Art of the Odd

I should start by saying that we do not live in a bad neighborhood. We do, however, live in a neighborhood where new, upscale stores (art galleries and high-end meeting spaces and day spas and shiny salons) do battle with older, grittier businesses (liquor stores and cheap Indian takeout and, well – sex shops).

So, once upon a time, there was a porn shop across the street, well-stocked with candy-colored marital aids and oversized video boxes bearing such titles as Forced to Lactate: Volume XVII. Later, the porn store branched out, adding a case full of smoking paraphernalia in glass and bronze, all of it to be used only for smoking tobacco, of course. One night, though, we heard a sound, and NovySan looked out and said, “Why are they pressure washing the porn store?” and the next day, it was gone, carried off in a mighty torrent of water.

A couple of doors down, though, sits a business built on water – The Roman Holiday. It has no windows, but it’s open 24 hours. Some of its clientele walk proudly through the front door, while others slink through the back, shoulders hunched and hoods pulled low over their blushing cheeks.

Whoever it was who walked past my house on his way back from the bathhouse yesterday was, I suspect, one of the former, unless he dropped this packet in his fumbling haste to get back in his car without being recognized.

To The Roman Holiday – kudos for encouraging safer sex, though I’m amused by your recent rebranding as a health club.

To Joe Lube – custom-printed condoms and lube? That’s seriously kind of cool.

And to the guy who dropped his lube – I better not find the matching condom out there. Especially if it’s been used.

I made a mistake on Tuesday.

I went to OSH for supplies – a rosemary bush, some stripper (for the cabinets, you perv), a tube of epoxy, and a pitchfork.

I walked out with a tulip, some stripper (still for the cabinets – what is wrong with some people?), a tube of epoxy and, yes, a pitchfork.

Going to OSH was not the mistake.

Going to OSH at 4:30 on a weekday – that was the mistake.

The drive there was fine, but coming home? Yeesh.

I got so fed up with the traffic on Bundy that I turned off, planning to take Pico to 23rd and come home past Santa Monica Airport.

Never, ever take 23rd past the airport during rush hour.

A couple of miles north of the airport, I posted this to Twitter.

(Before you chastise me for tweeting while driving – I wasn’t driving. I was sitting through two light changes, in the middle of a blocks-long tailback, waiting for the cars in front of me to move. They finally did – after the light turned red for the third time.)

Some time later, I made it home with my pitchfork. (And my tulip, and my epoxy, and my stripper. Which is still for the cabinets.)

And NovySan said that we just don’t use pitchforks often enough in this modern world.

He had an idea for how we could change that, though.

Not by pitchforking people in traffic, but by escorting trick-or-treating groups armed with pitchforks and torches.

Imagine it – a cluster of princesses, mutants and monsters, flanked by a sizeable group of (possibly tipsy) adults waving the implements of B-movie riots proudly aloft.

Halloween may never be the same.

When I drove up the 405 this morning, the clouds had parted and patterns of light and shade danced across the asphalt and the hills. I merged onto the freeway, fought my way clear of the 405-10 interchange, and looked up to see the Getty, gleaming white in a pool of sunlight.

This, I realized, is one of the reasons that I love the rain. When it passes, the air is clean, and the light shines from the towering clouds and the wet streets. It leaves the sky a rare and special shade of blue. And here, in a desert that’s suffered years of drought, the earth drinks so deep that the cacti look out of place against the brilliant green that surrounds them.

There are a lot of pictures of the destruction these storms have brought – the beach erosion and mudslides – but the image I’ll cherish is that white citadel basking in the sun, set off like a jewel against emerald velvet. I passed under a bridge, and when I emerged, the clouds had shifted and the vision was gone. I’m writing it down so I never forget.