Okray, my amazing second-grade teacher, read translated African folklore to us back in the day. If anyone would know about such things, it would be her. I remember far more from the second grade than any guy should. I remember my teacher once telling me that if I pulled my lazy head out of my lazy ass, I had the potential to be the sort of person who could find a way to cure cancer. I admit I was a lazy young kid, but with her pushing and my mom’s 24 years of love and constant prodding (she wasn’t quite a tiger mom — I still can’t play a musical instrument to save my life, and I sucked at calc and AP physics in high school), I hope I can honest-to-god tell them I’m still doing something almost as cool as an automotive journalist now.

Flowery language is like anything else — best used in moderation. Camus believed flowery language was more like Charlie Sheen: Using even a small amount of it would have caused his head to explode, and his children would have wept over his dead body. But he did something I challenge every author to try: Make words speak. Make the hollowness of each short word reverberate with meaning — saying something without saying anything at all.

Face it, if your every other word is fluffed up with garbage, some people will say, “Oh, you’re so artistic. Your metaphors are so deep.” I’ll call it the crap it is, laden with excess baggage. Reading that sort of garbage for five years made me adept at spotting it. And while I never got above an A- in any of my writing classes (Note: But I did day in a Holiday Inn Express last night),  I think I have every right in criticizing it.

Running full circle with the initial point, how do I get away with saying that while I can’t and won’t criticize visual art? Simple answer: Visual art is only as cumbersome as you imagine it to be. Who are we to say whether or not it can be properly digested? Conversely, words are meant to communicate, and making it too heavy can dilute one’s attention span, if not the ability to understand them altogether. Words can have an abstract quality to them, but in the end all they are is a simple tool. Overcomplication is simply a way to taint them, to metaphorically add three switches to turn on a single light.

So leave English the way it was meant to be. That is not to say dumb it down; rather, expound upon its nuances and virtues instead of beating a dead horse with every allusion. Keep it simple, stupid.

Life as an Undocumented Worker

I’ve always felt that, much as it’s an easy movie to hate, Terminator 3 has some noteworthy parts to it. Take, for instance, the opening scenes where a now-adult John Connor is shown living off the grid, cash in-hand and a backpack with everything necessary to live in it in order to escape from the law and Skynet. It’s rebellious beyond anything James Dean could ever hope to pull off, audacious even.

After Tom Ridge became the top secretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, he began instituting a series of ID checking. In Pennsylvania, for instance, where the program launched, if your face is on a driver’s license or state ID, you can be tracked to whatever bar you go to where they check to make sure you’re 21. It’s a bit invasive, and in a post-9/11 world, it’s more the rule than the exception anymore unfortunately. That’s right, you’re cataloged into a database, and you probably didn’t even know it.

As much as I’d feel better knowing that the government couldn’t track my every move, I know it’s not going to happen. I’m not some extremist political dissident, and heck, I even like baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and most Chevrolets. But there’s an allure to living out of sight from Sauron atop Mount Doom.

California has allowed me to experiment with it on several accounts. I’m not on a lease here — I’m a fulltime subletter. My business mail gets shipped to a P.O. Box in Ohio. I am registered to vote in Pittsburgh. My driver’s license is from Pennsylvania. My car is registered in my father’s name and is thus not technically mine, much as it was my initial $800 that picked it up. It’s still registered to him, and I drive with a note of permission saying I’m allowed to drive it. I guess that’s a law in this state. In living for three years fulltime in Pittsburgh as a resident of the city, I never ran into problems, and I don’t plan on running into any here, but I’m not going to take chances.

Call it what it whatever you think it is. There are between 7 and 20 million illegal residents in this country — many of which are in California with its proximity to the Mexican border. I’m legally on paper in many places where they are not. If you live over here, you notice many places that only take cash and many people who only pay cash. To me, it’s not that big of a deal because all they’re doing is trying to find a better life, often taking jobs that legal residents often say falls beneath them. I worked with an illegal immigrant who washed cars with me in Pittsburgh at the BMW dealership where I worked. All he wanted was to raise enough money at $8 an hour to ship it back to his family and oneday open up his own convenience store in Mexico. He claimed 11 dependents on his taxes with whatever made-up background he managed to find.

And he was the best worker in all of that dealership — and one of the friendliest people there, too, in a company of truly miserable souls.

I’m planning on voting absentee when that time comes up, switching my voter registration back to Ohio now that I’m out of reach from one of the most short-sighted mayors I’ve ever seen in Luke Ravenstahl. If I have to do it when I visit my family in December, I’m happy to do so. But I think it’s a right I should have, much as dual-citizenship has started growing in popularity (lest you think U.S.-born athletes have no right competing for other countries in international events like the Olympics). Yesterday, I went to Walmart, at which I was stopped by a girl trying to register people to put an initiative on the ballot.

“Hi, sir, we’re filling out a petition against the proposed internet tax, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to sign it.”

“Uh, um.”

“Are you legally able to vote?” Do I really look Hispanic? Really? I had a coworker tell me the other day that I could pass for it, but come on, seriously, I’m German, Irish, Russian, and Hungarian in ethnicity. I start wondering how numb this girl is.

“Yeah, I am. It’s just that I’m not registered here.”

“Oh, well we can change your voter registration right now.”

Do I really want to be on the radar here yet? Do I want to be on-record anywhere in a state that, while it’s growing on me, doesn’t feel like home quite yet?

“I’m not sure I want to change it yet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s still in Ohio.”

“Come on, Ohio. California. Which one’s better?” Listen, you dingbat. What makes you think you have any right to talk smack on my home state? I’m not saying its Beverly Hills or anything, but it’s home. Get off your high horse. Only native Ohioans should have the right to make fun of it.

“It’s not that. I just want my vote to count, and it won’t out here.”

“Oh, you’re a Republican (she says it like it’s a bad word). It’s all cool then. No prob.”

I don’t want to identify myself with such numb, brainless, Kool-Aid-drinking people. I admit that my stay in this lovely state has been eye-opening in that it has taught me that kind, caring, laid-back people do exist in the world. Even the douchebags out here are nice. I’m sorry the same can’t be said of Pittsburgh. I have a lot of friends there and from there still, but but living in SoCal has given me an appreciation for living in a place that you’re not going to be ostracized if you’re not a yinzer.

Still, I’m a libertarian by identification and a Republican by designation, if only because the Libertarian Party is a joke, filled with pot-headed hippies. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the majority of its stances, however.

So I’m going to be a rebel as long as I can, living off the grid as much as I can. I’m not paranoid or anything, but there are a good number of people here who deserve a lot more attention from Johnny Law than I do. Let them have it. I have sun, life, and very few worries keeping me contained, just the way I like it. That’s how a state that proclaims itself a paradise ought to be.

California is so weird, it almost seems normal

Yesterday, I woke up to go to a coworker’s apartment so we could carpool to a Saturday afternoon assignment. No big deal. No worries. Nothing out of the ordinary happened on the way there, sans the fact that I hit 75 mph on Los Angeles’ highway system.

Oh yeah, and I saw this scene in my driveway.

I might have been less taken off guard had I been in Ohio instead of the middle of a city with 6 million people in it (8 million or so in Los Angeles County), but even then, I lived in a suburban community bordered by farmlands. It still would have been kind of weird.

But the longer I live here, the more I realize unpredictable is the norm. Sense? What the hell does that word even mean?

That said, it’s more than welcome. Why does life always have to make sense? Why does a logical flow always need to exist? Does everything need a beginning and an end with something in between, no matter how brief?

Around here, days melt together with some sort of non-pattern that are seemingly only separated with identifiers we assign them. I’ve thought about it for a while, and life permitting (money and time), every day could be the same. That’s why, I’m sure, people with tons of money out here between acting gigs can so very quickly find themselves picking up bad habits — they become overwhelmed by the complacency of having nothing to do without a real day job, no real pattern that tomorrow is going to be different from today. If you had all the money in the world with a manager handling your day-to-day activities, if you forgot what day it was, how would you stave off such regular boredom? Me, I’d write. I’d figure out something to say and someone to whom it ought to be directed. Some people are a little weaker, and as I posted a few weeks back, if you don’t have a certain amount of grounding, Los Angeles will eat you alive without remorse.

Regardless, to me, this place makes no sense. Every day looking the same doesn’t make sense. Green grass with no rain doesn’t make sense. A high cost of living but all of the cheap restaurants around doesn’t make sense. Extreme unemployment for so many people with so much flourishing industry around here doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense, much less half the ridiculous laws you hear about here from smog checks without inspections (leaving many people driving around in half-functional Beetles from the 1960s) or a state billions of dollars in debt with the highest sales tax rate in the nation.

I can’t complain, though, as much as it all boggles me because it all has so little order to it that it always feels like a different adventure in a consecutive series. It feels like a sitcom with an unknown plot.

To segway into how the water around here seems to be getting to me, my high school class is having its fifth-year reunion coming up in two weeks. My senior prom date commented on the event’s Facebook page that she would be in another place and couldn’t make it, to which I “liked” her comment. Not that I don’t think it’s cool that she’s finding something of a track in life that makes her busy such that she cannot attend — that was one of the reasons I chose to randomly endorse her comment. As much as I made a few long-lasting friends in high school, I find that the further the separation I have from high school, the more I find that today is what defines me. Yesterday was just training for tomorrow. But to defy all philosophical reasoning, just because I could, I “liked” her comment simply because I could. It didn’t make sense, but why did it have to, I thought?

The “New York Minute” out east is some kind of staple of torture back there. Somewhere in the Midwest is the same sort of pressure of making sure all the trains run on time. Out West, though, it’s some kind of mash of order and organization with a pragmatic grip on life that if you’re not entertaining and being entertained, the returns returns on the quality of life diminish quickly. Things get done, and they get done well, but to someone trained on an East or Midwest schedule, this place can be nerve-racking in that it doesn’t make one iota of sense at times with regard to order or pacing.

But — and I’m learning this slowly, bracing through my own strain on why things don’t move faster — who really cares? Life would be so much more pleasurable if we took the moments as the come, savored the little things, took chances just to see what happened, and woke up each day with the idea that every day was its own gift.

I’m getting the impression that it’s best to let it make no sense initially and find sense somewhere in the midst of it, to leave preconceptions by the wayside. Either that or carry them and walk away from the show a little disappointed that it didn’t live up to where it was expected to be.

I really have no idea if anything I’ve written tonight makes sense. I really don’t care, either. It’s my blog; I can do that. But what I do know is that you can either live your life actively or passively (such is the case, as I just discovered, with a bunch of sentences in this post tonight — oops), with an excitement for what comes next or a disappointment that what just happened felt as logical as a plotline in a Pauly Shore movie. Sometimes it’s just best to walk into a situation with a smile and an open mind and just see what happens.

Ferrari Watch: Officially Over

Today was a day of tragedy. It was a day of heartbreak. It was a day of joy. And it was a day of triumph.

If you couldn’t figure out what was what, tragedy struck in Oslo, heartbreak occurred when the talented Amy Winehouse succumbed to a never-ending drug addiction, joy came to the Yinzer faithful and city of Milledgeville, Georgia when Ben Roethlisberger married his girlfriend and solidified an end to his search for love. May sorority sisters everywhere sleep better at night because of it.

And triumph occurred. Triumph. A full-circle conclusion to a six-week-long search for one car. Pft, that sounds ridiculous with so much going on in the world of more importance, but this actually meant something, if ever-so-trivial to me, a realization of what I thought LA was.

I finally saw a Ferrari. Well, three actually.

Last night, I posted on the excesses of Los Angeles. I know this city is as superficial as Las Vegas in many respects, sans the fact that people have real jobs here and the architecture doesn’t look as gauche. But there’s a vibe of lots of money and trying to hard to spend it in much of this city. Today, I finally got to go to Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and the parts with more money than sense. I got the tour from my friend, Joe: “Oh, that’s the hotel where Lindsay Lohan went for her coked-out binges,” he explained among other factoids you’re just not going to get on the Star Tours.

Beverly Hills is excess turned up to 11. It solidified my opinion of it as a fairy tale world, one $30 million, er, $60 $85 million house at a time. Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, Maserati, AMG Mercedes, BMW M, Porsche — being honest, Beverly Hills, as well as LA in general, has taken the glamour out of seeing so many of them on the road. I’m sure my opinion will change when I have the opportunity to drive some of them, and I still hold all of them at dream level, but they’re pretty much like the idea of wrapping Mila Kunis in a burqa to me — what’s the point of looking gorgeous if they’re homogenized to the point of anonymity? To the people who can afford them, I say this: Buy a Noble. Buy a Lexus LFA. Buy a Spyker or a Morgan. Buy something with a little less “me-too”-ness to it.

Rarer than any cars I had seen — and likely intentionally so — are Ferraris out here. You wouldn’t think that’d be the case, but with two-year waiting lists and $100,000 fees to jump to the front of the line, a 458 Italia suddenly looks overpriced when you can get a Lamborghini Murcielago roadster for the same kind of money — and the Murci is an open top. You know, see and be seen: the motto of Beverly Hills.

The Hills was the last place I had not been that could possibly see a Ferrari. So we went there. I’m really digging this urban exploration thing if you haven’t figured it out.

I saw the usual round of uber cars. I thought that there could be a chance that today would once again not be my lucky day after seeing an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and a Vanquish back to back. But then I saw a 599. Wow, the first one I had ever seen of those. And shortly after cruising the roads leading up to the Playboy mansion, I saw a 355 Spider.

And all good things apparently come in threes, so when we stopped for dinner, out cropped a 612 Scaglietti to complete the cycle right across from Hollywood’s favorite Starbucks. Ah, what a great end to the day.

So to all of you annoyed to the point of insanity from my incessant “Ferrari Watch” ranting, fret no more. I’ll find something new to obsess about now. Come on, my longest-standing worry since I landed here June 9 has been to see a Prancing Stallion on something  from Modena. I saw one, er, three tonight.

I’ve got to say that if that was my biggest worry, I’m now through with it. Thank goodness. Life’s pretty good right now.

Los Angeles Fact vs. Fiction Part 2: Everyone Looks Remarkably Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Out Here

I’ll admit it, I could afford to lose some 30 pounds. That’s the bad news. The good news is that in August I’m forcing myself to pick up a gym membership, and usually I’m too cheap to disuse something of which I have a vested interest. Suffering, working out, getting your swell on at the gym — whatever you call it — that’s what I’m going to do pretty soon.

I came to LA thinking that everyone has sun and fun all day long, and they all look good doing it, too. My beyond-obsessive fitness guru former roommate and I once joked toward the end of my stay that he would look more at home in this city than I would. Come on, everyone supposedly looks perfect here. I’m just an overweight schlub from Ohio, right?

The latter may be the case, but the former isn’t by a long shot. There are over 6 million people who live in Los Angeles, and most of them are not in the Hollywood Hills. Most of them are not actors and actresses. From down here, most just look like normal people, albeit with a little more pigmentation due to the sun never hiding in these parts.

But then you go to the bars, and it’s a reckless display of aesthetic anarchy with everyone vying to win some sort of imaginary pissing contest. Just last weekend, I messaged one of my best friends in Pittsburgh that thar be cougars afoot. Not saying that I mind the anatomical modifications some women felt necessary ordinarily. I’m a red-blooded male. But it’s awkward seeing such things on a gaggle of women — all of whom looked far greater than 40 — as they grabbed center stage en masse and danced with more fervor than anyone else in the bar when the Tom Petty cover band jammed out.  The pack of cougars looked like cartoons. If I had that much extra money to blow on various things, I’d be living in Manhattan Beach and driving a 2000something car right now.

Such bearing any effect on my night would be ancillary at best, though. I had a ton of fun regardless due mostly do good music, good friends, and good drinks. It was nothing short of outstanding. But I do question the total insecurity one must have to over-tan like some people or come with a group of friends, all surgically-enhanced. It’s a pervasive attitude among the “haves” out here — at least the ones that were at the bar I trafficked — is that good is never good enough. I’m not so sure it’s outside the realm of normal human nature, though. Normal people get braces, go to the gym, get their hair dyed, etc. Other than my Midwest sensibilities finding the exuberance to be excessive, are my societal norms to be the ones that dictate LA society? Not by a long shot.

Among the college set here since I live near USC’s campus, I’ve come to the conclusion that they all look like college students. Other than the fact that many wore sunglasses, they could have looked at home on Pitt’s campus (the sun doesn’t believe in Pittsburgh).  I’ve seen nothing unusual from them.

But with an 11.9 percent unemployment rate in Los Angeles county and a host of “have nots,” there are plenty more people of lesser means than the Gucci and Rolex set around here. There are plenty of “normal” people out here. Though where there is money, there’s vanity in large quantities. It’s boring; out here, Porsches are like Camrys. Vanity is the standard. Taste isn’t.

And such seems to be the case with the people around here, too. Are there a lot more good-looking people out here than in Pittsburgh or Ohio? Absolutely. Come on, it’s Southern California. A friend once told me that Los Angeles is a lot like trail mix — it’s mostly made of fruits and nuts — his words, not mine. But it’s an obsession around here; a sort of keeping up with the Joneses, if the Joneses washed their faces with $4 bottles of water and considered a Mercedes-Benz to be their beater car. It’s a far different culture, a far scarier culture to be part of as an unprepared, ungrounded soul.

That’s why I WILL NOT ever recommend to anyone who has aspirations of driving into the great unknown to drop everything and move to LA on a whim for a chance at stardom. Not my family, not no one. If you’re not grounded or at least have a reasonable expectation of what you’re going to get with this city, it will eat you alive without remorse. LA is a psychotropic, and if you’re not aware that it’s just a city filled with people who eat and breathe just like you and me, it’ll overwhelm you. I firmly believe this city is that dangerous.

But that’s not to say it isn’t what you’d expect it to be. Everyone and everything looks pretty at the surface. It has life, charm, opportunity, excess, grandeur, love, and passion packed into it — but those all often become buried in the background, deep down. This place is eye candy all around. I’m not here for that aspect — yet, at least. I’m here on a dedicated mission to kick ass with my professional endeavors. I work with that mission every day. I am not suffering from cabin fever. I am not concerned that I am among the working poor in a city of wealth. I’m not concerned that I will never be six-feet-tall or that I don’t own a BMW yet. Let people who give a crap worry about such things.

Los Angeles can give rise to a mix of emotions. It’s a boiling pot of water. All you see from the outside is a very nice pot, perhaps with a copper bottom and made of stainless steel. It’s a piece of rabid fascination, obsession from the outside. But if you’re inside, all you have is heat, pressure, and a frenzy of movement in all directions with little idea if any of it is flowing in a particularly productive pattern versus another.

What you see on TV, in bars, in Beverly Hills — that’s all the shiny pot, the shiniest pot made by the best metalcrafters in the world. But on the inside, it’s an absolute mess.

Los Angeles Fact vs. Fiction Part 1: S***’s Expensive

When I was exploring the considerations that I needed to take in before moving to Los Angeles, it dawned on me that I was never going to have an apartment again where I could get away with paying some relatively paltry sum like I did in Pittsburgh. To put it bluntly: cheap wasn’t likely to happen again.

Since moving out here more than a month ago, I can effectively report that my rent is double what I last paid as a tenant of a four-bedroom apartment…and I still live in a four-bedroom place. And where I thought the quality of the neighborhood might go up with the added cost, yeah, that didn’t happen, either. But at least it’s sunny all the time, and that has to count for something.

Here, I have mariachi music, dogs that bark at ungodly hours, two roosters that cockadoodledoo right at the crack of dawn, and no one who speaks English in addition to an area that’s no cleaner than the last college ghetto where I lived. But at least the neighbors are fairly friendly, and I feel safe here. There is something to be said for that.

And with moving 2,500 miles west, taxes went up, too, from 7 percent to 9.75 percent on store items. It’s an extra $2.75 per $100 spent, so it doesn’t hurt like you’d think a torturous maiming ought to feel. I compare it more to keeping a wound open and letting a slowly intruding infection of gangrene do all of the work. Sorry if you’ve not yet had dinner. The metaphor worked, and I’m sticking with it.

But, like Pittsburgh, the city and state do not incur taxes upon groceries, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy a loaf of bread. There are more impoverished people out here than not, lest you believe that there are no poor people out here as the movies portray. People need cheap places to grab food. I shop at Food4Less where the parking lot is always a mess, I’ve had people beg me for change, the clientele makes Walmart’s look wholesome, and did I mention it’s cheap?

I could go to Ralphs (no apostrophe), which is akin to Giant Eagle for all of you Easterners (Geeze, is it bad I consider Ohio east now?), but it’s a little more expensive. Demographically, it’s much younger and more affluent, and it seems to be the place where the USC students shop, so it might pose a place where I may be able to meet people around my same general demographic a little easier…but it’s expensive. And seriously, as I find my travel receipts (which are all tax-deductible as moving expenses — even Taco Bell), I realize I spent a whole lot to get out here. I’m in saving mode before the festering plague of creditors and student loan officers hunt me down, so I think I’d rather save a buck or two where I can.

That’s not to say the food quality at any one place is any better, either. On the contrary, while bananas are about 20 cents per pound more expensive out here than they were in Pennsylvania and Ohio, almost everything is cheaper in the store, and it’s the same level of quality. I can buy real steaks out here for $4 per pound, which is unheard of back east. And, weirdly enough, ground beef is quite expensive out here, so I’ve substituted ground turkey in its place.

As for shopping here and there, that 10 percent thing gets in the way a little, but it’s not unbearable at first glance. And bars are similarly priced to how they were back home. While I’ve not gone to a whole lot of places yet, I went to a piano bar the other weekend whose clientele looked to have a median age of around 35. Other than some 24-ounce cans of PBR (oh yes, I went there), most of their beers were high quality stuff, and not overpriced particularly.

It gives me hope that this place becomes just as livable the further up the socioeconomic ladder I am able to move in these parts. ‘Cause honestly, this place isn’t New York City expensive. It’s not Washington DC expensive. It’s not just a tourist town; real people live here. And in saying that, at least from the perspective of one of Los Angeles’ lowest common denominators, it’s not a terribly overpriced place to live with me, my 50 cents more expensive per gallon gasoline (I just paid $3.799 per gallon tonight),  and I.

To sum everything up, Los Angeles isn’t a terribly overpriced place to live, so I dub that notion pure fiction. It sure as hell ain’t cheap and I still believe California might be run by socialists, but it’s definitely doable on a right-outta-college salary. Did I mention it’s always sunny and warm out here, too?

In search of Enzo Ferrari

With J-Los, R-Pats, and an alphabet soup of people with more dollars than sense, it shouldn’t be too hard to see a Ferrari around Los Angeles, right?

Well, I guess that all depends on where you are. It’s not like this place has been a dearth of exotic automobiles. On my second night here, I saw a Maybach 57 sedan parked right on Spring Street downtown. On my first day of work, I was passed by a black-on-black Bentley Continental Super Sport convertible on my way to the 105 (that’s how you say highway names out here — not “Interstate 105” or “I-105”). But not counting what might’ve been a Ferrari California a mile down the road and a few “lesser” Maseratis, I’ve yet to see an Italian Stallion. I know they’re in lesser supply around here these days. Nic Cage had to give up some of his collection in the aftermath of financial meltdown. It’s even gotten to a point that I’m sure is annoying with my coworkers that I have created a game called “Ferrari Watch.”

I’ve not won yet, obviously.

But for crying out loud, I saw more Ferraris in North Canton, Ohio than I’ve seen in what some people consider the mecca of rare and exclusive cars in the U.S. Part of this could stem from the fact that I have yet to visit Beverly Hills and too, too much of Orange County where the rich and famous roam the real estate. No, I’ve stuck mostly to my spot near USC, Long Beach, and Van Nuys, where I’ve now been twice. This isn’t to say I’ve not seen rare and eclectic cars abound. Lamborghinis and Porsches are like the sun out here — not a day goes by when you don’t see one.

And even in my lower-middle class area, there are tons and tons of Jihadi-spec old Toyotas that you may never see in your life if you live in the Rust Belt. It makes me not wonder so much what Afghanistan is really like, sans the fact we don’t have IEDs here.

But getting back to Ferraris, they were never meant to be seen so much as the Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, Aston Martins, and Lamborghinis of the world in spite of the fact that just a decade ago, you could pick up a new 360 Modena for less than the price of a new Mercedes S600.

When a wine maker and tractor producer bought a Ferrari back in the 1950s, he fancied the Pininfarina design and sporting character. But let’s be honest, it was harsh and as reliable as getting your money back from an impoverished meth addict. So that man went about creating a car that could carry the same sporting nature while providing a bit more practicality and refinement. That man’s name was Ferrucio Lamborghini.

Ferrari, on the other hand, fancied his street cars as a means to an end; a way to get funding so he could build his world-beating race cars. He couldn’t care less if your car broke down so long as you bought another one. And it wasn’t until the 1990s that Ferrari stepped up its game in provocation from Honda with the NSX, a car that proved sporty didn’t have to be unreliable. Really, up until Ferrari realized most of the people lusting after them couldn’t drive stick, its cars weren’t about luxury or getting your money’s worth in creature comforts. With the F40 in 1987, you could see the glue runs on the door seams where Ferrari had fastened the car together. It was the last car Enzo himself worked on before he died that year.

Here I am, wishing in a place with probably the largest disparity of wealth on Earth that I’d see just one of the handbuilt sports cars — just one. Of all the people who buy them out here, you’d think that would be the case. But until I venture over to the western corridor of this city, I’ll likely have to settle for my Porsches and other ego-mobiles that just aren’t Ferraris.

Pity me.

The Independence Day fiesta

So the other day, I went to a restaurant, walking through the door, staring at the bilingual menu on the wall. A man approaches me and asks me a question. What did I just hear? He repeats himself — same confusion on my end. Oh right, he’s speaking Spanish. For some reason, that didn’t quite click immediately.

“English, please,” I say to him. I have a little bit of a tan going on, but my German-Irish-Russian-Hungarian heritage don’t quite look Hispanic. Just as quickly:

“Do you need a menu?” he says instead.

That was easy.

“Sure.” I looked at the menu, but after hearing lore of cheap Mexican food (and really good) Mexican food, I left at the sight at $12 meals. Come on, I don’t live in Beverly Hills or anything. A big spender on a Tuesday night I am not, so I went next door to grab some chicken tikka masala from the Indian joint. In the middle of a heavily concentrated Hispanic neighborhood.

Thinking about it now, I’m not sure if I had any reasonable expectation of getting English as Language 1 at the Mexican restaurant. This is the U.S., but we don’t have a national language. Heck, even McDonald’s signs are all in Spanish here. I am happy that at least it was Option 2, though.

Growing up in small town Ohio, you just don’t get that feeling of being a minority. It’s not a bad thing. Really, this whole California experiment has been nothing short of a learning experience — every day.

I find myself struggling to grow my patience, but that’s the worst of my problems. I’m not the most patient person on Earth. In fact, I’ve often been my way or the highway. But this neighborhood is slowly changing that. Work is slowly changing that, being the small fish in a very large pond and all. It’s really, really tough to manage, akin to some sort of dog waiting for hours to get the scraps from that night’s steak dinner.

But it’s doable. And it’s being done.

Yesterday was my first birthday away from my family. I ended up celebrating it with a meal at In-N-Out Burger, my first time going there. Tonight, I’m balancing my Pandora station with the techno mariachi dance music that’s playing outside. It’ll probably be playing on July 4th, which I guess is better than country music. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m probably going to watch the fireworks in Long Beach anyway.

So to recap, I probably ought to learn to speak Spanish because it’ s not going anywhere and neither am I for a while. Patience is a virtue. Work is still awesome, and it’s great hearing the ins and outs of such a business.

After all, I didn’t drive 2,400 miles just to throw in the towel.  Life’s an adventure, and California is one giant sunny, jolly, leading-edge part of that. I’ll try to keep up with these shenanigans more often, but life’s a bit busy in my third full week of living in the Golden State.

Impressions from a week in Los Angeles

Okay, so I’ve been here since the night of the sixth, but after going through my first week of work and experiencing a little more of the second-largest city in the nation, I can come back with a bit fairer assessment than “Woe is me, I live in the ghetto!” and the whole starving artist mantra I had when I got here a week and a half ago.

Life’s pretty good right now. It’d be better if I had a bed instead of a sleeping bag for sleep, but at least I got a desk today so I no longer have to sit on the floor in a somewhat uncomfortable position to be able to use my computer. That’s progress.

I got the impression pretty quickly as I went to LA’s monthly ArtWalk last week that I wasn’t in Canton or Pittsburgh anymore. As I spoke to my dad, a woman kicked over her shopping cart filled with her life’s belongings and began cussing at whoever would listen to her. Just moments earlier, she looked like she was having an awfully good time rocking out to Michael Jackson music booming through the streets. Try explaining all of that over the phone.

And the day after, I went to meet my boss and check out the Motor Trend offices where I work. I can’t say too much about those sorts of things in specifics, not that it would be like spoiling the plot of Titanic or anything, but I was taken aback with the surroundings (in a very good way). Since the people over in that department did load this picture up on Facebook, I have no problem telling you all it’s a pretty cool place to spend eight or nine hours a day. And that the Lotus pictured there smells of fine leather and Elmer’s glue. But that’s neither here nor there. My non-disclosure agreement prevents me from saying much more than that, but between getting to live the life of an automotive journalist and getting to learn from talented people who’ve been doing it a lot longer than I have, I don’t think I could ask for much better.

Getting back to the city, though, it’s a crazy place. In either commute route — to work in the morning or from it in the evenings — I don’t face the rapture that is Los Angeles’ worst traffic, fortunately. It’s still bad though. Like 45 minutes to drive 15 miles in the morning bad. But Google Maps says if I took the 405 (LA speak doesn’t use “Interstate 405” — it uses “the” in front of numbers, or so I’m told), I could be on the road twice as long. And that doesn’t strike me as a fun thing to do in an old, misfiring economy car with no air conditioning. Los Angeles hasn’t been particularly balmy since I got here, but it’s still pretty warm.

I’m still getting used to it albeit more quickly than I thought I would. It may be my misplaced fear that some kid playing hop-scotch in the back will try to jack my car (they’re all under 10), or that whole getting used to the inch-thick bulletproof plexiglass  windows in everything from banks to fast food restaurants, but there seems to be an on-edge feeling all the time in the midst of the characteristic laid-back vibe you can’t get anywhere but SoCal. It’s a juxtaposition, an oxymoron. It’s a contradiction. It’s central Los Angeles.

There is no place I’ve been — not New York City and certainly not DC — that possesses such a diverse environment of slums just miles from Rodeo Drive or Ferraris sharing the road with clapped-out 1985 Chevy Novas. It’s exciting and simultaneously daunting. But then again, the idea of driving my old clapped-out Saturn out here is the same sort of spirit.

I can get used to this very easily, I think, from the mariachi techno music emanating from my neighbor’s all-weekenders to the never-bad weather. It’s not bad, not bad at all. I need to be here a little longer and see the city in more depth before I can make any real impressions on whether or not it’s the paradise it’s touted as.