Struggle Gets Oriented

I recently spent ten minutes explaining to a café waitress in the Shanghai Pudong airport the concept of an iced coffee. Really? REALLY? Has NO one ever made that request before in this entire NATION? Is that possible that in a country that includes all four seasons, no one, craving both a  refreshing cooling experience and life’s best and most legal drug, has asked politely to combine coffee and ice in order to create a more perfect union? Or is it, as I suspect, that people have asked, oh, how they’ve asked, begged, cried even, in all the languages of ever spoken from Babel and beyond, and the People’s Republic just doesn’t care. I bet you a dollar (that’s 6.8 RNB, by the way) that Mateo Ricci  and Marco Polo were both like, Por Favore, café con ghiaccio, por el amore de dio! The British probably pleaded, the Dutch demanded, the French sneered, the Spaniards gesticulated, but China has stood firm. Coffee with ice in it? That’s just crazy talk. White devil juice. None of that for desendents of Khan.

So if you ever find yourself in the Shanghai Pudong Airport I would advise you to get some coffee beforehand. Not only will doing so aid you in avoiding an awkward interpretive dance enacting the term "ice", but you will have something to console you as you wait in the inumberable lines that seperate you, the traveler, from your gate. Or, like me, you will find yourself with a 10 dollar paper cup filled with hot coffee and rapidly melting ice while laughing Chinese people eagerly watch you to make sure you are (finally) happy. In such a case, it's best to just fake it, reguardless of how disgusting the drink is. Trust me on that one.

And so, horrible cup of coffee like substance in my hand, I departed from Shanghai and, 14 hours later, arrived in a much stranger and more strugglesome place (is such a thing possible? Oh, wait for it, folks!). That's right, people. I went to Los Angeles.

Now, I firmly believe there are people out there who love and delight in Los Angeles. I believe there are people who enjoy equestrian paintings and crocs and t-shirt's that say "Your Boyfriend Bought Me This Shirt" and the music of Justin Bieber. I believe these things are real and out there and that there are people who treasure them, and are grateful for their existence. I even believe that there are people who when told: Death is not an option and are placed in front of the Twilight Saga DON'T immediately scream "Death is ALWAYS an option!" and jump out the nearest window. I am just not among them.

I think I've made my feelings about Los Angeles pretty clear in the past, but just for all those who have joined us late in the game, I point you to the nearest Woody Allen film. Well, that's not quite fair. After all, Los Angeles has truely excellent food, and the weather is really nice. And if there is any other good quality... I personally have yet to find it. But Strugglemano lives there, and as I wasn't wild about extending my trip across the Pacific ocean to include a cross-country flight, I dragged my bags, still dusty from the sand blowing off the Gobi desert, into my brother's car and, scowling in the sunshine like the East Coaster I am, observed the most common Los Angeles view there is, that is, the one framed by a car window.

The thing about flying from China to the West Coast is that you gain 15 hours of time, so in many cases you find yourself arriving about an hour before you left the day before. For some people this might have seemed like a perfect opportunty to hit the sights and check out the museums. but having spent the last 5 months of my life doing exactly that, I was honestly eager for some downtime, and if you can't count on the United States to find places to stuff your face, where the hell can you? So, in deferance to my wishes, Strugglemano set out to find me the best of the best of the worst possible foods for you. And here is something I noticed on our gastronomic journy, and I have to say, maybe it's our arrogance, or our ignorance, but when it comes to dining we in the US sometimes act like we are inventing the wheel. We are always "discovering" things like cupcakes or couscous or chicken and then carrying on like no one has ever heard of this item before. This year seems to be the year of bacon and whiskey, despite the fact that the Chinese consider it to be the year of the tiger. Sorry, China, tiger meat is just too expensive these days, though apparently whale is just fine...

So in keeping with these exciting new food discoveries, Strugglemano and I made it our mission in my first 24 hours back on US soil to consume them both in large quantities. Starting with the bacon-maple donut from the Nickel Diner in downtown LA ( I know it sounds disgusting, but I have to tell you, it was glorious, every articlogging bite of it) and moving on to murkey but delicious burbon Derbies at the speak-easy style Edison (has to be one of the coolest bars I've seen in a while, it's not every day you get to sip bootleg gin surrounded by silent movies and turn-of-the-century machinery). We ended the day stuffing our faces at Animal, a resturant specializing in little plates of delectably prepared meats. I guess America has found meat this year as well. Thank goodness, too, it coincides with our recent discovery of fire.

I will say this much for Los Angeles, when I walked into a coffee shop, be it the painfully hip Intellegetnsia or the bubble tea house in a mall complex in the San Gabriel valley, they knew what I wanted when I asked for iced coffee. It's almost a shame, really, I was getting really good at miming.

Struggle in LaLa Land

So, contrary to my deeply held belief system, it turns out the Los Angeles really does exist. I know! I too was floored! It's not just a well kept secret, it's out there! It's real! Well, sort of real. Kind of real. Diet-Real. But kind of sort of maybe possibly real, none the less. And it's prrrrreeeettttyyy. So that's me proven wrong, at least on that one count. A rarity, to be sure, so note it down.

However, what I was NOT proven wrong about was my equally deeply held belief that LA, despite it's bright and shiny exterior, is a huge struggle. For example, people say it's a city. I'm sure they even believe it to be a city. In their sweet, dumb, hemp covered California hearts this delusion comforts them at night as they stare through the haze of smog and pot smoke at the ozone burning up through the atmosphere at sunset. As they gaze upon the sprawling monster of a city, hidden by peaks and valley and gang territories it looks like a game of shoots and ladders, all of the highways and streets bisecting the mountain ranges. But this, my friends, this is not a city, no, no indeed. This is just an obese suburb that wont stop eating. Everyone in LA asked me when I was coming out there to stay, and all I could think was, really, you actually want more people to come out here? So that the traffic can get even worse? Because that's something they aren't lying about, the traffic. It's awful. That's a struggle right there. Millions of people means millions of cars in a "city" where without a car you might as well never leave the house for all the places you can get to. I have never walked less in a city. I honestly can say that my best workout was wandering around the LACMA Art Museum. Plus I had to stretch my neck a lot, thinking all those deeply important and profound thoughts about art. So at least I had that.

Now, I can honestly say that most people in LA actually were quite beautiful, though if you're coming from not-Yale the bar is set pretty damn low. LA has a way of making you feel fat and pasty regardless of your actual level of athleticism and skin tone. My brother, who was a saint and drove me all around the city, took me to Barney's near Rodeo Drive and as I marveled at the 100 dollar plain white t-shirts and 600 dollar sweaters that looked like they had been the bedding for a community of homeless men for more then a year, I realized that though my weight and appearance hadn't changed the moment I walked in the store, my perception of myself had. Dramatically. I hated everything I was wearing, I realized my hair was better suited to one of the witches from Roman Polanski's Macbeth and I never wanted to eat again if it meant I could lose three sizes. Then I got a frantic text from my brother who alerted me to the fact that Kayne West was in the building. I charged up the stairs, thinking, well at least this is some cardio, and hid behind a display to spy at Kanye as he flipped through racks of horrendously expensive clothing and his entourage following from a discreet distance. As I crouched lower behind a Marc Jacobs mannequin all I could think was, what the hell am I doing? I'm hiding from sunglasses-display-model Kanye West in a Barney's in Beverly Hills. I should be doing my homework right now. I should be thinking about Brecht. Instead I'm thinking about just how odd looking this person is and hoping his Entourage doesn't throw my ass out of Barney's.

And that's the thing about LA. Everyone wants to be famous, and everyone wants to be friends with someone famous or see someone famous. People collect brushes with celebrity like trading cards, stories to trot out to underline just how LA they are, how cosmopolitan, how exciting and excellent it is to live in a non-city removed from all normal weather patterns and thought processes. And it may be all those things. Certainly lots of people absolutely adore living there, and if you want to make movies, or money, or a combination of the two, it's the place to be. It's filled with fit smiling well dressed people and beaches. I mean, hell, it's literally called the city of angels, right? Heavenly as it might be, I couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief as I landed in New York and was once again a part of a cold, rushed struggle for my train back to New Haven. Dark, gloomy, crowded and pasty as it might be, with a large coffee and a bagel in hand, that was a struggle I could get behind.

Song of the weekend? Awesome French Pop Princess Yelle. Thanks Alex! See her super cute video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsrN3qxX2Yw

Struggle in Transit

Though not-Yale is many things, I will be the first to admit that it is not an easygoing, particularly pleasant or relaxed place. So in my final year of college I made the executive decision, aided my recently converted older brother who now worships all the Church of Our Lady of Los Angeles, to take a weekend on the other side of the country. Now, a person with my level of bitterness and general hateration for the universe is not general the person you would think about taking a weekend getaway to sunny Los Angeles, home of movie stars, pinkberry, thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants and Debordian spectacle all around. But my older brother, Alex, lives here, and works in Hollywood and wanted me to see it, and to be fair, not-Yale doesn't offer too many diversions this time of year, so with my sunglasses on my head and my most expensive jeans I headed off to LA.

Now, when I say headed off to LA I'm actually using a euphemism for "Took a cab from not-Yale to the not-New Haven train station, Took Metro North 2 hours to Grand Central Station, Took another cab from Grand Central Station to Penn Station through cross town traffic, Took New Jersey Transit from New York to Newark (possibly unwittingly deceiving a kind Latin American man on the way) and Took the Newark Airport Train to terminal C and waited for 3 and half hours to board a plane". You know, that common old saying. Upon my arrival in the Newark Airport I was informed by the nice blinking screen featuring departures that my plane would be an hour late. Lovely. So I wandered about the lovely sterile Newark Airport observing roving packs of cheerleaders and Midwesterners gawk and buy New York themed products. Amazing, given that we were in NEW JERSEY. But who am I to judge. I purchased David Sederis' new book and seated myself at what seemed like a fairly decent restaurant. Any by fairly decent I mean it served alcohol. Sure, it was 4:30 in the afternoon, but as my friend Cory assured me via text, it's got to be 5 somewhere.

Now, maybe it was the canned air in the airport, or my lack of hydration through the day, or the stress of all the traveling or maybe even it was my bad habit of working out every day, but two glasses of wine coupled with a salad left me fairly trashed. I looked up from Sederis' hilarious description of his attempts to quit smoking to see several DEEPLY southern ladies drunkenly talking about "Paaaris" and "biiistros" and "Well, I just try and eat at the biiig places and see what looks good, I aaalways have goood chicken when I go there" and could barely keep myself together. Did I mention these ladies were, like, a table away.

And it was this wine haze that made the hours I spent waiting to board the plan and then the HOURS spent on the plane waiting to take off bearable. As I finally landed in LA it was 12:30 at night, so 3:30am my time, it was cold, it was windy, and my wine buzz had vanished along with my good humor and attempts to be positive and laid-back, as I felt befitted a journey to the west. So I've started out super well, here in beautiful California. Wish me luck for the rest of it, it's already going so very well.