Darin and I flew down Friday morning on Southwest, the Greyhound of airlines. You get on, hold on to a hanger strap, get off. We arrived at Burbank Airport at 12:30pm, rented a car --
(Slight digression: Hertz offered us a mammoth cruiser-class car for $55 a day, Avis offered a mid-size car for $24 a day; who's trying harder here? However, the car we ended up renting was ostensibly a new Oldsmobile with only 22 thousand miles on it, but when in the last twenty years was the last time the Olds guys designed a car? It's this ridiculous, blocky, horribly designed American car. I played with the radio for a while and said, "It doesn't have an FM radio!" It turns out the car does have FM, but Darin and I were completely convinced for a while that it only had AM, that's how out of date it feels.)
-- and drove to meet our friend Fernando at his office in Burbank. The three of us went to Mi Piace, in downtown Burbank, where we met Harry and Brent for lunch. Darin met Fernando, Harry, and Brent when he was in college at the University of Texas, Austin. These guys know one another really well. They talked about WarCraft II. Sigh.
After lunch we followed Fernando back to his house, where we're spending the weekend, and then the three of us set out to find me an apartment. I had the following requirements:
And that's about it.
We started at Fernando's old apartment, since he evidently lived in a fairly fancy apartment in Studio City at one time. What was hysterically funny was that this apartment building was one of the same streets CJ and I had looked at during our trip down here in late June! We started at Fernando's old building and walked up and down the street, checking out apartments. Then we went to the next street over and the next street after that. We spent the better part of four hours walking in and out of apartments. I learned the following things:
The most ridiculous place we went to go see was the Studio Colony. Apologies if anyone reading this lives there, but Studio Colony is a giant walled fortress in Studio City with automatic gates, a guard, and absolutely no pedestrian walkways into or around the complex. We nearly got run over by vehicles coming and going, because we had to walk down the central driveway to get to the rental office, rather than have what we Northerners colloquially call "a sidewalk."
We saw two apartments there, a studio and a one-bedroom. Rather, we saw two apartment models, which were decked out with furniture to give you a sense of what your residence would look like, if you happened to have furniture of that caliber and you had never actually touched it except when you dusted. In the studio there was a couch instead of a bed in the main room, so the apartment looked like a living room that never led to a bedroom. If you couldn't see past the decor, you wouldn't be able to imagine what the place would look like, unless you planned on sleeping on a pull-out couch.
I don't need these fancy amenities, I'm not there to meet and date bond traders and junior studio execs. (No, really, I'm not -- somebody tell Greg to stop making those snickering noises.)
The places I felt were the most my speed were also the cheapest. The whole "luxury apartment" thing of hot tubs and fitness rooms is attractive if this were where I was planning to live, but I'm not, I'm planning to sleep there and get phone messages there and maybe have a box of Lucky Charms on hand. (Even if I end up deciding to move to LA permanently -- hey, it could happen -- I would not choose one of these places as my permanent residence. Sterility and conformity do wonders for restraining one's sense of belonging.)
Tomorrow I'll be signing a lease on a place. Big load off of my back.
After the umpteenth apartment, we decided to call it a day and head back to Fernando's to wait for his wife Nancy to come home from work and just to chill out in general. I went and lay down in the guest room, because I hadn't slept very well the night before (hence my early morning entry yesterday).
Despite Darin and Fernando talking in the living room, on which the guest room bordered, and my not having "perfect" sleep conditions -- total quiet, total dark, on my back, arms by my side in the yogic "dead man's position" -- I passed out for an hour or so. When I woke up Fernando and Darin were still chatting and Nancy had arrived home and was sitting on a large bed-chair in the living room whilst drinking a glass of a fine Cabernet Sauvignon and petting the black long-haired cat, mysteriously named "Blackie."
I said hi and yawned a lot. After much debate -- "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, I'm not hungry, what do you want to do?" "I don't know. Hon, do you have anything you want to do?" "Me? No. Do you?" -- we decided to go to the Daily Grill for dinner.
One of the amazing things about LA that I enjoy muchly every time I come down here is how good-looking everyone is. Every person I pass seems to be on their way to or from a casting call. All the restaurant servers are gorgeous; all the restaurant patrons are glamorous. I want to get autographs from the valet parkers. (Everywhere has valet parking, by the way. Even though lots of place it's free, you still have to park via valet.) Not that we've seen anyone famous so far this trip down here, but you never know -- anyone you walk by might be famous or is on the verge of being famous. God knows they all have the look.
We ate dinner and then we came back to Nando and Nancy's Love Hut (they just got married a couple of months ago). Nancy went to bed, because she has to work tomorrow. I fiddled with the FreePPP settings on my PowerBook for what seemed to be most of my natural life because I had forgotten about OpenTransport's configuration files, but once Fernando reminded me of that I was up and running. I finally connected to the Well and collected mail.
I felt as one with the universe when I saw Eudora logging in to goonsquad and beginning to download the 85 messages that had collected during the 12 or 14 hours since I had last gotten mail. Once again I was in contact with the rest of humanity, or at least with the other people I spend most of my time with. Life was good.
Well, I think I know which apartment I'm going to get tomorrow -- uh, I mean, today, the day this is being posted. (I've got to stop writing these entries really late at night.) Once that's over and done with Darin will start smiling again (I don't think he's enjoyed this little chore at all) and we can go do something fun, like visit Virtual World in Pasadena or something. Actually, he and Fernando can go do something fun...I'll probably just celebrate getting a place by napping.
I'm going to be up late again -- Darin is playing a few late night games of WarCraft II with Harry. Sigh.