Warren Zevon’s great song, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” seems to be my mantra lately. And so it happens that 5am is my new wake-up call. 5am is the new 7am. This is a good thing for the upcoming Oscar season, as one of the biggest bummers of all is/was having to wake up early for the Oscar nominations, and the SAG nominations, and the Golden Globe nominations. Waking up is hard to do if you like to sleep. Lately I’m finding I don’t like to sleep that much. I’d much rather be up. And the key to this existence, my friends, is taking naps. You have to think like a cat, or a senior citizen. Nap the afternoon away and it will change your life.
It’s been baking hot here in Los Angeles in November. Is it global warming? Or has it always been this way? It’s hard to know, really. I’ve lived here all of my life with a few pit stops in New York and Boston – always finding myself missing the wide open spaces here, even if they are concrete spaces, smog and hipsters-cluttered mini malls.
I probably couldn’t live anywhere else.
Los Angeles is much of what Steve Martin said it was in LA Stories. People do drive the couple of blocks they could walk, and they do make fun of the valley. The sun is harsh, leaving us all feeling a little over-exposed. But there is much here to appreciate, if you can dig it. If you don’t dig it, it will chase you out in a passive-aggressive way (as opposed to the aggressive way NYC does it).
To dig it means to exploit its best offerings – Santa Monica beach, the Arclight theater in Hollywood, the Sunset Strip, the Huntington Garden and Museum, but then you have to dig it in low key ways, because that’s what we do here. We shuffle out of our homes in our sweats and sunglasses, into a coffee place – like Starbucks, but not necessarily. Try Marie et Cie on Riverside in Valley Village.
You can shop at Whole Foods for the full spectrum California experience – you are most likely to see celebs there, especially at the one on Fairfax in the ‘Wood. But try the out of the way markets too. My favorite of these is Jon’s, which seemed to buy up all of the Vons and change just the one letter. But that is perhaps my own weird theory. They all of these strange imports, mostly from Russia and the like, but they also have some from the Middle East, Mexico (like Mexican coke!), and Italy (seriously, whole wheat imported pasta — what could be better). And you have to dig the “laid back” vibe, so don’t get too tense, unless you’re behind the wheel and road raging.
LACMA, the Getty, the Natural History Museum and Science Center are also not to be missed. It’s nicest in the mornings, though, if I had to choose a time I like this city best. There is no smog at that hour, and if you listen carefully, you can almost hear the birds chirping.
