Los Angeles: Medium-Well Please
by boh3m3 on Nov.16, 2008, under A Few Words On...
Even the birds have had enough
LA is burning. Again. The hot Santa Ana winds are the bellows of our bonfire and, once again, mansions and double-wides alike are our expensive tinder. People are acting surprised. People are suffering.
Well that’s just how it goes, folks.
I hate to be the cynic on this one, because it is a tragedy that in our current times people are being burned out of their homes. An economic shit-storm followed by losing your home and all your possessions in a raging fire? Yeah that’s a bad year for anyone.
Of course, I didn’t even find out about the fires until yesterday evening. Living in my cave without a television has it’s drawbacks, of course, so instead I found out at the thrift store by a TV a few years older than me. I remember leaving for my next stop and hearing just over the din “The winds are changing to the west now, and fire fighters are…”
So within the span of about ten minutes, I noticed the sky getting darker. The sun, I thought, is having a nap. Poor thing. I went to the mom and pop thrift store and picked up a book made in 1911 and started walking back home to find snowflakes.
Los Angelean materialism was floating down lightly, smearing the world with black spots and making people choke. Bits of plastic looking like twisted-up microbes on steroids flew about, dying to be sucked into a nostril or to ruin white clothes. Passive-aggressive apocalyptic snow flurries from hell.
The people in Pompeii died of the ash, not the fire, I thought. I wonder how many kids stuck their tongues out expecting frozen water before they realized what awaited them...
The ground was covered in a sprinkle of gray, nearly indistinguishable from the usual grunge of LA sidewalks. I wanted to make ash angels, but there clearly wasn’t enough to work with. I suppose this is the only point where being a smoker pays off… Has my addiction become a survival trait?
I thought about living in Florida, and the first hurricane I could remember. I was staying at my stepfather’s house with him and my mother, and a semi-serious hurricane was due to pass directly over us. I say semi-serious, because in Florida a hurricane is only as good as the damage it inflicts, not the damage people think it will do.
I couldn’t sleep, so I spent the night in the living room watching the storm outside. Giant bursts of blue light from the electricity station illuminated the night and made me wonder if Lo Pan had retired and, like so many other senior citizens, moved to FL.
I watched a trash can whirl like a dervish in the cul-de-sac outside, a mad furious clanging can-can dancer twitching to the rhythm of the hurricane. The water started to wash through the crack under our front door, and I ran to get some towels.
Returning with my stepfather’s floral-print guest hand-towels [the kind made for people who never really ever arrive], I noticed the trashcan had stopped. Laying on it’s side in the middle of the cul-de sac, it rocked back and forth like a drunk preparing for stomach evac. It was then that the eye of the storm passed over.
It’s an experience you have to have yourself; for no matter how eloquent the words you use to describe it, the feeling will never be understood. It was as if God had opened the junk drawer in the kitchen at 3AM and found us in there. Like the moon was a celestial flash-light looking for AA batteries.
The image is as clear in my mind as the first time I saw goatse. Ever since, I have realized that in the world we live in, it’s more a matter of picking what disasters you will deal with instead of trying to find a “perfect” location.
Let’s face it: You go up north in the states and you deal with blizzards and ice. You go to the south and deal with hurricanes and tornadoes. The pacific northwest? Feel like a 5th grader’s precipitation science fair hobby-kit.
We, however, chose to live in Los Angeles. Regardless of our reasoning, at some level we selected to live in the shadow of “the big one,” in a harsh climate full of odd people, smog, and frequent fires. LA seems placed over the Devil’s lower intestine, and we all know that sucker loves to light his farts.
So when the big “S”’s bowels tremble and he flicks his zippo at the ready, just remember: it could have been snow.
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November 16th, 2008 on 3:16 pm
Yeah, I was actually pretty relieved watching the news this morning. I say relieved because I saw that most of the fires seemed to be pretty far away from Torrance. I hope like hell it stays that way.
I feel terrible for those who lost their homes.
I remember a few of the semi-bad hurricanes that hit Florida about four years ago. Those were…fun. I lost power for two weeks, and running water for one. I was bathing in cold water that I had gotten from one gallon bottles of water at the local Target. My family designated one bathroom at the back of the house to be used, and it smelled, well, terrible.
Whenever the eye of the storm passes over, it’s always and eerie calm. I remember barely any wind, but the streets looked like little, shallow, slow-running rivers.
One by one, everyone began to come out of their house, and you can pick a metaphor for it (I’m fond of, “as though we had all at once farted in our houses and needed a breath of fresh air”, or “as though we’d been starving for weeks and thought we smelled food”).
Before the hurricane was even over, we put in a group effort to get some of the debris off the road, inspect cars for damage, allow young children to frolic happily without the old people becoming annoyed, and the dogs to take a wonderful crap outside, where we wouldn’t need to clean it!
We made idle chatter like nothing was happening, and made dinner plans for the weeks ahead.
I remember during one hurricane in particular, my girlfriend had been staying with us. Her dad was on a long business trip, and he couldn’t make it back before the storm. We’d stay up late at night, listening to the sound of the rain, and random objects smashing against my shutters. She would bitch about how her hair was a mess, how greasy she was, how she would go insane if she couldn’t give herself a proper hair style soon….etc.
Other than the lack of power for long periods of time, I’ve always really enjoyed hurricanes.
I’m too tired to proof-read for possible errors
November 16th, 2008 on 7:43 pm
So far, 800 homes have been destroyed by California’s three major fires and one of them was deliberately set.
Pyromaniacs piss me off!
Also, pray for rain…
November 16th, 2008 on 8:16 pm
somehow this made me smile
not sure what it was, but thanks
~Garth
November 16th, 2008 on 8:36 pm
Amazingly written, dude.
And kick ass picture.
PS, I decided to aggregate my feeds into Thunderbird today. Including yours. Thank you for simplifying my life and moving me beyond “granny web browser” status. Mozilla: 2. Microsoft: 0.
November 16th, 2008 on 9:39 pm
My heart goes out to all of the victims of these cluster-fuck phenomena. I can’t imagine how it is to lose everything you got (materially speaking) in a flash.
Having said that, I believe that this is exactly why your last two paragraphs don’t hold water in my opinion :P
I live in the north east, and yes, we’ve had quite a few ice-storms that took the power out on more than one occasion.
But there is a reason why your poll question favors snow storms by a large margin (well, without taking into accoucnt the skewed WoW demographic ratings :P )- A snow storm may be unpleasant, but I’ll take that anytime over pyroplastic outbursts and seasonal earthquakes.
That is why I have nothing but respect for people who are willing to move there. I’m too big of a chicken to do so.
Thanks for another great post, Ben.
Keep chillin’ (no pun intended)
November 16th, 2008 on 10:06 pm
I’ve been having some problems with your website loading slowly, recently D:
November 17th, 2008 on 1:42 am
What a gorgeous picture… there’s been some wonderful photography of the fire skies. Always look on the bright side, eh.
Glad you’re ok, my thoughts go out to those who’ve lost their homes.
Thanks for writing about this x
November 17th, 2008 on 8:41 am
wow, this is an excellent piece.
and that picture is amazing.
more importantly, i’m glad you’re okay.
best wishes.
November 17th, 2008 on 10:30 am
I remember the first time the fires and ash stuff got really bad around my city…I was in middle school and the entire sky was almost completely black. Everyone’s clothes were covered in the ash and I could barely breathe at all. We skipped PE for nearly a month or more and we weren’t allowed outside during the breaks for snack and lunch. It was crazy stuff.