A 4AM ODE TO LOS ANGELES

A 4AM ODE TO LOS ANGELES.

BARRY LYNDON FONT:  (This is a brief riff about L.A..  Probably of no interest to anyone who doesn’t or hasn’t lived here, or who doesn’t want to be famous and fuck models and cruise around in cool shades in a Geo Tracker with PSSYHND vanity plates and do coke and go to parties with models and fuck them in an infinity pool like you see in sock-fuck fake pornos in the dead of night.)

All my life I wanted to live in Los Angeles.  Like to me Los Angeles was HAZY SOFT FOCUS and hot pussy and blondes also blondes also blondes, like this LOOKER glow with fucking Albert Finney fixing up these imperceptible flaws in obviously beautiful women.  It was John Ritter in a skintight-as-fuck pits-stained banlon shirt doing mugging faces in front of Chrissy Snow.  It was SOAP with Ted Wass.  And Blake Edwards movies where guys who looked like Robert Weber and Richard Mulligan were surrounded by always-willing topless blondes at some Malibu Colony pool party at all times.   Jan-,Michael Vincent and William Katt were surfing a few hundred yards up the beach.

It was this era of hermetic 70s-ness that gave way to MARK BLANKFIELD IN FRIDAYS AND JEKYLL AND HYGE TOGETHER AGAIN, and Fast Times and tons of 1983 titty movies, that gave way to To Live and Die in LA and Less Than Zero and The Morning After, coke and deadness and ANTISEPTIC SHEEN and aloofness and THOSE SOFT-FOCUS OVERHANG LIGHTS over Hollywood Blvd that you see in Lethal Weapon that they don’t have anymore, then HAIR METAL and GNR and SUNSET STRIP with the Crue, and then JIMMY HOLLYWOOD and GRAND CANYON, before the 1994-5 L.A.-IS-EXCITING thrill-ride of the O.J. CASE, PULP FICTION, and of course Michael Mann’s HEAT.  On one hand it still had that Altman-ass Topanga-groover bullshit health-foods vibe for aging Democrat pussies, but fuck all that.  It was the edgy of BIG SKYSCRAPERS AT NIGHT and FAME and PUSSY and MONEY and I was hell-fucking-bent on moving here.

Drove out once and flopped in a fleabag motel for a month before running out of cash, went home tail between legs not having become “the next Jim Carrey!” as I’d promised, saved up and tried again the next fall.   Fully hoping to be CAPTAIN LOS ANGELES.  They’re gonna fucking LOVE ME.  When I got back to town, it was that NEW BRAT PACK era of LEO and JOAQUIN and McCONAUGHEY an AFFLECK/DAMON all starting to really blow up, late 1996 with DETAILS magazine covers and LONG DECEMBER on KROQ 17 times an hour when they weren’t playing BEN FOLDS BRICK or Soul Coughing, and I thought I’d made it.  Yeah, I had some wack-fuck job but at NIGHT I’d hop in the TAURUS and drive that motherfucker RIGHT DOWN to SUNSET BLVD almost every night.  Drive around listening to my BUSH music or whatever, not really having any friends yet or anywhere to go where I’d be wanted, but passing by all the “COOL SPOTS” like THE VIPER ROOM and the ROXBURY and the ROXY and THE RAINBOW, imagining any day now I’d be a super famous actor and comedian and chicks would be willing to bang me just for being me.  I was gonna SELL SCRIPTS and FUCK CHICKS, and basically I’d be Hollywood’s cross between TOM CRUISE and PAUL SCHRADER and QUENTIN TARANTINO and THE DICEMAN and JOHN CARPENTER when I wasn’t being STEPHEN KING.  Probably should have been CLUE ONE I wasn’t gonna be ANY OF THAT SHIT that even in my “back home” hometown I was a TOTAL FUCKING DORK yet I somehow thought I’d be pulling mad pussy on the basis of my nonexistent looks, never-been-to-a-gym physique, and REALLY HORRIBLE WRITING SAMPLES and grainy Pennsylvania extra-work headshots.  But more pressingly, the cliché “jack of all trades, master of none,” while it would be giving my no-talent ass 1000x more credit than I warrant, it’s pretty true – if you come to LA or NYC (WELCOME TO NY SWIFTY POWER), come with an ACTUAL VISION.  If you’re gonna be an actor, come with a real and hit the audition circuit and live in the fucking Y if you have to, and blow some old men if you have to.  If you wanna be a comic, stand outside the fucking comedy club begging to wash dishes and hang out till they give you a spot.  If you wanna be a writer, actually spend time honing your craft.  As opposed to ANY of that shit, I just thought BEING IN LOS ANGELES was SO FUCKING EXCITING that all those, you know, LITTLE DETAILS would take care of themselves.  Through the sheer force of my personality, I’d make it!

Instead I worked my dead-end job because I’d blown the nest egg I had trying to get my FUCKING CAR REGISTERED.  Absolutely the source of my hatred for any hilljack hayseed I see driving around LOST AS FUCK in L.A. with their Podunk outta-state plates, usually living at the fucking Oakwood, but IN THE END those dudes are probably hitting the scene, posse-ing up with some other pussyhounds, and making a true go at this town.  They aren’t setting themselves up solo in a 2-bedroom, blowing their cash on CASH REGISTRATION, and working in a cubicle where you get 1 week off per year.  So I’m doing that, no freedom, total desk jockey, total loser, but all I wanna do is be on the SUNSET STRIP.  The most exciting place in the world in my head, that NIGHTTIME SOFT HAZE and CHICKS OUT IN LITTLE OUTFITS, I imagine this world where movie stars and rock gods just go into clubs and snap a finger  and they’re having sex with 400,000 women a night, every night, blowing loads, doing coke, fucking chicks, fuck the ass, fuck the pussy, eating asshole like a fucking Belladonna video, and I’m sitting in the ass-end of the East Valley wasting away.  Like there’s a whole world of pussy and drinking and coke and assplay out there, and I am a nobody.

And nothing symbolizes any of this shit more than Sunset Boulevard, and maybe nothing moreso than the glorious CHATEAU MARMONT, the PLACE OF MY DREAMS, my PERSONAL VALHALLA where Belushi overdosed and which overlooks the city with those MICHAEL MANN-ASS LIGHTS over Sunset Plaza.  The fucking HILLS, THE FUCKING HILLS, all I’ve ever wanted to do is have that RACK-FOCUSED CITYSCAPE BEHIND ME like in HEAT as I’m on some rooftop of pool over L.A., maybe fuck a chick in the BODY DOUBLE HOUSE.  I like ELEVATION and I like parties and I like a blue sheen and GOOD-LOOKING PEOPLE being AWESOME.  One thing I NEVER EVER EVER get about “movie nerds” is how asexual most of them are.  Was watching some “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” “Movie Week” last night where the contestants were all “Movie Nerds.”  And Chris Harrison asked one dude, what’ll you do with the money, and his stupid answer was like “buy the BTTF DeLorean and the Ghostbusters car” and reconfigure his house to look like some sci-fi shit. LIKE WHAT? WHAT? How about calling a brothel that specializes in LA RICH GUYS and setting up a DAILY SYSTEM OF FUCKING BY WHICH THEY SENT OVER a new girl every TWO HOURS, all blonde, maybe one brunette, all anorexic, promise of NO STDs and you can stuff like anal and anilingus and facials and record it all while shouting YAHOO YA MOTHERFUCKER like GoodFellas then post it on your personal site so everyone ON EARTH knows how much PUSSY YOU GET which is all that counts?  Like do other guys REALLY not think of fucking 75 women an hour, or are they just too square and sheepish to admit? I want to fuck, and I want to fuck a lot, and I want to fuck hot chicks, and I want do a shitload of coke and then HANG OUT ON A SUNSET AND CRESENT ROOFTOP with the BIG-ASS EXCITING CITY BEHIND ME AT 4AM with the ONE GIRL who’s a little special above all the others named APRIL or maybe AMBER or maybe EMMA but she’s a little high right now but she’ll do that thing with me where we put our HEADS TOGETHER and FEEL THE ELECTRICITY AND SOULFULNESS but she ultimately has to go get high and I ultimately have to go eat the asshole of a girl who turned 18 last night.

And do I get ANY of that? A) NO B)  NO C) FUCK NO.  You know what I get? This un-remarked-upon part of L.A. that TERRIFIES the poseurs and the fake-shakers who front to act like they’re in the biz when they’re clinging on by fingertips about to break off like Mia Sara’s in THE MADDENING.  Nope. God fucking forbid any of those poseurs and pussies ever stepped off the strip to hang in the hellscape  no-man’s-land of the San Gabriel Valley, or Pasadena, or Glendale, or Christ fucking forbid, Burbank, where the Town Shuts Down at 4pm and the only action you’re getting is waiting for the sunscorched St Josephs Resident with Red Hair and Bloody Scrubs to take too long at the fucking Poquito Mas salsa bar.

That shit is a Clive Barker netherworld Purgatory Los Angeles, So Close But So Far, no Marmont, No WILSHIRE (whatever the fuck that is), no HOLLYWOOD CITY TED WASS SHEEN WITH THE ERNIE ANDERSON ABC VOICEOVER.  Just DOUGHBALLS and working stiffs, lined up in rows, all up and down Pasadena and Glendale and Sunland and parts unknown to Ben Affleck or Bachelor Ben – a never-never land shitbox where you might as well be back in the fucking Rust Belt, paying LA prices  for the privilege of never having made it, never gonna make it, and all you got to fucking show for it are some sweet fucking California plates, so you can have the high ground in flipping off the next out-of-work “actor” dawdling up Vine with a Newport out the window.

And don’t even get me started on how some new-to-LA fucking HAYSEEDS know enough to move into the relatively happening WHITE PEOPLE PARADISE of Los Feliz instead of the East Valley. HOW? HOW DO THEY KNOW THIS? Is there like a White Dork Beacon there? If so, why didn’t I get this message in 1996 instead of immediately seizing on those sun-baked studio apartments behind Sardos when I got here? Just fuck everything.

Everything.

HELPING CHRIS PINE MOVE A SOFA

HELPNG CHRIS PINE MOVE A SOFA.

What would be like if Chris Pine called you up and was like “Hey, bro, yeah, it’s C-PINE. SO, yeah, I’m moving on Saturday and I need help with the sofa”?  Would you be able to help him?  Could you be all normal and be like “Sup bro, yeah bro, what’s going on, bro, hey howyadoin’? Sure I’ll be there”?  All casual like BROS are with other BROS, just a couple of dudes hanging out and MOVING A SOFA and drinking like ONE CORONA in the sparse living room thereafter and talking about positive things with a Positive guy?  Then roll out for some WAHOO FISH TACOS with a WHEAT TORTILLA while Pine’s insouciant coif flips and flows and his eyes BEAM as he recounts his latest conquests and you struggle to keep up with some comparatively mundane story about, like, getting Achnad at 7-11 to sell you a sixer of Rolling Rock at 1:58am, getting it in JUST under the wire before he locked the booze cage?

Saw THE PINE on Kimmel a few weeks ago, and dude is weird as fuck, did some “funny” song about school closures that hanged in the air like Robert Blake getting lynched at the end of “In Cold Blood,” then our erstwhile Captain Kirk rolls out for his interview proper, and Jimmy Kimmel, who used to slug beers with The Fox and blaze up with Snoop and insult all of womanhood in tandem with his long-left-in-the-dust rolling partner Adam on “The Man Show” back when Durst was telling us ‘Cause This is How We Learn – sorry, I got off on a rant there – But Jimmy’s earlier in the show been doing Some Shtick with two Absolute Fucking Dorks in the crowd, one of whom/whose (who gives a fuck) GOAL IN LIFE is to break into porn acting.  The Porn Dude is this scrawny rentboy-looking cipher, and his cipher-like buddy is, oddly, some Sorta Fat Guy.  This has been discussed earlier in the show, and once movie star Chris Pine is out on stage, Jimmy throws the attention back over to these two harmless bros, and mentions one of them wants to be a porn star.  Pine, sort of squinting, gamely playing along but probably not THAT interested regardless, sizes up THE FAT GUY and WINCES something like “THIS guy?” before he’s course-corrected that it’s the OTHER, skinnier dude, and the bit goes on from there, whatever.  But this QUARTER-SECOND of the star of STAR TREK and, more pressingly, SMOKIN’ACES and UNSTOPPABLE, visibly fucking CRINGING at a LESS-THAN-PERFECT physical specimen, SENT ME INTO A RAGE.

Like, sorry, Chris, we weren’t all born to the SARGE FROM CHIPS and born in SUNNY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, full well knowing there was a 90% chance we could slide into SAG like a KY’d cock and get automatic auditions and movie parts.  I kinda ate ABSOLUTELY ANY showbiz scion anyway, unless it’s a Hot Chick or Michael Douglas, but while I’m at it, I fucking hate ANYBODY who was lucky enough to grow up in LOS ANGELES – even the biggest Valley loser who came up in that haze-fogged FREE FALLIN’ time and place or anytime thereafter gets to grow up with a certain cognizance of niceties like diversity, forward thinking, Mexican food, and physical fitness that are a fucking CHAMBER MYSTERY to us hilljacks in the other 48.  Growing up in L.A. isn’t just a leg-up on breaking into showbiz, it’s a leg-up on being an acceptable human being in modern enlightened society.

So here’s fucking Captain Showbiz Kid snarking on these two losers, and I got somehow terrified.  I’m terrified of actors.  A lot of absolutely morons, mouth-breathers, and no-charisma fatbodies I read online seem to have this ABSOLUTELY MYSTIFYING LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS by which they think they have ANY BASIC HUMAN WORTHINESS to talk to celebrities, but they’re deluding themselves.  Like Clint in Torino says, these guys don’t wanna have anything to do with you and I DON’T BLAME THEM.  How do you talk to a celebrity? Like how how how how how, also how?  What do you say to CHRIS PINE or CHRIS EVANS or CHRIS HEMSWORTH or CHRIS FUCKING ISAAC?  You’re a douche, they’re normal, and they’re famous.  Is there any point deluding oneself into thinking they even REMOTELY value you as even a basic human being?  They probably do not.  Like fucking Hemsworth.  Like this dude rolling in like a fucking Norse God with that physique, if he was in line at fucking Vons with a HEAPING SHOPPING CART of PROTEIN POWDER AND RUBBERS that would take six fucking hours to ring up, and I hate a sixer and some CHIPS AHOY and was actively in FRONT OF HIM, I’d let him cut AND genuflect out of sheer inferiority.

And taking it back wider (TM LAUER), the root of this is something that’s plagued me my whole life:  How do I, you, us, we, whatever, as a REGULAR GUY, a sadsack, a schmo, a chump, a bitch, a fatty, a loser, a nothing, INTERACT with POSITIVE, GOOD-LOOKING DUDES?  HOW?  I was never a huge sports guy, never played sports, wasn’t in the service, so that EASY-BRO INTERACTION is more mystifying to me than the fucking Virtual Insanity video.  As TERRIFYING as a hot chick is, I at least know my place there (leave her the fuck alone and go get drunk and depressed and pathetic by yourself), but the COMRADERIE OF BROS has MYSTIFIED ME my entire life.  Like when you’re at the shitty Chandler Post Office in North Hollywood and some black dude with a shaved head, Right Guard working, and camo pants gets a ring from one of his CREW, he’s all “YEAH. YEAH MAN, SO WE’RE GONNA GET THIS DONE, IT’S GONNA BE GOOD, “ all straight and narrow, NO IRONY, like a JOCK POSTGAME INTERVIEW from David Justice, ABSOLUTELY COCKSURE he’s gonna go out that night, hit a club (whatever the fuck that is) and meet chicks and hang with his BROS have UTMOST CONFIDENCE, SERIOUSNESS, and NO SENSE OF SELF-DEPRECATION.  Like how do you talk to men like THAT?  What incredibly mundane bit of self-hatred can I offer up in the face of “YEAH MAN IT’S GONNA BE A GOOD TIME” which is what ever Positive Guy always seems to be saying.  “It should be fun, it should be a good time, it’ll be cool.”

In my experience, NOTHING is EVER cool, there’s no good time to be had, I’m a drag to be around because I have manboobs and a bald spot and I’m wearing FRUIT OF THE LOOMS where the Tide on the 1.25 apartment simple cycle  couldn’t entirely get rid of the ass-skid.  That’s my lot in life, and when Regular Guys get together and talk about their travails and conquests and the Super Bowl in that soul-deadening Jock Voice, it’s an absolute mystery to me.  These are the guys who could move Chris Pine’s couch and be effortlessly easygoing, no fear and no intimidation amongst men – no fear that, hey. CHRIS MIGHT CALL and ask to move the sofa on the day TRIPLE 9 comes out.  Real dudes don’t care about this.  They get the call, they go and be positive and NORMAL together.  You can’t tell a dude like fucking Chris Pine that “Hey, Chris, love to help you out, but today’s KNIGHT OF CUPS day and I gotta see it at 11:40 at the Arclight or otherwise if I go to a later show I might have some fat guy choosing a seat within 10 rows of me and it’ll RUIN THE ENTIRE MOVIE.”  Pine would give you that DEAD-EYED look of  “What the fuck, man?” earnestness.  Normal guys don’t understand self-loathing and anxiety and insecurity and basically just WANTING TO BE LEFT ALONE until the PRECISE MOMENT they can help you with something (ie, hand-deliver a paid-for, STD-free escort under perfect circumstances) at which point they roll the fuck out and leave you alone.

The easy camaraderie of men.  Confounding.

THE HEART WANTS by LexG

Herman sat in the plastic green booth, sipping at his shake, alone in the corner.  The ‘70s décor in full Hal Ashby sheen, his horn-rims sliding down his sweaty nose with each sip.

Flo the waitress came by again, more than she needed to, “You okay, Herman?”   A slight dribble of the vanilla shake dribbled onto his long-since faded-and-dated short-sleever.

“Yeah, thanks, Flo.”

She cracked her gum and smiled warmly.  “Okay, hon, just say the word.”

She shuffled off to Buffalo and he sat under the ‘70s-game-room, two-seater booth to himself, alone, alone, also alone.  Meredith had sat on the opposite side for many a low-key post-church lunch, spinning her yarn about Christ-knows-what when he wanted to fucking shoot himself from the echoing walla cacophony of sameness, as he scanned the low-rent vista of the diner imagining the other people getting to fuck their girlfriend in the ass and blow loads, while his big day was a free Steelers cookie.

Whole world of wonder out their beyond the Alcatraz gates, “eat some pussy, eat some ass,.”  Aging to 40, to 50, and yep on to 60, hating church and basically not giving a fuck but being a champ, standing by and supporting, as things faded away, hope faded away, sameness kicked in, true hope gave out, and then things REALLY started to fade away, like for real. 

Now alone. In the booth.  By himself.  Drinking a flat diner shake wanting it all back.  He’d had sex  2 times in 50 years and now was fully impotent.

Herman finished his shake, smiled at Flo as he left a 10 dollar tip, went into the shitbox, pulled out a .38 snub from his ‘Nam days, and blew his fucking brains out.

The couple at the booth next to him went home and the guy drilled the girl in the asshole then came on her back.  The cum ran like Herman’s brain matter on the humming florescent overheads.