A · Tale · of · Two · Settees

It's quite astounding where a ready supply of cheap gasoline and a lengthy rolled-out carpet of paved road will get you. I still can't quite get over all the places I've been today nor my ability to adapt to my surroundings. All within a single county line, of course. And to think it should all end with me discovering a cling-wrapped glass of white wine sitting in the refrigerator, waiting for me. Ah, now that's service

Events of the day (New Year's Eve):

1. Breakfast in my apartment: French toast (two pieces of)
2. A drive up to Mt. Baldy with my significant other. This included a trip up a frightening gondola to watch people ski and snowboard and get carted off the mountain with broken limbs. A chance also to grasp an unfamiliar substance: snow.
3. Down the hill, a dead gray squirrel is spotted
4. Back home again
5. Off to Los Angeles proper
6. Koreatown: a place that Koreans own and other people inhabit, apparently. Kids firing bottle rockets outside their apartments towards the occasional passing car. Very charming indeed.
7. Northridge: the cite of my birth, and of a local earthquake, in which nothing worth noting generally occurs, and in which people nevertheless still settle. No, I take that back. Once in 1984, or thereabouts, while my father and I were working on building a model aircraft carrier, the lights went out. It turned out that a bunch of drunk kids in a truck knocked over a light pole and somehow caused the electricity for the entire neighborhood to go out. The darkness convinced me that the end of the world was near. Since then, I have been convinced of the world's demise a number of times, though each time, the experience becomes less harrowing.
8. Friend's apartment: nothing remarkable about that.
9. Sunset Junction: Good Luck Bar. This is where hipsters hang out. Iggy Pop, REM, and a number of other choice bands are also played loudly over the speakers before the New Year's countdown
10. Friend's apartment again
11. Back towards home, passing Pasadena all lit up like the Blitz and ready for the Rose Parade. Next came the vast dead space of Irwindale, home of one of the Miller Brewerys (it's only noteworthy landmark, unless one is counting the enormous excavation ditches in the area)

I don't know... I suppose that's not a lot. I still didn't see the ocean or the desert, if one is going to be nitpicking. But snow, bottle rockets, nothing, nothing, hipsters, and bright midnight lights still leave me impressed.

Oh... and finally, I should note that I saw Wanted, featuring James McAvoy, who I'm really quite convinced could become the next Killian Murphey, which is as much to say that he'll end up becoming the next Ewan McGregor, which is somewhat like being the next Malcolm McDowell, but not quite, since of the named group McGregor and McAvoy have thus far been featured in greatest number of decent pictures, while Murphey and McDowell showed great promise and never really amounted to much.

One thing that is both incidental and noteworthy (try that one on for size) is the way each of these actors will typically get hit in the face, causing blood to flow from the mouth. Rather than get bent out of shape because of this, each of these actors actually seems to enjoy the sensation of blood flowing from the mouth, because they always grin afterwords.

All I'm saying is that this seems to be a common running theme among makeup artists. If the actor is a pasty white guy, make sure that he's seen at least once with bleeding gums. What is to be made of this? Is it a good look? Perhaps I, too, being blindingly white, should invite someone to punch me in the mouth to improve my features.

Of course, as with everything, it is possible to take things too far.