Almost

Well, it is almost three weeks since I moved to this town, and there is much to report, with a lot of it being almosts. I finally have a real internet connection, and a comfortable desk and chair and table lamp, so I am *almost* in shape to tell it all, except for the being really busy pouring energy into setting up my life (nearly from scratch) (in the material sense) and syllabus (not quite from scratch, but somehow completely impossible to finish -- why so difficult? The grad seminar should be easiest of all classes to teach). In almost three weeks I have furnished almost my entire apartment (remaining: kitchen table, dining room chairs, nightstand, and also I should make curtains, because in direct opposition to my Spookytown postage stamp where you could do whatever and no one could see into any window, here there is no window that is not a fabulous display of "my life" for some nearby potentially interested personage, some of whom live just a few feet away across a charming concrete alley). Oh, and I've almost bought a car several times now, except that I have come to the sad realization that in my price range (it is low! since I prefer to buy cars outright with cash and then just own them) I simply am not going to be able to buy a car that is both a convertible and nice to drive, so I'm going to have to go with boringly reliable and almost certainly without gold hubcaps, which is if not an actual crying shame, still a bit of a bummer.

So, in lieu of an almost coherent narrative, some bullet pointed micro-anecdotes and observations into life here in our nation's media capital.

• In most cities where I've lived, there's a weekly "alternative newspaper" with arts listings, local profiles, and pseudo-outraged pseudo-investigative journalism (e.g., "the police can be bad and sometimes beat people up!" (which is really news in places like Oakland and Chicago and Spookytown)). This town is no exception, and the journalism and arts listings are just what you might expect, but the advertising is really, um, remarkable. Usually it's for restaurants and bars and clubs and futon/furniture stores and clothing emporia etc. etc. But here page after page after page after page is devoted to the surgical or near-surgical enhancement of appearance. There are processes or listed chemical injections that I don't even know what they are! There's "aesthetic and implant dentistry" (with IV sleep sedation available) in which "general dentistry" is the sad, lone bullet at the end of a long list of cosmetic things, "aesthetic plastic surgery" with arm and leg lifts, "total body lifts", and more. There's a world of lipsocution, laser hair removal specials for all body parts, but also eyebrow transplants (?). Not to mention the vaginal rejuvenation special for just $2500 (lots of "before" and "after" photos for the surgical procedures, but none for this one). In my "hey, you just moved here, let's give you some coupons!" package that arrived last week, in addition to deals for hardware stores and bottled water suppliers was a coupon for a fall plastic surgery special -- "Come in now!", it told me.
  
  Despite the seeming homogenization of this country, there's always been a bit of culture shock each time I've moved somewhere new, and the eyes eventually adjust to what seemed unusual or shocking upon your arrival (like in the Bay Area I stopped noticing piercings, or the sheen of dirt so many had, or the ubiquity of street people). I was out with the Stik the other day, who took me to a boutique-laden street frequented by the star(let)s, where one shirt that I randomly picked up cost more than I will spend to furnish my entire apartment (including couch and new mattress), and while my eyebrows went up at the super-tan anorectic young woman with artfully tousled hair, a shirt functioning as mini-dress, knee-length fringe suede boots in 93-degree weather, and a tiny fluffy white dog under her arm, chatting with a behatted tight-jeaned hipster boy with remarkably good highlights, he didn't notice at all. At what point will all of this insanity simply not register? Hard to imagine the day will come...
• I'm walking home from my car the other day around dusk (there's a glitch with my off-street parking; given the popularity of my neighborhood, it's kind of a pain) and this woman in the next building, which is low and pink and square, was vigorously misting a large green plant that was balanced on the long railing in front of her building. Except the plant squawked, and spread its brightly colored wings, and moved down the railing because it was in fact not a plant but rather a large parrot. That she was vigorously misting. At dusk in front of her house.
  
• There are colonics places almost everywhere you go. My favorite juxtaposition is in Burbank (en route to the Ikea) where what may turn out to be my new favorite restaurant, the Wok of Fame ("Taste the Difference!" it says on its marquee) is adjacent to Healing Waters Colonics. Which, thankfully, has a different motto, but one that I can't recall at this time.
• Yoga here is kicking my ass. Almost literally. There's this great studio on my corner, and they even do one half-price "community" class each day for those of us who live nearby, and it's all great, except they don't separate their classes into levels like 1, 1-2, 2, 3, the way the studio in HippyDippyville did, it's just "basics" and "mixed." I went to a basics class the other day, to remind myself of foundational stuff, but since then the mixed classes have been more convenient, timewise. Yesterday on a whim I headed out at 3:54 for the 4:00 class (and got there early!), which was filled with skinny yoga chicks who all apparently can put their feet behind their heads. I thought that that was just a yoga joke from people who never do it, where they think you put your foot behind your head, but no, the teacher (who was really excellent but my god the things he wanted us to do) talked us through putting a foot behind the head (let's just say I did not make it into the full realization of the posture) and the tiny lithe woman to my left not only could do it but then hoisted herself into a standing position. With her foot behind her head. The entire time. After class I collapsed like a little wet noodle onto the couch and lay there for like 20 minutes. I think I'm going to have to find a less challenging class.
• One of my favorite things about my neighborhood, or really the neighborhoods just to the south and to the west, is the stark juxtaposition of super-Jewish and super-hip. I mean, at the very extreme ends of both of these respective spectra, such that a glatt-kosher restaurant (that's like the ultimate in kosher) is adjacent to a store whose only wares on display are a wall of shrink-wrapped brightly colored sneakers. The right one only. Or how Von Dutch, which is popular with Britney and Justin and the like, is adjancent to a yeshiva so sectarian that there isn't even English lettering on the building and whose denizens wore for the new year giant fur hats wider than their slender scholars' shoulders and knee-length coats with knickers and white stockings and I must say looked a wee bit out of place walking under palm trees and the blue-yet-smoggy sky.
• Yard saling is different here. The Avis woman gave me a Jeep Wrangler when I asked for a four-door to move furniture, so I found myself tooling around town on a sunny Saturday in a too-snug ringer t-shirt that says "Kiss Me, I'm 1/12 Uzbekistanian" and listening to top 40 and going to Hollywood yard sales. At the first one I bought a table that used to belong to an 80's television prime-time soap star, and before that was apparently owned by the guy her second husband used to be the opening act for. Oddly enough, I already had a candelabra I'd bought the previous week, so I'm all set!
  

So much to see! And think about! And hopefully soon document with my camera, which is somewhere around here...