Hometown Glory

Thank you, Los Angeles. You've been a great audience. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

The Long Goodbye

It hasn't fully sunk in that I'm moving out of Los Angeles one week from today. On a practical level, I've certainly taken the necessary steps to prepare, spending the better part of my downtime since the end of the WSOP divesting myself of a sizable percentage of my physical possessions. 14 bags of corporately-produced clothing that I wore to slave for a corporation half a decade ago went to Goodwill. Three bankers boxes of books and DVDs are still sitting in the trunk of my car, waiting to be sold to a secondhand shop in Hollywood. Cabinets and drawers full of junk I forgot I owned have been sorted, catalogued, and (mostly) discarded. Most of my clothes are already inside a dresser in San Francisco and the winter coats and heavy sweaters I'll no doubt be donning in the upcoming weeks and months have been cleaned and pressed. I suppose it's the fact that I'm still hanging on to this apartment until the end of the year, the fact that it's still filled with furniture and appliances and art on the walls that separates me from the reality of moving. The 800 or so square feet I've called home for the last seven years will remain largely unchanged, albeit inhabited by a trusted caretaker. I'll make the 380-mile journey south come Thanksgiving to placate my parents' wishes to spend the holiday with both their daughters, and again for an unspecified amount of time around Christmas that has yet to be decided. It's a long, but necessary goodbye.

The move was met with mixed reactions from my family. My mother was sad, but ultimately understood, having moved clear across the country when she was 23 to a place she'd never been. Mandy was thrilled and can't wait to visit after her hellacious 10-week shoot in Las Vegas is complete. My father, as expected, was downright funereal in his tone and went on a negative offensive (It's cold up there! Public transportation is horrible! Everything is so expensive!). He's less dour now, but still unconvinced, and probably hoping that after the initial six months, will settle back down in Southern California, in and of itself, a highly improbable scenario. But he's my father and he loves me and I'm a lot more like him than I'd care to admit. So I get it.

Outside of my family, everyone who I was once close to in Los Angeles has moved on, or I see them so often outside of Los Angeles that our mutual home based has ceased to matter. My holy triumvirate of Showcase, Bean, and Ben are all on Eastern Daylight Time. My blogging brethren are scattered all over the world and the poker circuit limps on, although my role in that traveling circus is constantly being redefined. So there aren't too many goodbyes to be had. Los Angeles will always be my hometown, but home now is with Pauly, wherever life may take us.

I see a future without this couch and this table, without the zen blue of my bedroom walls and the dark woods of Pauly's office, without my grandmother's dining room table and the orange chair my father used to sprawl in as he studied for his law school exams more than forty years ago. It's also a future without the circular saw presently grinding away in the neighbor's yard, so there's that too. It'll be replaced by the rattling our bay windows make as the Muni whirs past and the wind through the giant ficus that stands guard outside our new home.

It's a future that is only a week away, and one I'd jump into tomorrow if I could. Anyone want to finish packing for me?

A Hairy Situation

Dear Juniors,

It this were any other restaurant, I probably wouldn't be writing this letter. But the fact is, I grew up around the corner from here and have been a customer since I could walk. I blew out candles on birthday cakes from your bakery. My parents used to bring home your chicken soup where I was sick. I've never, ever sent a plate back at Junior's and as my boyfriend (and dinner companion) mentioned to me, he's never seen me send a plate back at any restaurant we've patronized in the five years we've been together. Yesterday, however, while grabbing an early dinner at your establishment, I had to send my turkey burger back not once, but twice. It's pretty easy to tell when a turkey burger has been undercooked. The inside shouldn't be pink at all. And two bites in to this half-pound monster, a swath of chewy, pink, uncooked meat greeted me.

So I sent it back. My waitress was quite gracious about it and returned about five minutes later with the same patty, re-grilled, on a fresh bun. Unfortunately, although the outside was nearly blackened by now, the center was still not cooked through. So I sent it back again, and with my boyfriend now finished with his meal, I asked for the burger to be wrapped up to go. The waitress presented me with a fresh one and asked if I wanted to check it before I left. I said I trusted her. Big mistake.

When I returned home twenty minutes later and sat down at my dining table to finally eat my dinner, I found not one, but several black hairs inside the burger, which I clearly wasn't eating now, but for which I'd still paid about $20 when tax and tip are figured in.

I don't wish anything in return except for the money my boyfriend paid for the meal I was never able to eat. You also might want to look into the gentleman operating your grill around 6:00 pm on Sunday, who was apparently so offended at my criticism of his culinary skills that he decided to cover my turkey burger with hair from some unspeakable orifice.

It really does sadden me that after more than 30 years, I may never eat here again. And after reading this, I think you can understand why I've lost my appetite for Juniors.

Sincerely,

change100

P.S.-- And to the man who put hair in my burger I say this-- don't you know that shit doesn't fly anymore in the age of social media?

Bleeding Dodger Blue

Life inside L.A. city limits so rapidly ages its inhabitants-- a rather ironic situation for the de facto capital of nips and tucks. The lines across my forehead deepen every time some jackass pulls blindly out into traffic, not noticing that I'm headed straight for his passenger side door. Or when I get two lanes of gridlocked cars to let me make that left turn, only some bimbo on a cell phone decides to plow her VW Jetta straight into the spot in the intersection that says "KEEP CLEAR" and stay there, as I sit, helplessly curved into opposing traffic while she texts the pretty boy hipster she met last night at Bar Marmont.

Millimeters at a time, those lines deepen. Today's three-mile roundtrip jaunt to the diner for lunch came complete with two near-death experiences. It's enough to make me long for the day when I make enough cheese to pack up this shitbox and move to a place where I don't have to drive. Like Manhattan. Or Amsterdam.

Of course, aside from the vehicular warfare in the streets there are many things to love about Los Angeles. Sun. Warmth. Beaches. Weekday matinee movies. Zankou Chicken. The Hollywood Bowl.

Dodger fans are not one of them.

Along with the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," the din of lawnmowers on summer mornings, and the putter of my mother's yellow VW bug, Vin Scully's voice was one of the iconic sounds of my childhood. My father would set a small black portable radio up on the wall in the backyard and listen to Scully call the action of guys like Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson, and Mike Scoscia as he went about his weekend ritual of drinking a six-pack of domestic beer and watering the yard. I'd be doing my homework at the picnic table or inside at the kitchen bar and there was Scully's voice, omnipresent in the background as I learned long division, read Animal Farm, or made a papier-mache replica of Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Still, I've always hated the Dodgers, despite being a native of their city. My east coast-transplant mom bought me a Yankee doll during the 1981 World Series, and later, a Yankee Cabbage Patch Kid. That's really all it took to successfully brainwash me. My father was naturally horrified and proceeded to convert Mandy, all of two years old at the time, to his side where she remains to this day.

I love the Lakers, and if I followed hockey I'd like the Kings. I imagine if L.A. had a professional football franchise, I'd be a fan of them too. Just not the Dodgers. Never the Dodgers.

From 1986 on, my parents had season tickets to the Dodgers. I was dragged to many a game as a child, and nursed many a sunburn from roasting out in our field level seats. Sometimes I'd get so overheated my mom would buy those frozen chocolate malts and use them to cool of my face before we'd eat them. I was almost always on the verge of passing out by the seventh-inning stretch. Mom and I would wear Yankee hats and always root for the opposing team, much to the chagrin of my father and Mandy. Back then, there wasn't much cause to feel threatened.

Cut to: 2008. Monday night's game was a blowout for the Dodgers by the end of the sixth inning. Pauly, Derek and I were already talking about leaving. We'd had our fill of Dodger dogs and had enjoyed a few laughs with the four Phillies fans that sat in front of us.

"Conshohocken, PENNSYLVANIA!" shouted one of them repeatedly at a pair of Dodger fans behind us, referring to Tommy Lasorda's birthplace.

The pair responded by attempting to pelt the Phillies fans with peanuts. Then limes. Then beer cups. Only problem was, they were hitting us instead.

Derek stood up and told them to cut it out and stop throwing shit. Which only made them throw more shit. Half a beer hit me and I ducked as Pauly stood up. Words were exchanged. And then, out of nowhere, these two drunk cholos decided to leap across three rows of seats and lunge at Derek.

I didn't see the punch land, as I was busy ducking again. When I looked up, security was coming down the aisles and hauling one of the guys off. Then I saw the blood. Holy motherfucking shit.

As we climbed the stairs up the aisles, people actually started booing us. And throwing more shit. Real classy. I flipped off the crowd as blood gushed from Derek's chin.

Ten minutes later, we were in the security office waiting for the LAPD to arrive. The asshole who punched him was in custody under a citizen's arrest. Naturally, Derek wanted to press charges. After the paramedics put a stitch in his jaw, Derek and Pauly gave their statements to the cops while I waited. I watched a bumblebee slowly die on the carpet in front of me. Remarkably, as dozens of ticket-takers and ushers dropped off their equipment and clocked out after the game, not a single one stepped on the bee.

Here's L.A. justice for you. Drunk asshole punches you at baseball game with hundreds of witnesses. If you want to press charges against drunk asshole, you too must be arrested and deal with the ensuing red tape and the blemish on your record despite doing nothing wrong. That's a lot of explaining to do to prospective employers and/or creditors over one punch. Or, you can not press charges and everyone goes home. Those are the options offered to you by the Los Angeles Police Department. "We don't want to bother to figure everything out, so we'll just make it as difficult as possible for you to seek that justice you deserve, OK? Unless you're famous and this shit is going to be on Entertainment Tonight. Then we'll do everything we can and make sure to keep your publicist in the loop."

Derek's a tough guy. Pauly said he barely flinched when the punch landed. Though I'm not sure how soon he'll hurry back to L.A. after we put him on a plane home to New York with a sunburn, facial stitches, and a bag of antibiotics.

At least he enjoyed the weed.

Little Earthquakes

The way the windows shook, I thought the #7 bus had roared past too quickly. The way they kept shaking, I knew it was an earthquake.

There hadn't been a decent shaker in quite a while in these parts. It seemed they happened much more frequently during my childhood. Those little four-pointers in the middle of the night or the early morning. The way the flimsy, sliding window next to my bed would vibrate with the tinny hum of metal-on glass. The way Mandy would sit straight up in her bed right when it started, her ocean-blue eyes wide like an animal's and how I would groan and mumble something about how it was so small it wasn't even worth getting up before rolling over and falling back asleep.

I was here for them all. The Whittier quake in 1987 (was sitting in the schoolyard, having just been dropped off for the morning), Northridge in 1994 (was asleep and mumbled something to my sister about it only being a baby one just before the ground erupted). Even the ones centered out in Lake Elsinore and Arrowhead. Through all of them, I was oddly calm. Even as our chimney sat in the middle of the street and shards of glass lined the downstairs hallways in the hours after Northridge, I was more worried about acing my Spanish final than the aftershocks that were hitting every few minutes. Eventually my father took away my books and gave me a broom.

"There's no way school's open tomorrow, let alone making you take tests" he growled as he pointed at an overturned china cabinet.

I was waiting for my Huevos O'Groats when those same fault lines that let loose back in '87 roared to life again. The front windows of the restaurant rattled, then the framed art and mirrors that lined the walls on either side of us. Every conversation halted. I picked my coffee cup off the table and took a sip.

"Is that an earthquake?" a woman squawked.

A little blonde boy, maybe seven or eight sat straight up in his wooden chair, his eyes as wide and blue as Mandy's that long-ago night.

"Don't worry, it's only a small one" I assured him, as the shaking subsided.

A group of tourists from Texas had just walked into the restaurant. Welcome to California. Aren't you glad you came?

"So that was your first earthquake, huh?" I said to Pauly. He nodded.

"Maybe a four-pointer, four and a half. All depends on the epicenter" I mumbled, taking another sip of coffee.

It needed sugar.