dehydrated pussy

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-- MCMLI --

What the hell does DDoS mean, anyway? Oh: Distributed Denial of Service. This is what's happening to LiveJournal right now, and why this entry is posted on Blogger -- just as yesterday's entry about my Los Angeles trip was -- at the moment. My plan is to re-post them, back-dated, on LiveJournal once LiveJournal is all better. God knows when that'll be; this issue has evidently been going on for a minimum of three days now. I just didn't know about it until yesterday because I was traveling, and I very rarely post regular entries while out of town.

I certainly have mixed feelings about the fact that my Twitter digests have continued to post in the meantime. On the one hand, I'm glad they did. On the other hand, what the fuck? Why are those posting, but I can't post manually? Every once in a while I'll get my journal page to load, and even the update page to load, but I click on the "update" button -- which I have been doing over and over, compulsively -- and I just get an error page, usually after a drawn-out period of the page appearing to load. That status bar is the bane of my existence right now!

Does this shit ever happen on Blogger? I'd consider moving there permanently, except for the fact that its tools are so primitive compared to LiveJournal's (and it has seriously limited organizational options), plus the fact that I have nine and a half years of archives already on LiveJournal. What a pain in the ass. At the very least, this kind of thing does seem to be rare at LiveJournal; it just sucks big fat donkey balls that when it does happen every few years, it lasts for days. And actually I can't remember LiveJournal ever being down to this degree before, where I could not even post for several days straight.

The thing that irritates me most is that I'd prefer my regular readers at LiveJournal -- many of whom are not LiveJournal members -- be able to pay attention more to the Los Angeles post than just about anything else I post this week, but by the time LiveJournal is back to normal, that entry will be buried beneath newer ones. I could just re-post it as a latest entry, I suppose, except that it'll still be old news; it's what I had to say yesterday, not what I'll have to say tomorrow or the next day (or next week or whenever the fuck this will all get fixed). I don't know how many such readers -- although I do realize my readership, while often larger than I realize, is still pretty limited -- see such things as my Twitter, Facebook or Google+ accounts to get any indication that I have posts over on Blogger.

Then again, I just realized that since the Twitter digests are posting, at least there was a link to the Los Angeles post on Blogger posted to LiveJournal early this morning. So at least there's that. (I did try posting by email last night, and that didn't work. I'm a little irked that Twitter is getting special privileges here and I'm not! It's too bad I can't just call up Twitter and say, "Hey, could you post my entry for me?")

-- MCMLI --

On the Los Angeles front, the big news is that it looks like we've moved from Shobhit nearly having decided to move there to definitely having decided. The plan is now already in motion: last night, while we were on Skype, he booked his flight to return to Seattle with me after I visit him there the last weekend of August. That will be his official move away from New York. He's going to want me to bring extra suitcases with me for him to use on his way back. He's even thinking of shipping a box of books to Seattle through the mail.

Very soon thereafter, he'll take the car and drive down to L.A. Sometime in the interim, he will likely take another trip from New York to L.A. just to look for a place to live. And after moving there, he's already planning on flying back to New York in September just for a day to do acting work that involves all of two lines -- but will be worth the time and expense because it will make him finally eligible to join one of the actor unions. I can't remember now which one, AFTRA or SAG. I want to say AFTRA but I could be wrong. In any case, it's a booked job that he can't afford to slough off, but neither can he afford to wait any longer to move if the move is actually going to happen.

And it's already happening.

-- MCMLI --



-- MCMLI --

I had a slight scare yesterday, which in turn resulted in Shobhit getting very angry with me. The difference this time was that a) his anger was mostly actually justified; and b) it was not his normal, abrasive kind of angry, but more contemplative angry. I had to tell him there was nothing more that could be done before it appeared he might stop stewing about it.

The cats were out of water. I didn't even notice this until yesterday morning, even though I had gotten home Tuesday night -- when I really should have checked. But the cats didn't act at all strangely on Tuesday night. Still, being without water is pretty dangerous and it's not really excusable that I allowed this to happen. I know I checked their water bottle before leaving last week, and I know there was still water left in it -- I just don't remember how much, only that it was not completely full as it should have been -- and that I clearly immediately forgot about it. A cursory Google search indicates cats can survive several days without water before dying, but maybe only a couple of days without increasing probability of adverse health effects. So clearly they'll live, but they were still put in a potentially very dangerous situation.

The only reason I thought to check their water was because when I was brushing my teeth yesterday morning, Guru kept trying to get to the water in the bathroom sink. You may be wondering about Delan, in whose care the cats were left. Well, there are two sides to that one. First, you'd think he'd have noticed their water dish was empty on the times he filled their food bowl -- which he clearly did while I was gone. He used to have a dog of his own, after all, so it's not like he doesn't know how much pets need water. That said, I've always made sure the water was full in the past, and have never asked him to pay attention to the water, so it's relatively natural that he didn't look closely. (Although the water dish is right next to the food dish, but whatever.) This reminds me of when I shared a residence hall room with Gabe in college and he got slightly upset with me when his geckos died while he was away for a weekend -- in that case, though, he hadn't even asked me to look after them, so the animals completely slipped my mind.

In any event, I have no idea how long the cats were without water, but it couldn't have been too long, because they behaved perfectly normally on Tuesday night and Guru did not start the strange behavior until yesterday morning. I'll still have to make absolutely sure their water bottle is full every time I leave going forward, though.

Shobhit was seriously worried about the cats when I told him about this, which is reflective of his far greater level of worry over those animals than I have ever had -- even when he's in New York. I made a mistake which was an honest but stupid one; it's not something that's going to become a habit. By and large, the cats -- which I generally think I spoil even on my own, without Shobhit's far greater level of doting -- are still perfectly fine overall. I don't think this makes me a Bad Pet Owner or anything. It just means I did something incredibly stupid. Although it is a relief that nothing worse resulted from it.

-- MCMLI --


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Los Angeles

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Marina Del Rey:





Venice:





Catalina Island:





Hollywood / Santa Monica / Century City:





Sara: Roland thinks L.A. is a place for the brain-dead. He says, if you turned off the sprinklers, it would turn into a desert. But I think - I don't know, it's not what I expected. It's a place where they've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams. I've seen a lot of L.A. and I think it's also a place of secrets: secret houses, secret lives, secret pleasures. And no one is looking to the outside for verification that what they're doing is all right. So what do you say, Roland?

Roland: I still say it's a place for the brain-dead.

-- L.A. Story, 1991



Although I had been to L.A. proper twice before (1999 and 2009; this does not count my 1994 trip to my cousin Ben's wedding in La Puente as we never spent any time in the city itself), which had given me the impression of Los Angeles as a gargantuan shithole, this visit definitely put it into a new context for me, and from many angles: 1) It's now a potential home for Shobhit, much more likely now than before; 2) I now have fourteen visits to New York to give it comparison to the one other major American city that matches -- and even exceeds -- its iconic status worldwide; 3) I spent time in some surprisingly nice areas of the city: Marina Del Rey (actually unincorporated, but still surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles; the other side being the Pacific Ocean), Venice (actually part of L.A. proper), Santa Monica (actually its own city -- of nearly 90,000 -- bordering L.A.), Century City (actually part of L.A. proper), West Hollywood (actually its own city -- of over 34,000 -- surrounded on all sides by the city of L.A., just as is Beverly Hills), and Hollywood (which is a district of Los Angeles proper).

Hollywood itself didn't strike me as grimy as it did when I visited both in 2009 and 1999, though that could have to do with the fact that our time there was limited exclusively to the Kodak Theatre complex. We went there on Monday, and were only there long enough to tour the Kodak Theatre (which was fantastic and I totally recommend it, especially if you're a AAA member as their discount is 33%!) and then have lunch at the neighboring Hard Rock Café (which was shockingly delicious).

On the whole, the visit was very pleasant, and actually kind of worked to temper my loathing for L.A. The place is so gigantic, after all, that there are nice areas if you just know how to find them. Marina Del Rey turned out to be pretty nice, and I really loved Venice -- both its Historic Canal District and its Boardwalk. In my photo sets separated by area location (for the purposes of keeping the L.A.-specific photos in my historical Los Angeles trips gallery, I also have those photos duplicated into a single Los Angeles, July 2011 set, which excludes the Catalina Island photos), Venice ended up with by far the most pictures taken. I guess that's a pretty good indicator of what my favorite area was.

I still hate the idea of moving there, for two reasons that still remain significant to me: the car culture; and the monotonous weather. Of course, there's also the fact that I remain head-over-heels in love with Seattle and L.A. is so not Seattle. It's so not New York, either, though -- in many ways, it occurred to me, it's like the anti-New York. I get the feeling a lot of New Yorkers go there just to get away from the hustle and bustle of The City. L.A., even at nearly 4 million people, does not feel like capital-lettered The City, simply by virtue of its vast sprawl. (I mention frequently how Los Angeles has half the population of New York in 1.5 times the space. It has 27% the population density. It does have slightly higher density than Seattle though.) Even San Francisco feels much more like The City than L.A. does; indeed, both San Francisco and New York have regional colloquialisms referring to them as "The City" by people in surrounding areas, and L.A. does not.

So: everything in L.A. is far away from everything else and takes forever to get to. When I was walking around the canals in Venice, I found myself thinking it was so pretty there that I could probably learn to live in one of those, probably insanely expensive homes. Should Shobhit move to L.A., though -- and it's looking increasingly likely he will, and I mean, by the end of August -- he'll never live in Venice, as it's too far from where all his auditions would be. He's thinking West Hollywood, which is the most central to all places with auditions going on: people who know who he's spoken to say it takes roughly 45 minutes from there to everywhere he'd need to be. Were he to live in, say, Burbank, then he'd be really close to the auditions there -- but over an hour away from all the other places. Given that West Hollywood is the gay area (41% gay or bisexual men, apparently -- that's a higher proportion than San Francisco), Shobhit's thrilled with it being the most ideal place for him to be.

It seems a ton of people don't even realize Los Angeles actually has a subway/metro rail system (I informed Jennifer this morning), nearly all of which branches out from downtown. There are five subway lines, which, although clearly better than, say, Seattle, is pretty pathetic for a city the size of L.A., both in terms of population and geography. Also, much like what happens in Seattle with most of its bus lines, in many cases you can't get from one area to another without having to go downtown first, even though going downtown means going rather far out of your way.

Thus: mass transit in Los Angeles is tedious at best and awful at worst. If I ever had to move there, I'd still be pretty hell bent on proving it's possible to live without a car (especially when your partner has one!), but it would still take a long time to get anywhere -- which is the case even in cars. New York is known for being teeming with people; L.A. is teeming with cars -- on the side streets, on the countless interstates (at all times of the day!), everywhere. Although I will admit that I drove the rental car for the first time yesterday and I did find it less stressful than when I had to drive in Manhattan. And I even drove on the "Carmageddon" 405.

These aren't going to be concerns of Shobhit's. As of yesterday he was talking about flying back to Seattle with me after my visit to New York late next month -- which is already booked -- and then driving the car down to L.A. This will leave me with having to either use the bus for my biweekly grocery shopping (I'd rather not, when I average 3-4 bags each time anymore, and, yes, I'd have to transfer downtown!) or renting a Zipcar every time (more expensive but fairly easily done).

And in spite of my opening up slightly more to L.A. after this visit, there's still the fact that I only recently become open to the idea of moving to New York. I'd never say it's impossible, but my openness to the idea of leaving Seattle diminished significantly once Shobhit living in L.A. became likely. That said, the city being in my same time zone will make visits much easier, as will the fact that the flights are half as long (although door to door is still a minimum 6-hour affair, what with transit to/from the airport and security lines, etc). Shobhit and I were dreaming of a scenario in which he was making enough money acting in L.A. to pay for me to visit every single weekend, which honestly I do think I could live with. I couldn't do that in New York, but L.A. I could -- especially if it meant I didn't have to leave Seattle, which I really, really don't want to do.

But I truly believe Shobhit has real potential in L.A. Between movies, theatre and TV, television is the only medium notably making use of diverse actors. And it was certainly promising that this ActorMarathon thing landed him two meetings and an audition yesterday -- I drove the rental car back myself and he bused back to the airport after his second meeting. I think his greatest potential is as a character actor, not likely making millions per project but getting steady enough work to make a decent living. The likelihood of his getting to that point, at the very least becoming established as an actor, is much greater in L.A. And once that happens, he's likely to be visiting New York -- always his first love among cities in the U.S. -- regularly anyway. He may even manage to break into acting in L.A. and then later move back to New York.

This is all conjecture, I know. And Shobhit and I both know that his competition will be much fiercer in L.A. But that doesn't change the comparative potential he has there, and I really believe in him. And if it would be to his advantage to move there -- and I suspect it would -- then he should do it.

Click on the images to be taken to the area-location-specific photo sets on Flickr.
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