Los Angeles is the land where movie dreams are made so I
guess it is appropriate that between the four of us we watched a total of nine
movies on the flight out here. (Eight,
really, because Izzy and I both watched Pitch
Perfect 3.) Consensus: PP3 was kind
of dumb, The Darkest Hour is formulaic
but also excellent, and The Shape of
Water is very good except for the scenes where he cuts off his fingers and she
has sex with the fish.
Despite our early arrival, we are held up in a line of truly
shocking length at the LAX Avis outlet. We’ve
waited a long time for rentals during our travels (I’m talking to you,
Milwaukee, around Thanksgiving), but this will henceforward be the standard
against which all other rental car lines are judged. Bill will be standing in this thing for an
hour, at least, before he gets a car and we can blow this pop stand. Fortunately, it is warm and sunny and there
are palm trees, none of which there are back in Cambridge, Massachusetts right
now, so we deal.
I’d say that everyone but particularly Izzy spent today kind
of teetering on the edge of meltdown. We
were tired, we were hungry, we were a little hot (what is this sun business all
about?), and there are SO MANY CARS. More
about that in a minute but let’s get into some food because Guy Fieri aside,
this really is a happening food town and I am pretty excited to dive in.
Not much to do about the tiredness but the hunger was
stylishly addressed at Gjusta (don’t ask me how to pronounce that) in Venice,
an offshoot of the popular Gjelina (same) restaurant. Everything there looked gorgeous – like
Tatte’s more sophisticated yet at the same time more rustic[1]
older sibling – and we ate quite delicious food (smoked brisket banh mi and a
porchetta melt? Yes, please!) under an
awning stretched over happy people who were almost all wearing sunglasses. So I immediately put mine on, to get into the
spirit of it all.
As it happened, we’d parked near an outpost of Jeni’s
Splendid Ice Creams, which we pay through the nose for by the pint in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Guess
what? They’re even more expensive by the
scoop in California! But oh so worth it. Flavors sampled included:
Izzy: Salty Caramel
Peter: Salted Peanut
Butter with Chocolate Flecks
Bill: Brown Butter
Almond Brittle
Lisa: a half-scoop
each of Lemon Buttermilk Frozen Yogurt and Goat Cheese with Roasted Cherries.[2]
Peter feels that no ice cream should ever have more than
four words in its name. Jeni challenged
him in this respect, but he graciously admitted that exceptions might be made
for chocolate flecks.
We think about parking so we can walk around the Venice
Beach scene but at $35/hour and the aforementioned hot-and-tired, we opted
instead to drive to our house.
Before I get there, a note about LA. Now, I know lots of folks whom I respect live
here, and I would never question their judgement in this choice. They have family, jobs, and lives here, and
they are happy and smart people so clearly they are doing something right. But the rest of you – I just don’t get
it. What is the appeal? It is sunny all the time which is just
unnerving. And there are ALL THOSE
CARS. Everywhere there are cars and
people in them. You have to drive and drive to get anywhere from anywhere and
gas costs almost twice as much as it does in New England and no one seems that
upset about it but I am here to tell you that it is really awful.
(This will be a recurring point of family discussion but
I’ll try not to dwell here.)
Our vacay hideaway this time, once again courtesy of
HomeAway.com is a sweet bungalow clinging to a hillside in Studio City. (Why is it named this? We don’t know.[3] Do the “NO ACTOR PARKING” signs in a nearby
shopping center, offer a clue?) The
house is reached by 35 steep steps, so it is kind of like Amsterdam, except at
the top there is this airy little house tucked around a small, pretty pool with
lots of lush greenery (A lemon tree!
With real lemons! We made
lemonade!) so it is also kind of like Guadeloupe except the couches are way
more comfortable and there is a television in every room. Not to mention a lovely view of some valley
and mountains in the distance. Suffice
it to say, we’re very comfortable in our cozy cottage and some of us would like
nothing more than to spend our week lounging upon those comfy couches and snoozing
beneath that lemon tree.
Dinner was some strip-mall ramen and more fried chicken
thighs than we knew what to do with.[4] Fortunately the Bruins won so we all went to
bed happy.[5]
Except, except . . . word trickles in about a disturbing
event at Harvard. A black student,
clearly tripping, was aggressively subdued by the Cambridge Police on Friday
night, all in the presence of many video-ing phones. There is an immediate outcry that this is
police brutality, where was the University, how is this happening? It is disheartening – we think we’re pretty
evolved in Cambridge but maybe we’re not.
You can’t watch the video and avoid the conclusion that the police
physicality was unwarranted. You also
think that the institution might have been more on top of the situation, except
that it is off-campus and you know that there is a protocol of involving police
when a student appears violent.
Appears/is, there is a canyon of difference between those two words and
now we have to find our way out. Will we
become a better institution and individuals in the process or will we refuse to
talk and just dig ourselves deeper into our respective positions?
[1]
Rustic in this case means distressed and mismatched furniture, with tippy
chairs.
[2]
This may be the best ice cream I have ever had.
[3]
It’s actually not that hard to find out that Studio City was named this after
Mack Sennett built a movie studio here in the 1920s. I don’t think there are any studios here
now.
[4]
Don’t be deterred by restaurants in strip malls. Everything is in a strip mall here. And you have to drive to get to it. There is exponentially more ramen and sushi here
than in Cambridge.
[5]
Now that we are neck-deep in hockey, we follow the Stanley Cup playoffs like
nobody’s business.
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