Sunday, March 28, 2010

"As far as I'm concerned, you can drop off the Earth. That's a promise."

 Thanks to the brilliant writing of Tommy Wiseau for the title of this post.  More on that later.

There was a distinct moment earlier this week where for the first time I felt like I actually lived in Los Angeles.  It was, simply enough, the moment I started listening to local radio.

We've had satellite radio for about two years now.  Birmingham has quite possibly some of the worst local radio stations.  After Citadel pulled the plug on The X, I was pretty much done with local radio.  Sure they had the occasional station pop up to replace The X, and after it's 15 minutes of fame were up, whatever company was behind it pulled the plug on it as well.  Because of this, I found myself listening solely to NPR...and then we discovered XM.  I've spent the past two years listening to nothing but satellite radio, because I never had a reason to listen to local radio anymore.  The first couple of weeks we were here I was still listening to XM, and then one day I got in the car with Alex and he was listening to KROQ, and it was...dare I say...GOOD!  So I began to channel surf in my own car, and there it was...the moment I realized I lived in California.  I was driving to the dog park one morning, surfing through channels and listening to local morning talk radio and it hit me:  I actually live here now.  Strange how something so minuscule can be such a defining moment, isn't it?

Before we moved we were warned that people in LA won't drive very far outside of where they live, mostly because of traffic.  So, in other words, if we live in Sherman Oaks and someone else lives in Venice, the odds of them coming over to hang out one night is pretty much slim to none.  I thought this was a pretty insane notion at first.  Four weeks later and I'm finding myself participating in this line of thinking.  In Alabama it's nothing to drive from Hoover to Trussville to see friends or what-not.  And it was nothing for me to drive 30 miles to my mom's house at 6pm after work if she needed me to.  But here...totally different.  I've been taking Raimi to this dog park that LeeAnne introduced me to in Encino.  It's a whopping 8 miles from my house.  It takes me 15 minutes to get there if traffic is good.  At first it wasn't a big deal; however, everyday this week I've found myself thinking "eh...it's so far away and I'll have to deal with traffic...maybe we'll just go on a long walk instead."  Am I serious?  8 miles...15 minutes...and I'm thinking that's too far?

The thing I'm discovering about Los Angeles is that while it's a huge city, it's actually very much small town at the same time.  Maybe not small town in the "everybody knows your name" sense, but small town in the way that every little community has pretty much everything you could ever need, so you never have to leave the area where you live.  For example, we live on the Sherman Oaks/Studio City cusp, and there are 5 groceries stores that I can name off the top of my head within a 2 mile radius of my house.  There are 2 different Starbucks locations within 1 mile. And it's like this everywhere you go.  The farthest we've had to venture for necessities is about 7 miles to Ikea in Burbank.  It's a far cry from Birmingham, I'll tell you that much.


Speaking of venturing out, last night Alex & I went to see a screening of The Room at the Sunset 5 theater in Hollywood.  If you don't know what The Room is, here is a link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCj8sPCWfUw

The movie is terrible...absolutely horrible, but it's become this strange cult phenomenon.  The director, Tommy Wiseau, apparently rents out this theater on the last Saturday of every month and shows his film in all 5 theaters.  This info is especially important for those of you The Room fans who are talking about visiting us.  Schedule your trip wisely.  It was absolute nuts.  It was a midnight screening and we got there about 11:05 only to be about 200-300 people back in line.  Some comedian Alex recognized was there.  Michael Cera was there.  This was a big deal.  I've never seen Rocky Horror (don't hate), but apparently it's the same kind of thing.  People were throwing spoons at the screen...yelling at the screen...just nuts.  But it was the most enjoyable experience I've ever had at a theater.  Alex filmed the Q&A that Tommy Wiseau did before the film.  If you're interested  in seeing the video, it's here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=610697909536&ref=mf

You know, this blog was supposed to be for me AND Alex to write about our adventurous new life in California, but since I'm the only one using it, I'm considering going back to my old blog, which I haven't touched since opening this one.  We'll see..

1 comment:

  1. Portland's like that too... I constantly find stuff on Craigslist to see that it's 5 miles away and decided I don't want it that badly. In Trussville it was that far to the grocery store!

    If you go back to your old blog drop a link on here... some of us don't know it.

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