I went down to L.A. for the long weekend, technically in part to...wait for it...work on my screenplay, but really mostly just to hang out at James's house and also to attend our friend The Other Karen B's birthday party and get drunk on mojitos and lick chocolate buttercream off of ladyfinger cookies. (Apparently that's what the kids are calling it these days. Who knew?!)
Because James and I are so very, very old, we decided to go to downtown Pasadena on Saturday before the birthday party simply to ensure that we'd stay awake until 9:00 p.m., which was when the party was scheduled to begin. Sadly, I am completely serious.
Fueled by sentimentality more so than a desire for decent potables, we stopped by the restaurant/bar where we went on our very first date back in 2000. We plopped ourselves down, ordered a couple of drinks, and when they arrived James immediately (a) noticed that the two tiny straws in his beverage were of different diameters, (2) inserted one inside the other, and (iii) romantically declared, "I've now got a concentric multi-walled nanotube." He looked vaguely confused as I scrambled to dig a pen out of my purse and reached across him to grab a cocktail napkin. "I need to write this down," I explained, scribbling. "This is COMEDY GOLD."
James: "Why is that funny?"
Karen: "It's funny."
James: "The fact that I don't understand why it's funny is also funny, I bet."
Karen: "Yes."
****
There's nothing like spending a weekend in L.A. being driven around in a purring German sports car and attending parties full of movie industry people to make you truly appreciate the misery that is the route 31 bus up here in San Francisco. Because lo, that is the bus I chose to board for the final leg of my public transportation journey home this evening, and I would be lying if I told you that one of my fellow passengers wasn't a crack-smoking transvestite in a hospital gown and a puffer jacket, sporting a dingy bar towel as a 'do rag, occasionally flashing her naked ass, and manically switching seats and talking about someone who was going to rape her and asking the driver to find her a cop and then bitchily accusing him of not being a Christian. And when I say this person was a crack smoker, I am not jumping to conclusions or falling prey to vicious stereotypes. SHE WAS SMOKING CRACK RIGHT THERE ON THE BUS.
P.S. If any of you out there are planning to take the 31 in the next couple of days, there is at least one coach with several seats you'll want to avoid sitting in. Or touching. Or being alive next to.
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