We finally exited LAX airport at around 1:00am on 17th December. We were so tired and hungry we’d gone past frustrated anger and we just looked defeated as we shuffled outside of the airport with our cases to wait for a taxi large enough to take us and all of our luggage. We were silent on the cab drive to the hotel and even the Captain looked completely stuffed. He pepped up as we drove into the Marina del Rey area, where our hotel was located, and started talking animatedly about how much he loves the area and how it hasn’t changed since he was last here in 1988. How the hell he could tell this from the pitch blackness of night outside of the taxi is beyond me, but he was suddenly excited. He turned to us in the back seat and said, “We’ll just dump our cases, then find a diner and get a meal.” Up we all popped like a row of jack-in-the-boxes along the back seat at the mere mention of food. Suddenly we were awake and ready go.
We wandered into the deserted hotel lobby at 1.30am and checked in. We made it to our room and as soon as we opened the door, we were immediately hit by a wall of hot air. It was like a balmy afternoon in Darwin in there. I felt like I was going to melt into a puddle on the carpeted floor. We dumped our cases and resisted the temptation to strip to our underwear to cope with the sudden heat. We asked the concierge how to turn the heat down and he straight away turned it to Celsius for us. Well, good on you mate, but turn the fucking thing down before we all sauté in our own gut fat! I stood at the thermostat trying to make the fucker go down to arctic blast with the kids looking over my shoulder for support, but the lowest temperature we could get the unit down to was 24◦C; very fucking balmy! It was so hot in the room that we were almost fainting so we opened the sliding door to the small balcony and decided to leave it open while we went out to eat in the hope that the room would be habitable when we returned.
We passed a 24 hour diner on the way to the hotel so the Captain pointed us in that direction. It was called ‘Killer Café’ and I was hoping it had nothing to do with the food. Turns out Marina Del Rey were into death threats because not only did we find a Killer Café, we found Killer Hairstyles and Killer Shrimp too. Considering California’s serial killer list, this was an accurate threat. The first thing we saw when we opened the door and wandered in at 2:00am was a giant black man standing in the middle of the diner wearing a floor length fur coat on. What the fuck? Captain Fantastic turned to me and grinned, “Check that out,” gesturing at the anomaly in the animal pelt. I nodded mutely because I was so hungry I was starting to feel queasy!
Perusing the menu and almost salivating all over it because we were deliriously hungry, we finally settled on burgers and sandwiches. When the meals arrived, it was comical...they were huge. The Captain ordered a meatloaf burger but he received a meatball burger, which was a little disappointing for him. I had ordered a sandwich and it arrived on a platter, not a plate. The sandwich was served on bread that had been cut down the length of the bread loaf so it was double size. It took up about a third of the giant platter like plate and the rest of the plate was piled high with fries like a heart attack begging for a way in. Of course I could only consume half of the giant sandwich and a few of the fries because I’m a normal person and not from the land of giants where this meal should have been served. As wasteful as the excess was, I was still scarred by the acid incident so I refused to shove any more of this deep fried crap into my body than I could manage. Boy wonder devoured his entire burger and most of the fries as did The Captain because the boys had large appetites and could actually reside in the land of the giants. Miss Marvellous only ate half a sandwich too; she’s normal just like me.
We made it back to the hotel room and collapsed into a fitful sleep made all the more uncomfortable by the heat in the room. We discovered that if we left the sliding door open, we could actually get enough cool air in there to make sleep possible…if you only draped a sheet over one third of your left leg and hung slightly off the side of the bed to catch a little of the breeze.
The acid incident came back to haunt me because with the late arrival into LA and the sprint to the café for sustenance, I’d forgotten to take an antacid pill so I endured another night of heartburn that felt like molten lava had been set loose in my oesophagus. I managed to get through the night without vomiting so that was a bonus but I was more wary than ever.
Every day we would leave the room with the door wide open to reduce the chance of actually baking in there and when we returned, after the room had been serviced, we’d find the sliding door closed and the room an inhabitable hotbox again. There was no fridge in the room so we left our wine and beer outside on the balcony in the cool air to refrigerate it for us.
Our first day of sightseeing in Los Angeles was led by Captain Fantastic as he retraced the steps he’d taken in 1988 (Jesus, we’re old). We walked towards Venice Beach and after admiring surfers tackling nondescript waves from the pier, we made our way up the Venice Beach boardwalk that eventually ended in Santa Monica. I wished The Captain a Happy Anniversary...21 years. With the screw-ups and time differences, the date had completely slipped his mind. As we headed towards the boardwalk, we passed paddle tennis courts featuring a pretentious bunch of knobs playing like there was a trophy involved. Knobs were a real feature on this boardwalk and it made for an interesting walk. Within seconds of passing knob central, we were set upon by a very tall and imposing black man selling his CD. He asked where we were from and The Captain told him Australia. Big dude grinned and said “Hey, Guy Sebastian”, like he’s the only thing Australia has every produced of any worth. Captain Fantastic was not expecting this dude so he actually purchased the CDs to make him go away. He is not easily bamboozled like this so I was very surprised that he bought it. He only made that mistake once. We’ve never listened to whatever is on the CD, it was the equivalent of throwing a few bucks at him to be granted passage to continue on the boardwalk. The interesting observations started.
The smell of marijuana hung heavy in the air and no fucks were given by those openly smoking rolled joints on the path. Every second store front had a marijuana leaf on a sign stating “medicinal marijuana available here’ with staff dressed in green medical uniforms sporting the dope leaf like an emblem of health. On the right of us as we headed towards Santa Monica, dotted amongst the dope dealers, were stores selling tees with hilarious words printed on them, underwear with rude and funny declarations about the body parts contained within, smoke stores selling God knows what and the odd diner or food vendor. On the left, beach side, were market-esque stalls selling drawings, paintings and homemade jewellery and it felt very much like wandering through a small market with regular stalls. The artistic talent was astounding and then, every now and then, a stall trying to sell ‘art’ that looked like something your kid brings home from Kindergarten that you’re supposed to admire but is a mess of screaming colour all bleeding together and you think it is actually a piece of shit.
The market stalls gave way to a cluster of youth playing basketball on concrete courts with the beach as the backdrop. The men were of mixed race and college age; it was interesting to watch. Boy Wonder and I stopped to watch the skills of the youth. As he was watching he said, “black people are so much better at sport than white people; it’s in their genes.” Going by the skills displayed on the courts before us, I was inclined to agree. We continued walking and every few meters, someone tried to impress upon us, our need to purchase their CD. The Captain has been burned once and did not even enter into conversation with the pushy black men.
The market stalls continued until they ended suddenly at an enormous sea of homeless people. All clustered together, some of them sleeping, surrounded by everything they own, was an eye opener to the homeless situation. There were toilets at regular intervals along the beach so we were lulled into a false sense of security about restrooms, which would become a problem for us in the coming days and weeks. We wandered past muscle beach and it was empty. I tried to imagine the kind of tossers who would like to work out there.
We made it to Santa Monica and The Captain stated often how he would like to retire here. He is obviously planning on a future without me because I don’t share his desire to live here. It is noisy and full of people thrusting shit in my face like I’m on a beach in Thailand. We got our first taste of street performers in Santa Monica and we were impressed. The Santa Monica pier is fabulous and is the end of Route 66 so we took a gazillion photos here and marvelled at it; Boy Wonder’s fascination of Route 66 started with the movie Cars in his childhood. Miss Marvellous bought a snow globe because she has issues.
We ate a sandwich in a café with bread that was so thick that each slice was the thickness of four toast cut slices. It was too much and as usual, it was quantity of quality. Boy Wonder chose a drink which stated on the can would perk him up and immediately started feeling ill because of it (it’s a great imagination he has…I suspect the placebo affect had taken place). He didn’t like this café and I think it was because the bread was so thick and dry that he has to gulp the drink down to make the dry shit slide down his throat and that was more than likely why he was feeling ill. Either way, he blacklisted the café. I ordered a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel which only cost about US$3 so we were pleasantly surprised until it turned up as just a bagel with cream cheese, much to our dismay. The Captain queried this and was told that the stupid bitch who took the order didn’t hear smoke salmon (obviously a deaf stupid bitch) and advised that the smoke salmon bagel costs US$12 each. Holy fuck. Did they catch it and smoke it themselves? Next I’ll have to sell a kidney for a glass of orange juice.
We walked back to the hotel the way we came and the kids discovered a candy store called It’sugar, which really gave me the shits because of the dual use of the ‘s’ but I had to get over that because my offspring were intolerant of my grammar Nazi bullshit. Miss Marvellous discovered a row of shelves at the back of the store holding 'candy dick rings’ , 'giant cock pops’ and ‘dick lips’ sugar sweets; pointing and giggling at the sex shaped lollies because she is 18 and still a child in the mind. Boy Wonder had discovered Duff Beer and we saw boxes of ‘Skittles’ by the kilo! I suddenly wanted to get the hell out because my brain was screaming “Diabetic Coma!” at me at a thousand decibels. On the way out of the store I spied a box of cereal called “colon blow”. Curious, I took a closer look at the box and saw that it touted the cereal is incredibly high in fibre…all-righty then! Walking past Muscle Beach at the end of the boardwalk showed us a group of wankers who like to flex their muscles whilst a crowd gathers to watch them work out. I was not impressed by these tossers; they just confirmed their toss bag status to me. They should rename this section of beach ‘wanker beach’ so passers by get a real understanding of what happens there. Twats!
It got dark at around 4.30pm, which was something we needed to adjust to having come from an Australian summer where the sun sets at 8:30pm. The sunsets at Venice Beach were astoundingly beautiful. Miss Marvellous was clicking away like the tourist she was, which resulted in some gorgeous photos of pink skies and palm trees. The first dinner out (if you don’t count the 3:00am diner meal) was at a place called The Terrace. We ordered the pizza because we thought it would be a safe bet but we were so horrified by the disgusting flaccid shit-storm that we were served that we decided we should not tip these fuckers. They obviously know their food is shit because they have cheekily already worked the tip into the bill and it was about 18%, which is what you should pay for great service and great food, not the limp flavourless mediocrity served in this shit hole. This place was black-banned and was given the award of “Worst pizza EVER!” by our posse.
The Captain and I decided to walk to the supermarket so we could get stuff for breakfast or brunch because we don’t actually want to have three sit down meals a day. He told the kids we would be back in 40 minutes but he had no fucking idea because it was a forty minute walk one way. It was late and I was over it but we bought some wine so I thought I might be happy when we returned. I tried not to think about serial killers while we walked back in the dark. The Captain’s beer purchase was amazing; a 6 pack of Leffe for US$9.95. What the fuck? In Australia they cost around $6 per stubby. How wonderfully weird. There was a definite spring in The Captain’s step on the walk back home. The wine is okay but was a little on the sweet side…beggars can’t be choosers so I downed that shit anyway.
The shitty pizza gave me indigestion again and despite the preventive pill, the flaccid shit-storm churned in my stomach for hours and had me vomiting acid again in the middle of the night. My resentment of ‘The Terrace’ grew to the point where my mind referred to it as ‘The Terrorist’ because it blew up my guts. “Fuck my life” I thought miserably as I hugged the toilet bowl in the hotel bathroom while the rest of the family slept like the dead in the sweltering room beyond.
Doona
