Sick of sitting around the house, abandoned by friends who are "in school" or "working" or "leading respectable lives" and globetrotting parents, I decided if the mountain would not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain, and headed to LA to visit those who had abandoned me. I would be making three stops: Los Angles, UCLA, and Pomona College in five days.
Day 1
It was with great regret that I left my beloved 1991 Volvo station wagon behind. My father put his foot down and was adamant that in order to drive 6 hour stretches, it was imperative that I have working headlights and be able to drive over 70 miles per hour without the aid of a steep downhill or a strong tailwind. Parents can be so controlling. So I set off in his car instead, stocked heavily with snacks and water bottles. The drive to LA is long, but for the most part very pretty. Rolling hills stretch skyward on either side of long stretches of highway and there was very little traffic. It wasn't until I merged onto I-5 that I realized why this drive can be a bit tedious. For almost 200 hundred miles, everything is flat and smells strongly of poop, grace à Cow-shwitz, the enormous feed lots that supply beef to (by the smell of it) the entire world. Driving past cows shoulder to shoulder (do cows have shoulders?) as far as the eye can see with little to no shelter is a sobering reminder of the flawed food industry we would rather not think about. Rant over.
Regardless, I made great time on 5, silently thanking my father for forcing his car upon me, and after driving through a surprisingly snowy Grapevine, I found myself in Los Angeles, about to reach my first stop. I was visiting a family friend my mother has known since junior high. Over the years, Robin has become a second mother to me, and I try to come down and visit her a couple times a year. I got to her house around 7, we had a quiet dinner, watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and went to bed.
Day 2
Robin works as a prop stylist on photoshoots for print ads and magazines, and she happened to have a job the next day, which she graciously allowed me to sit in on. We went to the photographer's studio, where they would be shooting the spring drink collections for a popular chain of coffee shops in Los Angeles. A staggering amount of work went into creating four different pictures, and Robin, the food stylist, the photographer, and his two assistants moved around in a flurry of artistic activity while I desperately tried to stay out of everyone's way with mixed success. As Robin, all five feet and 90 pounds of her, floated gracefully around the studio adjusting slices of fruit, I clomped around behind her like a hillbilly experiencing city livin' for the first time. They discussed lighting and the arrangement of the pomegranate seeds strewn around the table, while I nibbled a donut and tried not to somehow destroy everything they were working on. Once, while Robin and the representative from the coffee company were picking which of six identical glasses to put the drink into, I made the mistake of weighing in. "This one seems summery," I ventured. They both looked at me as though I had set fire to the table. "Its insulated" the rep said, looking at me as though I had just told her with great fervor that I enjoy the taste of human flesh. I decided everyone seemed to like it better when I just lurked over their shoulders, and vowed to do nothing but that for the rest of my time on set.
Minus the cup debacle, everyone could not have been more friendly, and seemed amused by how fascinated I was by everything, which to them was perfectly ordinary. I gushed over every new photo taken, even the ones that everyone else agreed were terrible, and I oohed and aahed over every new arrangement of peach slices or leaves or some combination of the two. At the end of the day, everyone thanked me profusely for "all my help," the grownup equivalent I suppose of giving me a sticker for being "such a trooper." Nevertheless, I walked away feeling very accomplished
Day 3
I left Robin's and went to see two of my good guy friends from high school, Brett and Luc, huge fratstars at UCLA. We passed a lovely afternoon together watching Sports Center and (for about three minutes before I put the kibosh on it) a very inspirational film about an interesting quid pro quo agreement established between the mother of a bully and his victim from the fraternity's online porn account. Then we parted ways so I could go to dinner with the one and only Stef "Koi Tillywater" Singer, Parker, and Goodman. We had a wonderful dinner together, though unfortunately my schemes to get them to come out afterwords to the bars were squelched by the working world. After dinner, Brett and Luc came to get me and we headed out to the bars in Westwood, forming the prelude of my horrific morning the next day.
Let me begin my account of the bars by issuing a formal retraction of the snide comments I've made about people who go to UCLA. I have made assumptions that they are twatty, and for that I am ashamed (also, sorry to Brett and Luc that I have been making these comments, they obviously did not apply to you). There came a point in the night when Brett was busy macking on assorted sorostitutes and Luc was called away to deal with some unforseen (but actually very forseen)circumstances, and I was left partially my own devices at a crowded bar in which I knew virtually no one. This could have spelled disaster, if not for the aggressive friendliness of my fellow revelers . I felt like an infant in some sort of experiment in collective living, constantly babysat by an intricate revolving door of conversationalists. After a while I was feeling like a true Bruin. Whenever anyone looked at me quizzically, I played my trump card: "I went to high school with Brett and Luc" and they would nod knowingly. So consider this my formal apology, UCLAians. You are not twats, far from it in fact. And that, is high praise indeed.
At the end of the night, Brett and I went home and fell asleep watching ESPN. A fitting end to a fratty day.
Day 4
I woke up several times during the night in a panic over where I was. When I remembered I was in a fraternity house at UCLA I briefly panicked again, before remembering this was exactly the plan. In the morning, I blissfully experienced that half hour period where you imagine that you have escaped your hangover just before it hits your like a freight train and you wish you were dead. The fraternity was having burgers for lunch. Brett had two burgers. I had one fry and vomited. Luc arrived sometime during this fiasco and he and Brett sat on the couch hashing out the details of the night before while I sat rigidly, clutching my head, where my brain was apparently trying to claw its way out. Finally I decided to just gut it out and make the forty five minute drive to Pomona. I bid farewell to the boys, (Brett helpfully cautioned me not to get pulled over because "you'd probably still get a DUI") and shakily got in the car. About a block away from UCLA, I vomited into my hand at a red light, casually tossed it out the window and solidly refused to make eye contact with any other drivers. Classy to a fault.
The rest of the drive passed uneventfully, and within about an hour I arrived at Pomona, greeted by Erin who rightfully assumed I would be driving around aimlessly, hopelessly lost, and was waiting to lead me to parking. Pomona has got to be the most idyllic campus I have ever laid eyes on. The weather is beautiful (60 and sunny for my entire visit), the campus is gorgeous (if only about 500 square feet), the dining hall looks like Hogwarts, and the school serves you free alcohol. The only downside: the disturbing amount of gingers....Seriously, its like there's a tractor beam somewhere on campus. While the twins were in class, I slept off the rest of my hangover, and awoke somewhat ready for the debauchery ahead of me. We started the night off wondering whether we should drink at dinner. I was solidly in the "against" camp, but was outvoted, and being the slave to peer pressure that I am, dutifully mixed vodka into my Fanta (remember what I was saying about being classy? I wasn't lying). Post dinner, we hit the Claremont/Pomona basketball game, aka the sporting event of the season, where I was introduced to Donald, the twentysomething freshmen with a British accent of questionable origin. I use the term "introduced" loosely, as Donald was on the court, playing basketball, and Erin, Emily and I were watching from the stands... After the game (Pomona won, GO SAGEHENS!) we headed back to the room to prepared for Pub. Every Wednesday night, Pomonans go to an on-campus bar, where they get in for free and the alcohol is provided by the University. Its a win-win. We spent the night there, merrily fistpumping the night away, enjoying the occasional Donald sighting, before heading to a suite where one of the residents had taken advantage of the high ceilings and constructed a second floor out of plywood, plexiglass, and (one assumes) willpower and balls. According to the twins the university deemed it "structurally sound" but I wasn't taking any chances, and kept my feet firmly planted on solid, building code-compliant ground.
Day 5
Due to the magic of Pomona, I woke up well-rested and hangover-free. One final breakfast and I bid a fond farewell to Pomona and the twins and got in the car one last time for a relatively quick, and thankfully vomit-free drive home.
Thank you to Robin, Brett, Luc, Erin and Emily for letting me stay with you. I truly have such wonderful friends and this trip only solidified that notion. The people you have chosen to surround yourselves are all wonderful, and they with welcomed me with such open arms simply because I was a friend of yours. I am so blessed to have you in my life, and I will miss all of you so so much while I am gone, but I'm so grateful to have gotten to sit in on your lives very briefly.
With that, Lathrop out.
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