Art of the Odd

When I first moved to LA, the 101 so confused me that, trying to drive from Venice to Valley Village, I wound up in Calabasas. I’d had my suspicions I was going the wrong way, but the tack store looming up to my right confirmed it.

The 101 in LA County sets deep traps for someone with my notoriously unreliable sense of direction - depending on where you are, it may be labeled as either a North-South highway, or an East-West highway. It took me awhile to figure out that North=West, and South=East; until I did, I had to resign myself to daytripping around the West Valley when I meant to head toward Hollywood. (Though I did get better at realizing I was headed the wrong way, and getting turned around before I drove 20 miles out of my way.)

After seven years in Los Angeles, I think of the signage on the 101 as just part of the scenery - an “only in LA” quirk, of the sort that has spawned columns and photo collections in local blogs and papers. I thought of it today for two reasons: first, this is my 101st post; and second, I needed to find some way to tie the below picture into my 101st post.

When I saw it in a BBC News photo essay about the fires which have charred well over 10,000 acres so far, I said, “Now there’s an LA moment. Or at least a SoCal one.”*

“Does the Segway say GOB?” NovySan asked. “It should,” I replied. “And in just a minute, it will.”

*The author would like to assure anyone who cares that she is well aware that Arrested Development was set in Orange County, and that Orange County is not Los Angeles. But it’s her blog, and she can do what she wants. So there.

Or rather, NovySan does. And so we’re at Quantum of Solace, after an Italian supper served up by a scar-faced Guatemalan, with a side of irritating and misinformed attorney.

It’s gonna be a great evening!

I didn’t intend, when I walked into the Council Thrift Shop this afternoon, to photograph the five ugliest items in the store. And, in fact, I didn’t. I photographed the three ugliest items in the store, as well as the most out-of-place, and the coolest.

To start with the machine-made - the Swimming Pool, which is, as you can see, unfortunately shaped like a bedpan. (The brown box on the far side of the pool is the fat little man’s radio. I hate to think what he’s got to swim through to get to it.)

Moving on to the religious, we have this brightly-colored, papier mache god, who looks rather startled to find himself in the Jewish Ladies’ Thrift Store. Each head is a separate unit, as I discovered when I inadvertently pulled the middle one off trying to pick it up.

And moving on to the hand-crafted, we start with a candelabrum that I’m just sure was someone’s summer craft project…

…and move on to an abstract piece that was doubtless the project of someone either rather less talented than the candelabrum artist, or someone rather more artistically advanced. (I’ll admit, it shows a nice sense of asymmetry, but why, why is it glued to the tray? And it is glued down, unlike the god’s middle head.)

Finally, though, we come to the item I almost couldn’t leave without. Two things stopped me - the price tag, and the “made in” label on the bottom. $30 wouldn’t seem so high for such a fantastic piece of pewter penguiness, if it hadn’t also been made in India. I prefer my martinis unleaded.

I volunteered yesterday to help out at the VES Motion Capture event. I was supposed to be there at 5, but I had that one last thing to finish up first. You know that one last thing - the thing that you absolutely have to get done before you can leave work, that always winds up taking far longer than you thought it would? Yeah. That thing. So instead of leaving at 4:30 and maybe having time to wash my car, I left at 5. (Actually, since the do was at Sony, and Sony’s only three and half miles away, I did think, “If I leave at 4:30, I could ride my bike,” but then I realized I’d be coming home after dark (and lack the proper equipment to ride at night), and there’s no room in NovySan’s Bug for my bicycle. At any rate, I left too late for that to have been a viable option.)

So, I went out to my car, half an hour later than I had intended, turned the key, and glanced at the gas gauge. My gas gauge does tend to be a bit flaky (there’s a reason I carry a jerry can in the boot), but there was definitely something wrong. I filled up Saturday morning, just before driving to Topanga for class, and I haven’t driven it since then. So either I’m now getting 3 miles to the gallon, or I’m missing about 7 gallons of gas.

“Maybe I didn’t fill up on Saturday,” I thought. When you drive so seldom, it’s easy to lose track. “Well, fine. I should have enough to get to the gas station.”

I didn’t.

It died in the middle of a five-point intersection.

As to the people who swerved around me while I pushed it to the curb - well, at least they didn’t honk. (Seriously, people - I realize I’m no fragile flower, but you see a lone woman pushing her own damned car, and you can’t be bothered to stop? Or even ask if she’d like you to?)

The aforementioned jerry can being almost empty (due to a previous incident with the aforementioned flaky gas gauge, and me being in a hurry the last few times I’ve filled up), I drained the dregs into the tank and prepared to see whether it would be enough to get me to the gas station. Meanwhile, I called Novy and asked him to let the organizers know I was on the way. “You’re out of gas?” he asked. “Totally out,” I said, and it began to dawn on me what that meant.

As I put the now completely-empty can back in the boot (after an heroic struggle with the nozzle - the spring kept flinging itself into the gutter), a white van stopped across the street. I heard the words whose absence had echoed while I pushed the car out of the intersection. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ve just run out of gas.”

“Can I give you a ride to the gas station?” he asked.

I know a lot of people would have hesitated. I didn’t.

“That would be lovely,” I said.

And then he said, “Wait, I think I have some gas in here.”

He did. A whole gallon. And he wouldn’t let me pay him for it.

“The van runs on veggie oil,” he told me. “So do my two Mercedes sedans, and my other van. I’ve got a work truck that takes gas, and my ‘63 Comet. I learn something new every time I convert one of them, so I keep buying more cars. A lot of my machines for work take gas, though, mixed with oil, but I haven’t mixed the oil into this one yet. With the price of gas,” he said, “I guess a lot of people aren’t filling their tanks up all the way.”

“I did,” I told him. “On Saturday. And I haven’t driven anywhere since then.”

“Oh,” he said. “You should get a locking gas cap.”

Novy agreed. He ordered two this morning.

The gasoline saga wasn’t quite over, though. After the event, I went to the parking garage to find a pool of gasoline under the back of my car. I popped open the engine cover to discover that the hose leading into the fuel filter was so loose, there was gas dripping from it. I jammed it back together and thought, “Maybe someone didn’t siphon my gas. Maybe it just dripped out.” But then I thought, “There’s no way seven or eight gallons of gasoline dripped into the driveway without any of the four people who live in my house noticing.”

So we’re still buying the locking gas caps. And replacing that hose this weekend.