2021 Summer Vacation

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My Summer Vacation

This is probably a very first for me. I’m actually happy to be back home. Usually as a trip dwindles down, I’m filled with dread about having to return to work and the monotony of real life. But by the end of this trip, I was over it. I just couldn’t wait to get out of there.

This trip was a journey through the upper midwest, starting in Minneapolis then going through the Lake Superior shores of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan before heading through the Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula and circling my way back to Minneapolis by way of Milwaukee.

Let’s start with the good.

  • It was beautiful. Seeing the Great Lakes for the first time was stunning. The lush green forests were a great contrast to the brown chapparel I’m normally used to in LA.
  • People were nice. It’s true that people were nice. I wasn’t used to seeing people wave at me while driving down the opposite side of the street. I’m not used to strangers saying hello to me as I’m walking down the street. I’ve lived in a city for way to long I guess.
  • I saw a couple of baseball games. Saw the Brewers beat the Reds at American Family (nee Miller) Park and the Twins beat the Tigers at Target Field. These were the first live baseball games I’ve seen since the Dodgers lost to the Nationals in Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS.
  • I rented an Audi A5 with a sunroof to drive around in. It felt cool except when getting in and out because the seat was so close to the ground.
Audi

Now the bad.

  • It’s so white with a capital /H/. This is self-explanatory, but it was a similar culture shock I experienced when I first got to Santa Barbara. Oof.
  • I’m so senile. This continues my saga of a deteriorating memory. It started when I sat on the tarmac in LAX that I realized that I left all of my medications at home. Fine. I got an emergency refill when I made it to Minneapolis. Then that night I lost my credit card. Seriously, this needs to fucking stop.
  • The weather was crazy. It started in the mid-90s, then when I got to the UP of Michigan it was rainy and in the 50s. When I made it back to Minneapolis, it went back to what I am used to in LA in the 80s. But fuck man, I’m glad I brought a jacket.
  • Stupidity. Sure people were nice, but seeing all the Trump banners and flags STILL hanging up eight months after the fucker lost is annoying. I don’t usually discuss politics with strangers because I assume they are all Trumpers and I’ve already lost too much faith in humanity.
  • Shitty driving. You would think the home of car factories will make for better drivers, but Michigan drivers are fucking awful. On a two-lane highway, they would rather form a long line and risk a chain accident than pass a truck going 20 mph under the speed limit. This was the biggest reason I wanted to get the fuck out of Michigan. Then in Wisconsin, they are fucking insane! They will cut you off at will. It’s without malice, but just don’t be in their blind spot.

I’m back home. I feel like I need a make-up vacation. Where to?

Swamp Thing

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Future Unknown

I don’t know if I’m ever going back into the office for work, which begs the question: why do I have to stay in LA? Make no mistake: I love LA. I love being raised in this city. I love the culture, the people, the weather, the everything. Well, maybe not the traffic. And not the cost of living which brings us to where I am right now.

While it looks like I won’t be dying any time soon, I need to start thinking about my old age, something I swore I would never become. I’ll be 65 in 23 years, and I don’t think I can pay rent when I’m that age. Also let’s face it, at my rate I will most likely be very much single. So let’s talk about buying a house.

  1. It will have to be in the United States. I don’t think starting a new life in a new country is prudent now. Maybe if my dumbass had done it in my 20s, I could think about it. But not now. So as much as living in Paris or Berlin sounds nice, gotta put an X on those dreams.
  2. Southern California is too expensive. As much as I’d like to stay in the area, I’m priced out. Also, there is no way I would want to live in Lancaster or Fontana. Ew.
  3. Recent travels? Recently I went to Western Montana twice and really loved it, but I really am not going to purchase land and build a homestead out there. And real estate in Missoula has gotten a bit out of hand. In a couple of weeks I’m headed out to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to go traipsing around the Great Lakes. So maybe I’ll fall in love with that as well?
  4. Last alternative. So there is really only one other place: Baton Rouge, LA. Yup. Back to where I lived until I was 8 years old. I know the area, and real estate is cheap. But fuck, the summers are literal hell down there.

Who knows, though? Who knows if I get to work remotely indefinitely? Lots of uncertainty, lot of thoughts.

20210414_102406

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Where Is My Mind?

It’s going folks.

Saturday night I went over to Tyler’s and Lauren’s who were making Cuban roasted pork, so I brought Soju and Hite Beer. I’m walking the five blocks over to their place when I realize right at Pershing Square that oh fuck, I left my mask at home. Dear fucking lord.

Sunday afternoon my cousin Gina comes over. We go over to Dolly Llama for some ice cream and waffles then Tierra Mia for some coffee. I remembered my mask, but when we get back to my place I realized that I fucking left my phone at Dolly Llama.

Getting old fucking sucks.

Fonut

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Pride

June is pride month, and I’ve always had an ambivalence towards it. I’m not saying I’ve had any ambivalence towards being gay ever since I came out at 16 — no, no, I wear my faggotry like a motherfucking medal. But I’ve always had problems with the corporatization of pride. These are the same corporations that were content to just let us die when we trying to fight for our rights in the 60s and 70s and just trying to live in the era of AIDS and the 80s. It wasn’t until they sniffed the money that we have that they decided to come around. And then there is this:

Um, no. The Stonewall Riots were a bunch of my fellow degenerate trannies and fags who were sick of NYPD’s shit and fucked shit up. That the police are there to protect the interests of the aforementioned corporations that already give me a lot of ambivalence even further makes me want to smoke crack. And, you know, police violence and all.

So it’s no surprise that the last time I went to a pride parade was in the mid-00s — it was so unmemorable I don’t even remember when exactly I went. To drag me to a pride celebration, it would need to have these:

  • A subversive anti-Rupaul’s drag show featuring the most fucked up looking drag queens hopefully missing teeth.
  • Library of anarchist literature and porn
  • Kink demonstrations and classes
  • Vaginas and vulvas everywhere
  • No children. As John Waters wrote in Cecil B. Demented, family is just a dirty word for censorship

To sleep — perchance to dream.

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I Hate the Redondo Beach Pier

Monday I hung out with Madd. Covid prevented us from hanging out for over a year, so it’s nice to get back to that sort of normalcy. It’s not like we did anything huge, though. We went to furniture stores sitting on chairs and looking at tables and such. I know. Big fun.

When we got hungry, Madd took me to the Redondo Beach Pier. It was a crowded mess that smelled of a combination of deep-fried shellfish and urine, and neither of us wanted to wait for a table. After walking the perimeter we got out of there. It’s been about 15 years since I’ve been, but I never felt so repulsed by the place. I kept thinking back to all of the times I used to go, and it was then that I realized that I actually hate the Redondo Beach Pier. I guess we’re supposed to have fond memories of the place having grown up in the South Bay, especially with the now-shuttered arcade. But no. Even as a child, I thought it was a shithole.

Eating fried cheesecake.

We went a little south to the Riviera to get food, at H.T. Grill. I had their espresso short ribs which was amazing, just the perfect serving size with a deep smoky sweet sauce. In the picture you see me eating their fried cheesecake which is wrapped in phyllo dough and caramel. Also you see an empty glass that once was filled with a Manhattan.

One thing we talked about is where high school kids hang out nowadays. As we were driving around, we drove past my old high school coffeehouse haunt Yesterdays which has been closed for about 20 years. I started to feel bad because kids don’t have the variety of coffeehouses that we did back in the day. Like if you got tired of Yesterdays, you could drive down to the Riviera and go to Coffee Cartel (which is thankfully still there.) If you wanted to hang out with Neo-Nazis on speed, you go to Insomniac which was up closer to PCH. So where do the kids go to now?

Madd was very unconcerned about this. She figured they had their own places to hang out and that our places to them are passé and a bore. She’s right. Lord knows what they do, but I do hope they do lots of bad things that would make their parents freak out. That’s all I care about, really. I get freaked out that kids nowadays are too fucking boring and want to get along with their parents. Gross!

(Is there now any questions as to why I don’t want children?)

But I do know one thing. The kids also think the Redondo Beach Pier is a shithole.

CHELSEA

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Memoria Memoria

Saturday I watched Chelsea beat Man City in Porto 1-0 in the Champions League Final. CHELSEA ARE FUCKING CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE!!!! Sure Timo Werner still couldn’t find the back of the net, but that defense was near perfect for the whole match. When Kai Havertz scored for Chelsea in the 42nd minute, lord knows what everyone else in my building thought of my hooting and hollering. It was soon tempered knowing that 48 minutes remained. And it was tough, I’ll admit. Sure Chelsea looked like they couldn’t be broken, but with only a 1-0 lead anything could happen. And anything almost did in the 6th minute of stoppage time at the end of the match when Riyad Mahrez’s shot sailed just over the crossbar.

FUCK

My stomach dropped, and when I saw the ball sail harmlessly into the crowd in Porto the tears came rushing. I jumped up and down, the Chelsea scarf held overhead. The final whistle blew. WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE! WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE! CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE! WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE! I’ll admit it was a much more exciting moment for me than when the Dodgers won the World Series in October. I’ve been more invested in Chelsea and football more than I had been in any other sport. Hell, the last live sporting event I went to was Chelsea taking on West Ham United back in November 2019 at Stamford Bridge.

That was a nice way to start my weekend, but that certainly fucked up my Saturday. The rest of the day I spent cleaning and just puttering about, but the excitement kept coursing through me so I couldn’t just focus on one job. I was a mess. But it didn’t matter. My team is the best team in the world.

Paris Street; Rainy Day

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I’m Not Worthy

There are quite a few people I follow online, whether it be on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other platforms whom I’ve never interacted with. Sure, I started following them because I found them hot, but there was some substance there that kept me interested.

I rarely interact with these folks though. I don’t know how to describe why. I guess it’s something like I don’t think I’m worthy enough to interact with them. Or it’s more like I don’t think I have anything significant to contribute, so rather than waste time being a gushing fanboy or something idiotic like that, just keep being a voyeur. I know, very LA of me, but you’ve got to keep your damn cool.

At the beginning of the month someone I follow on Instagram posted a sunset photo of New York City. The text was not written by the person but by his mother — he had died suddenly over the past weekend. There was an instant sadness, but I had to push that aside for a work Zoom meeting. Sure it wasn’t full blown grief, but it did get me wondering why it affected me at all. I mean the only thing I knew about this guy were the photos and words he posted to Instagram.

But thoughts kept flashing through my head: am I missing by not reaching out? Would I be more fulfilled if I did lose my cool every now and then? What the hell am I doing with my life?

Oh well. Fuck it. I’ll take a nap.

Group Shot

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Almost Normal?

Actually, who knows what normal is anymore? What did make it seem normal was going out last Thursday and Friday nights for dinner with friends. But now that I think about it, is that really normal for me? Before the pandemic, I was living in San Pedro in what was isolation not unlike how I lived through the pandemic. I guess when I was living in Los Feliz I was a lot more social, but I was also in my late 20s and early 30s.

Thursday I went to DAMA in the Fashion District with Yuko where we had Mexican-style tapas and hung out for three hours. It was nice catching up with her, gabbing about what we did during the pandemic, what we’re planning on doing, our neuroses, chemical imbalances and intakes. And the food was quite remarkable between the empanadas, the pork shank and the deep fried fluffernutter.

Guacamole and Empanadas
Almost finished pork shank
Fluffernutter

Then Friday it was off to El Cholo in Pasadena to see Angie who was visiting from North Carolina, Ben and Catherine. It was another few hours of gabbing and catching up, drinking margaritas and putting each other down.

Me, Catherine, Angie and Ben up to hijinks.

Missing out on being able to do this certainly made this particular heart grow fonder — now that we are able to go out to dinner and hang out, I certainly want to do these things. I guess during the pandemic a lot of us learned that we can’t take each day for granted. I know: deeeeeeeeep.

Well since this is Memorial Day weekend, let’s see what shenanigans I get up to. Follow this space.

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