Many people would consider this an exciting, possibly spiritual, experience. The sun, the surf, the hippies on Height Ashbury. The pneumatic lifeguard babes. I however am travelling on business, to Vertucon corporate headquarters in San Jose, and my hideously delayed flight via the Black Hole of Atlanta dumps me at scenic Norman J Mineta International Airport after 10pm local, which is about as mundane an environment as it is possible to imagine without actually being an accountant.
No-one is wearing a bikini or waxing a surfboard. And my bag is still in Atlanta.
A very nice girl called Dawn checks me in at my hotel. I consider asking her to wax my board, but it’s gone 2am according to my bodyclock, and I’m feeling too rumpled to turn on my undeniable charisma. She tells me how much she loves my accent, as it reminds her of Hugh Grant. “Shame he’s gay” she adds, hermetically sealed on Planet Cretin. I take my frozen smile off to bed.
A subtle combination of threats, tears, phantom pregnancies and hysterical allegations of racial discrimination deter all but the most determined managers from winkling me out from under my cubicular rock in NC. Yet every now and then I am forced by mocking Fate to board some bankrupt’s rattling death-trap and suffer alongside hundreds of business school zombies, all crackling with static from their bry-nylon suits, shirt cuffs and tails trailing like circus chimps, bellowing nonsense into their cell phones. I feel like the Flying Dutchman condemned to round the Cape for eternity with a crew of financial advisors from Solihull.
Now they haunt my dreams, striding with entirely unwonted confidence through the departure lounges of the world towards the meetings and deliverables that hedge their straitened horizons round, while yawning at their feet are the unmarked graves to which they will go unwept, unhonored, and unsung. They call to me to join them, but I resist, resist…
At this point, Dawn of the Brain Dead calls me from Reception to tell me that my bag has arrived at the hotel. It is four in the morning. “Have a nice day!” she adds.
California. “Not far from Heaven” the old ads told us. Not far enough.
Some typical Californians, yesterday. In accordance with local dress codes, the girls’ tops are cantilevered to resist quakes of up to 8.1 on the Richter Scale. Although of course there’s a lot of swaying.
8 comments:
Hugh Grant--is 'e that twitching British twit whose body language thermostat got stuck on 'permanently nervous'?
California hasn't always been a cultural wasteland, y'know. Before the hippies, some of the finest European intellectuals were working on their tans in Cali. Except for Theodor W. Adorno and Thomas Mann, who could never relinquish their somber suits.
Also, LA is the birthplace of one raging drunk by the name of Charles Bukowski. In the screen version of his pitiable life ('Barfly'), he's played by Mickey Rourke. The chubby character in 'Sideways' quotes a few lines from Bukowski--but they're as dispiriting as their author.
--Desargues
Also, 'Dawn' sounds like she's the daughter of some of those hippies in your pic. Did you ask her if she's got a sister called Chablis? Or maybe Sunshine?
Hi Des - yes, that's the one. Very annoying character, but unusually for a Brit not at all gay, as Divine Brown could tell us. And did.
As for Dawn's sister, I suspect that there's a Rosey out there somewhere, if only because hippies are notoriously clueless about names. I give you Pippin, Moonchild and Galadriel, exampli gratis...
wait ur sayign shes a cretin cuase she isnt acuratly infromed uboat huhg grannt?
i questoin ur asumptions dude.
Hi 3H - good point, well made. But I think waking me up at 4am put the tin hat on the matter so far as I was concerned. Perhaps she has Hugh Grant mixed up with Rupert Everett. I must remember to put her straight if I ever catch her sleeping.
I think Dawn's a scream. Her sister over here would be called Chardonnay. As for Californian wasteland how about poor old Scott Fitzgerald?
Hi Pi - Old Scotty woulda run screaming from San Jose, trust me. For a start, it's hard to get a drink.
The lifeguard in the middle could do with some cantilevering too. Must be a B-cup at least. Too much for Rupert Everett, I'm sure.
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