Friday

It's Friday and I got nothing. Perhaps if I would get out of the house and stop writing I would find some humorous things to blog about.  Spaulding Gray was asked to write a novel.  He said he couldn't do it.  All he could do is wait for something interesting to happen to him and write about that.  I find his sort of narrative much more entertaining than pure fantasy. Although, once you start to tell a story it is hard to distinguish the fiction from reality.  My wife is fond of telling people, "Jay never lets the truth get in the way of a good story."

The minute an event hits paper or, in this case, pixels  it changes from life to prose.  It is why stand up comics are always experiencing funny things.  We all face the same events, it is just that the comic can structure an ordinary event into a funny experience.

I do miss being in New York City for that reason.  There was  a funny event to experience every time I walked out of the apartment. I remember walking to work down 7th  Avenue one day. An old lady pushed an apple she was holding in her hand toward my direction.  She said, "Apple Dearie?" and cackled like the witch from Snow White.  A block later there was a guy in a Spiderman costume looking up at the side of a building, as if he was getting ready to shoot a web.

In LA nobody walks. Casual meetings are rarely accidental. You only see others from the waist up through the tinted window of an automobile.  There is no eye to eye contact, only  an eye to headlight connection.

At my corner of Ventura Blvd. they are constructing buildings and commercial real estate like Encino was populated by people who walk around.  All the businesses have these great entrances that front the Blvd.  However, the parking is always in the rear, so you end up approaching them from the back entrance.  There is nothing like walking through the kitchen hallway to get to your favorite table at the cool restaurant. Kind of takes the magic out of the moment.

Quoting Spaulding Gray again, he said that Los Angeleans have "a 30 mile per hour consciousness. " From the time LA  kids are born they are packed in a car, ride on a tricycle or glide on a skateboard down the street.  He says we have evolved into a species which can not register an image on our retina  unless it is moving past us at 30 mph. I believe he is right.

When I moved to New York I sold my car to save the expense.  The savings were substantial enough not to want to jump back into being a two car family right away, so we have gotten by with only one car for a year or two.  Most of the time I am out of town  and my car would sit in the garage anyway, so in these economically depressed times it still makes sense.  At times it is a problem because LA  public transportation is living in the dark ages but so far we have worked it out.  Other than meetings across town, everything I might need is  a short walk away.  However, I have to get to Ventrua before I ever see another human being walking.  It is great for solitude, bad for writing about human experiences.

So there you go... I told you... I got nothing. Hopefully the weekend will bring an experience that I feel good about sharing.  If not I will be writing more blogs about how I have nothing to blog about.

As you were,

Jay