Southbay Sucks

I’ve spent the majority of my morning making “pros” and “cons” lists for my future. I think I get this from PawPaw Haley. He makes lists for everything and puts labels on everything. I’m like that, too. I feel like a lot of times I have cotton candy for brains and I can’t sort out the clear picture. List-making helps me to gain clarity and helps me to stay productive. If I have a list, I can check things off of it, and because I gain such incredible satisfaction from checking things off of my list, I’m almost guaranteed to get something done just so I can make that triumphant little line through whatever it is I set out to accomplish.

This could make me the most pathetic person in the world… or perhaps I’m awesome because of this.

I’d like to talk about the past couple of days that I have had that have not involved list making or planning or accomplishing. They’ve been great.

I was talking to my long-time friend from back home a couple of days ago, and he asked me if I could ever just “live in the moment.” I didn’t even have to think about it. I said “No,” emphatically, as if those who live in the moment are complete imbeciles. Something about him asking me that, though, made me challenge myself to just enjoy the moment for a day or two, so I did.

On Saturday, my friend came over and we drove down to the Hermosa Festival to check out all of the crafts fair type of crap people were selling. It was sort of an interesting experience, because many of the folks down there were very “south bay.” I used to dig the south bay a lot because there were so many young people there, but after experiencing 2009, the year from hell, my perceptions have changed.

I feel like when I first moved to L.A. a year ago, I was more naïve. I had come here enamored with all L.A. had to offer and I was so in love with the eccentricity of it all that I did not even see the douche baggery that some areas of town reflected. After dealing with a lot of superficial a-holes out here, though, I’ve lost a lot of the dewy eyed romanticism about this city.

I am still passionately in love with L.A. Living here has been the closest thing to feeling ‘in love’ that I’ve ever experienced, but let me tell you, there are certain areas of town with a certain type of inhabitant that I can no longer deal with.

As my friend and I walked around through the little tents of wooden sculptures and sunglasses, I couldn’t help but notice this “south bay” type of person EVERYWHERE. All of the guys walking around shirtless and statuesque, wearing board shorts and Ed Hardy hats with flat bills and Rainbow flip flops and douchey Ray Bans. Women with their expensive weaved hair and bikinis and cute little dogs in strollers talking about completely empty pointless stupid crap. I thought I was going to lose my mind. All of a sudden, I realized that I was stuck in sororityville. The south bay is like one big Greek “brotherhood.” Everybody says “Brah” and all of that, and people have a chip on their shoulder like they’re sportier and cooler than everyone else. I couldn’t deal with it. We left after 20 minutes and got sushi.

After enjoying our sushi, I told my buddy that I was done with the Pi Kappy whatever whatevers and I had to get out of there before I went bat sheet postal, and we drove down to Venice. Approaching all of those crazy folk made me feel normal again.

It’s weird, because I fit that ding-dong stereotype. I have the bleached hair and the accessories and all of that nonsense… But the thing is, I enjoy being flashy because it’s fun, not because I am trying to fake everyone else out about my level of “coolness.” I feel pretty post modern most of the time, because I don’t fit in with the Greek hoes, I don’t fit in with the ultra conservatives or the ultra liberals, I’m definitely no hippie (I drive an SUV and leave the lights on), and I’m a closet shy person. I am not sure how I would categorize myself. But back to the topic at hand - I just know that I’d pick the homeless crazies in Venice over the douches in board shorts in Hermosa any day of the week.

We drove down Vista del Mar with reggae cranked up and the windows down and my hair was flying all over the place. It felt nice to feel the sun on my face. It felt even better to smell the beach. It felt great to smile.

We walked around Venice and saw all of the fantastic weirdness that Venice has to offer. People played guitars and made art and just walked around and didn’t care if others were looking at them or not. They just were. It could be the LSD or what have you, but at least they weren’t calling everybody “brah.”

We saw a crazy man promoting the “Venice Freak Show,” walking around with a two headed turtle. This is the first two-headed turtle I’ve seen. I felt sort of bad for him. He was cute in his own un-categorizable, ugly duckling-esque way. I know what it’s like to feel like I have no place. I am a two-headed turtle. Now is no time for lamenting, though. Let us proceed.

I’ve heard the Venice drum circle on countless occasions, but I’ve always been on some sort of Type A, list-making mission, and I’ve never walked out onto the sand to observe these guys beat their drums. Plus, I’ve always been a little bit scared to hang out with the drummers, because I look like I just walked out of white people Barbie ville and I didn’t want the hippies to judge me for looking plastic. I was feeling rather artsy that day, so I bought a JT/Sinatra straw hat and wore it on my head like my crown of glory. I was empowered. My friend and I made the venture close to the ocean. We sat down on the sand and listened to the drummers beat on their bongos, their snares- whatever they had that could take sound. There was even a crazy hippie wee man beating the heck out of a cowbell.

This wasn’t the cool part.

I could feel the percussion in my chest. All of a sudden, I sort of felt transported to a different time in my life, where I actively made music. I remembered the music. I missed playing with the Memphis Youth Symphony in Europe and I missed singing with the candy makers in New Orleans when I was on choir tour in the 8th grade. It made me miss singing with my sisters and cousins at our great grandma’s funeral and it made me miss being one of the only white people singing at “Minorities in Motion” in high school. I missed it. I missed being a part of the music. I closed my eyes and listened to these people making music together and I thought about being in Africa when I was a kid- and that’s all I could think about- people being together, making music- and it didn’t matter if it was perfect or coordinated or cookie cutter—it mattered that they were doing it together. When I opened my eyes I saw this beautiful young woman in the middle of the drum circle. She was thin and wearing a short skirt and a thin t-shirt and she had a huge picked afro and she began dancing with her arms in the air. Something about seeing the sun in her hair and all around her made her look like she was glowing. I thought about that quote by St. Iraneus,

“The Glory of God is man fully alive.”

That’s what it’s about. Being fully alive.

I spent three days in a row like that. Not having a schedule or a list or planning ahead- just focusing on the here and now and being fully aware and fully alive.

It felt good. It felt foreign.

The next day, I went back to Hermosa with Fisty, and we bought some cool stuff. Then we got a free pint of ice cream from Baskin Robbins. We drove down to the beach and lay on the sand and ate the crap out of that Jamoca Almond Fudge. It was wonderful.

After a while, we went back to my house. We went to church downtown that night and then stopped at this Mexican restaurant by my apartment that I love.

We ate nachos and some mariachis came right near our table like bats out of hell and started playing their horns at MAXIMUM VOLUME. We started to come unglued. I haven’t laughed like that in forever. It felt great. I could feel the music again. It’s weird to think that I haven’t made any sort of music in years now. Something inside of me quit at some point. I just quit.

Anyway, at the end of our meal, our waiter came out and brought us our bill, and in big cursive characters, it said, “50% OFF!” He said to us (in thick Spanish accent), “I give you 50% off because you are the two most beautiful women in this restaurant. I would give you more- you deserve free-but this is all I can do.”

What?

WHAT?

When you’ve had the worst summer of your life and you’re about to abandon all hope for the human race, somebody makes you feel good about yourself and does something kind for no reason at all. That, my friends, is restoration.