Plastic People of L.A. Unite!

I've been on the go for the past week or so taking in everything that is the South East. I've been living out of suitcases running through airports and nursing hangovers but it's been worth it. Initially I was going to cap off my little cruise down memory lane and go visit some friends in NYC as well but it turns out that immersing myself in a steady dose of living below the Mason Dixon line has given me more context/ contrast than I could've ever imagined; I think Nietzsche was really on to something when he said: "Hell is other people"...here are a few happy thoughts to ponder...

I've often noted how people living elsewhere like to use that old coin about how "artificial" the folks out in Cali can be (especially the one's who'd been out there and have since scuttled back from whence they came); I've been out on the coast for about 8 years now and everytime I leave, after a while, every now and then, I begin to feel like Captain Willard (in Apocalypse Now), while sitting in his room waiting for a mission, when I'm sitting in my hotel out of town: "every minute that I sit here, waiting to do something, far away from the Hollywood jungle, I get a little bit weaker...and every second that California sits baking in the sun the Angelenos a little bit stronger..." I guess I'm actually starting to miss my adopted home...I don't know, what else, maybe it's a bout of "the grass is greener," but I will say there's a cloying lack of optimism on many of the faces I see around here and it seems to be draped over everything...even the trees -- it makes me want to recoil in horror, hand held to face... "fuggit, if you're so miserable here then fold up your tents and move to a new location, you tosser" -- no wonder I was in such a hurry to get out so many years ago..."never get outta the boat, goddamned right...unless you're prepared to go all the way..."

...Or maybe it's this constant layer of humidity that causes every pore on your skin to continually leak once you step out of any air conditioned building for more than 30 seconds -- that shite alone makes you want to hulk out and start biting people -- oh, and the slower than molasses Sunday drivers, who clog roads every day of the week out here, makes one misty eyed for the pistol waving and non-signalling lane jumpers who overrun L.A.'s 5. 210 & 405 freeways on the regular all of which causes me to circle back to the "L.A. fake-thing." It's all true, every bit...some Los Angelenos can resemble faxes-of memos-of-human beings...some, but not all...you get that shite everywhere else too -- in NYC, Chicago, you name it but unlike in the South/ SoCali, they don't smile when they're doing do it...in Boston they'll throw you a beating if you're in the wrong part of town wearing the wrong kind of skin but whatever...the point, I've come across since I've been revisiting my southern past, vis a vis the whole "L.A. fakeness," is this: most of the people who get out West and "change" for the worse didn't "change" at all...they were assholes wherever it was they came from..."don't hate the player, hate the game you say?" That's a bunch of pigeon pellets, kid...I wrote this because I've been asked more than ten times already: "how do you deal with those phony-ass glad-handers out there?" How? The same way I put up with shnooks out on the East Coast...ignore them...I opened with a quote from Nietzsche and I'll close with a quote from Mr. Mojo Risin' himself, Jim Morrison: " I drink because it allows me to converse with all of the arseholes in the world...which includes (myself)"...Laters