I Love LA

Rollin’ down Imperial Highway
With a big nasty redhead at my side
Santa Ana winds blowin’ hot from the north
And we was born to ride

Randy Newman

It was another beautiful weekend in the LBC (Long Beach, California, home of Snoop Dogg and Sublime) and I mostly enjoyed myself.  I blasted KROQ a decent chunk of the weekend and heard that the majority of Angelinos read my blog post on Friday* and decided to stay off the roads, thus keeping Carmageddon at a minimum.

After spending my week toiling for The Man (in this case, The Man is my younger brother), I cruised down the road in search of rad footwear.  It’s been years since I had a pair of Chuck Taylor’s and I was looking for a pair of hi tops in a cool color.  I ended up walking out with some Nautical Blue low tops, but was still happy.  I’m wearing them now, in case you were wondering (though I know you’re not).

After that it was time to get my grub on and I celebrated my mentally challenging work week by rolling into one of my favorite joints, Chronic Tacos.  This was my first  post-Buffalo visit to the mecca of Mexican goodness and my stomach was getting a woody just thinking about it.

I walked in and was greeted by a young dude (I believe his name was Dan) who I remembered from 2 1/2 years ago.  He said I looked familiar, but that he hadn’t seen me in a while.  I told him I moved out of state for a while, but I was back in the LBC and hungry for an al pastor torta.  He commended me on my choice and asked if I wanted my bread toasted.  I looked him in the eye and said, “Uh, is there any other way?”  He gave me a fist bump and went to toast my bun.

Once toasted, he added the refried beans, a generous helping of al pastro, cilantro, onions, guacamole and hot salsa.  He once again commended me on my choice of adding both cilantro and hot salsa and moments later, my taste buds were having an orgasm.  At some point after this I tweeted that if it was al pastor and it blew my taste buds, that it must be Catholic.  I can’t resist an opportunity to make a priest joke.

After that I went back to my couch/bed at my brother’s industrial building and watched part of a UFC DVD I got from Netflix and chilled out.  The next morning I woke up and ran a couple errands.  I returned to the building around 1 and was feeling kind of blah.  I stayed in all afternoon with the curtains closed and tried to work on the book, but I just wasn’t feeling it.  I forced myself to write for a while, but wasn’t completely thrilled with it.  I sent it to The Muse for some critique and was told that it didn’t fit with the rest of the book.  Fuckin lovely.   It was at this point that I made what was possibly the biggest mistake of my weekend.

I had a code for a free Redbox rental, so I went to the kiosk at the grocery store up the street.  I’ve never seen Transformers 2, so I grabbed that and picked up three items from the store.  I returned to the building and I know that I put the damn movie on my desk for later, but when I went to watch, it wasn’t there.  Between Saturday night and Monday morning I’ve spent probably three hours searching this tiny space and I can’t find the damn movie anywhere.  Chances are I left it at the store somehow and some asswipe is watching my copy of it and you know they won’t return it.  Shit.

Sunday morning I woke up and picked up Drama Queen around 11:30 for a day/evening of fun.  She hadn’t yet returned to Chronic Tacos, so we went there for lunch, then cruised down to Borders at South Coast Plaza so my daughter could pick up some books she reserved at the store.  Once the books were secured, we crossed the bridge from Crystal Court to the main mall and spent the next hour or so walking around this monstrosity of capitalism.  There is every high end store you can think of and the stench of, “I’m better than you,” hangs in the air.

After that it was off to Northgate Market to stock up for a BBQ at Crystal and Bone’s place.  Bone is a nickname, in case you were wondering.  My Twitter friend,  @CessyG tells me that because I shop at Northgate, I’m a “Messican.”  I say maybe that’s true, but I’m a well fed Messican.  I grabbed some freshmade tortillas, Mexican green onions, carne asada, pollo asada, cilantro, limes and a couple 32 oz bottles of  Sol and headed to the fiesta, where Bone was the grillmaster extraordinaire.  Dude whipped up some raging homemade guac and cooked everything to perfection.

It had been a long time since I really hung out with my friends and we ended up with about a dozen people in the backyard.  Around 7:30, the day finally caught up with me and neurologically I was fried.  I returned Drama Queen to grandma’s and I found my way back to my too-short-to-comfortably-sleep-on couch and thought about writing this blog post.  I could hardly string three words together in my brain, so I opted to wait and write this Monday morning, thus the reason for the tardiness of this.  I apologize for being late.  It’s not professional–not that anyone has ever accused this blog of being professional.

So.  What did you do this weekend?  Tell me about it.  I want to hear.

* I know people didn’t stay off the roads because of my blog post, but in my little fantasy world they did.  Cut me some slack, please.

P.S.  I don’t know how I let this slip my mind, but I forgot what colossal dicks some people are once they climb behind the wheel of their cars.  Just because your car was made in Germany, doesn’t give you the ability to drive where you want, when you want and at whatever speed you want.  The reality is, if I’m cruising down the road in my Dodge and you decide you want the exact spot I’m in, I’m not going to move just because you start into my lane.  (Please excuse my brief rant.)