Walk a Mile in my Shoes - Part Deux

So, I haven't had any new, profound L.A. experiences to chronicle of late. But what I can do, is revisit a topic from before, with a deeper understanding of the dynamics in play. I started exercise walking around January or so (I've lost over 20 lbs. I might add!) Ordinarily, I take the same route, heading West down Santa Monica Blvd. towards Beverly Hills, usually culminating in my reaching the border. So, you walk it 3-4 times a week for 6-7 months, you pick up a few things about humanity, and specifically, West Hollywood humanity. I've grown comfortable with this route. I have specific landmarks I can use that are good points of accoplishment. Plus, if I go east on Santa Monica, it gets dingy and more "wrong-side-of-the-tracks-y." And, it's always interesting.
A half mile in, I pass Fairfax Ave. This is basically the line of separation between Russian W. Hollywood, and predominantly gay W. Hollywood. Cross that street and all of a sudden, there's an abundance of clearly gay establishments. (this is where the Gay Pride parade runs, for example). Gay gyms. Gay bars, like "Trunks." Gay clothing stores, where I'm inundated with things like, cut male torso mannequins, advertising the skimpiest of male thongs and such. And there's also a lot of restaurants featuring outdoor, patio seating, that aren't necessarily gay, per se, but are dominated by a gay crowd. I'm not passing judgement, it's simply what is. So, one thing I find somewhat hilarious is when I see obvious tourists from middle America, knee deep in the festivities. I have to ask myself the motivation, and it boils down to, either some Nebraskan couple's wanting to "take a walk on the wild side," or, an overall cluelessness as to what's going on around them. I suppose it's conceivable that someone heard that the chicken sandwich at some otherwise forgettable restaurant is stellar, but I doubt that's the norm. Regardless, both scenarios make me chuckle. Maybe it's just me, but seeing some good old boy from the midwest, baseball cap in effect, whooping it up with his girlfriend at one of these bars just kills me.
I am prone to people watching during my walk. There's a lot of characters to observe, as well as a lot of eye candy. I mean, this IS Hollywood. But when the lights go down, things get a little funny. See, there's also a lot of queens in W. Hollywood. And after sunset, one's gotta be really careful. There's a legitimate danger of seeing someone approaching in the distance, thinking, "she looks nice," only to notice, (in my best Austin Powers voice), "that's a man, baby!" That's never fun. You can at least begin to see how Eddie Murphy got in trouble a few years back.
Closer to Beverly Hills, there's a few upscale restaurants like Dan Tana's, a steakhouse I see on TMZ a lot. Lots of beautiful people, valet parking and velvet ropes. Lots of movers and shakers, and one sweaty walker shouting Public Enemy lyrics from under his headphones. Anyway, I'm walking by recently, and I see these three young dandies putzing around on the curb, waiting for daddy to pull up in the Range Rover. Alls I could think of, as I saw these three Brody Jenner looking types was, "it's just a matter of time before these kids finish their metamorphasis into full-blown, Hollywood p*cks, living their entitled lives to the fullest, and making everyone around them miserable." Terrible. Terrible that that's how I feel, and terrible because it's probably true.
I do enjoy my walks though. Immensely. I'm always a fan of observing the human condition, good, bad, interesting, ALWAYS hilarious. It's completely just as reasonable for any of the lot I've described to have a chuckle at my disposal over there dinner. "Who's this putz walking up the street doing air-turntables with his hands? He thinks he's all that with his Hendrix t-shirt with the cut-off sleves."

"Ooh my arm...

...I think it's broken!" Anyone who's ever seen "Caddyshack," surely recognizes those words as the handy work of Rodney Dangerfield as "Al Czervik." Getting thrashed by Judge Smails and Dr. Beeper in their $40,000 golf game, Rodney tries to parlay a benign tap on his arm by a golf ball into a full-blown fracture, to try and welch out of the bet. Thinking on his feet, he frantically starts waving his arm all around to "prove" that it's broken.

Why this cinematic trip down memory lane? Because this week, young Orville has been doing his best Czervik around the house. O's hooves have been getting long, so we've set out on the WEEKS long process of trimming them. You can literally only do one snip at a time. So the other day, Bubba takes her first stab at hoof #1, the front left hoof. She's able to get a section maybe just short of a centimeter. Seemed fine enough, until a minute later, we see blood coming out. Upon closer inspection, we've found that despite appearances, the actual flesh of the hoof goes WELL into the nail, right up to the edge.

We spent a good hour trying to clean him, and bandage him up. I don't know if you know this, but it's deceptively hard to keep a pig still long enough for a cut to clot. Food is the key to pretty much everything, so, while Orville remained completely unflustered, he nonetheless was treated to a bonzanza of snacks, while we tried to keep him immobile. We'd stuff his mouth full of tomato while we tried to clean and bandage his hoof.

Well, Orville's no fool. He managed to put 2 and 2 together in his pig mind overnight. Come the next day, we wake up and Orville's gimping around like he's been shot. Just like Rodney. "Ooh my hoof! I think it's broken!" Just to be an even better showman, he threw in this wrinkle. Bubba recently taught him to shake hands. It's really precious actually. He'll raise his front left hoof (the one we happened to hurt), and hold it as long as possible. So now, to play up the pity, (because pity = snacks), Orville has been gimping across the room, and "desperately" raising his hoof as an offering of gratitude towards his saviors. He does it with the desperation of Willem Dafoe in "Platoon," having just been shot by his own men, and being left for dead. We load him up with 'mato's or carrots for our baby boy. He gets his grub on, then skips back to his bed or the couch in full stride. Then, his gimp "miraculously" appears about 30 minutes later, when he's hungry again. Genius.

Picture Us Coolin' Out on the Fourth of July...

...and if you heard we was celebratin', that's a worldwide lie.

Actually it's not. That's just a little Public Enemy reference. I couldn't think of anything else to reference July 4th with. Anyway, Bubba and I had an interesting, fun Independence Day. We were slated to hang with Big Saul, and old friend of Bubba's, fresh back in town. His apartment complex was having a pool party/bbq jam, so we figured we'd head on up and cook up some grub. As such, I headed on out to the Whole Foods to pick up some eats. Whilst roaming the aisles amongst the young and beautiful set, who do I see at the butcher next to me but Zach Braff. Now, relatively speaking, he's no big deal to me. I don't watch "Scrubs," but, he's from like several doors down from me back in the old South Orange. A little after my time, but I remember his brother from around the way. Given our bond of representing the 07079, I toyed with saying something to him. I don't really like bothering celebs, nor do I care for stroking this ego. I was like, "back in the day he would've been a little rug rat to me, some annoying little kid in the 'hood. Now I'm gonna go kiss his ass? Not bloody likely." So I opted against it.

Armed with the choice vittles, Bubba and I made our way towards Saul's new pad, up in the Hollywood Hills. Believe it or not, this represented our first actual Hollywood Hills party. I don't really party to much these days, and when I do, I no longer party like it's 1999. I party like it's 2008, and I'm 37 years old.

We wind our way up the hills, and come upon the party in full swing. Nothing but young, hip cats, having a good old time out by the pool. I half expected it to play out like a scene out of "Boogie Nights," but at no point in time did I see a porn star having sex in the yard with a perfect stranger in front of her husband. That not withstanding, I have to say, the vibe was pretty chill. Everyone there seemed to be peripherally related to the biz in one way or another, and we met some pretty nice people.

Come sundown, folks made there way up to the rooftop terrace to take in the fireworks. At this point, a GLARING difference between New York and L.A. revealed itself. Namely, they just don't do fireworks like Nueva York. They just don't. We were treated to a panorama of so-so presentations, spanning probably 25 miles worth of L.A. Each one, even the downtown show, or the ones I believe were coming from the L.A. Colliseum, seemed small-time to me. You have to understand, I used to the New York stylie, 30 shells going off at once, smell the smoke all up in your face, variety show. Across the board, I couldn't even tell when these shows were over, they were so, eh.

When the dust settled, we ambled back to the main area. What do we see but a bunch of folks playing volleyball in the pool. Forget "Boogie Nights," this was now playing out like straight out of "Three's Company." I half expected Mr. Roper to come break up all the "hanky panky," and force us to take off for the Regal Beagle for a nightcap with Jack, Chrissy, Janet and Larry. Come the end of the night, a quality time was had by all. Bellies were full, skins were tanned, and faith in America was at least temporarily renewed.