The Philadelphia Story (pt. 6 - Nobody Does It Like Sarah Lee--depending on what you mean by 'it')

Before we get going, here is a plea: if any of you know anyone in the greater Los Angeles basin region who might have any information or might know anyone who knows of any information pertaining to employment opportunities for someone with a shamefully weak resume (accents implied) but loads of both heart and gumption, please let me know immediately, or suffer the consequences. Thank you. Now, back to our story...
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After lunch, we went back to the hotel. Andy and his family went up to the ballroom for the rehearsal, and I hung out in the lounge, catching up with the recently arrived Evan and listening to him explain why New York is better than LA, even though he's been to LA once. That time he was out here, he complained about people not honking. "In New York," he said, "everybody would be honking." I suggested he come up with a related slogan to submit to the Chamber of Commerce.

It's a weird thing, the way everyone hates LA. All fucking weekend, people who'd never even been here told me how horrible LA is, how phony the people are. Which, quite frankly, is true; LA is horrible, the people are phony. But guess what? The same goes for pretty much every person in every spot on the globe. You don't think people in Calcutta don't do certain things to fit in? Yes, LA is ridiculous, and yes, people from LA think that people from the West Coast are better than people from the East Coast, and what the hell, I'll even give you that New York is better than LA, but if I have to choose between a shabby city blessed with 350 days of sunshine a year, or an amazing, vital one packed tight with fucking New Yorkers, nine times out of ten I'm gonna opt for the sunshine. Just personal preference. Anyway, there are plenty of good pizza places out here, and I've never known what differentiates a great bagel from a so-so one (for the record, the last time I bought bagels, they were made by Sarah Lee, and had a shelf-life of six thousand years).

All that aside, it was nice catching up with Evan. At least, until some acquaintance of his who lives in Philly dropped by, and they spent the next several hundred hours discussing econometrics theories, or something along those lines. All I know is, it involved economics, and was unremittingly boring. I excused myself, went upstairs to change, and when I came back down again...

As I write this, I'm watching Shrek on NBC, in part to see what all the fuss is all about, in part because I guess I'm just a big kid at heart, or an idiot at least. I don't like the film's message of acceptance for fat people, and I'm not exactly irritating my neighbors with gales of raucous laughter, but it's good enough, enough to make me put my writing on hold until the commercial breaks, the last one of which I watched long enough to see a commercial for baby.com. I'm not sure what baby.com is (although the prominent Johnson & Johnson logo on the screen at the end might have been a clue), but I do know that the commercial's tagline was "A baby changes everything." Well, shortly after I came back downstairs after changing, my friend Erik, his wife Noriko, their not-quite-two-year-old daughter, and their two-month-old son arrived. And I can tell you that having babies has not changed Erik even slightly; he was always a pussy.

Ha ha, but of course I'm nearly kidding. I chatted with Erik and Noriko for a while and tried unsuccessfully to engage baby Hannah (a picture of whom, joyfully eating watermelon and crawling around her father's neck, can be found somewhere in the depths of the photo gallery). The infant Max was hidden within some sort of Scandinavian papoose (the brand name, I believe, is Baby Bjorn, which I find unpleasant), and thus unavailable for conversation. After what seemed like a fairly long time, we were packed into a van and drove off into the miserable rain, destination: Chinatown.

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(Coming soon - Jellyfish and Ladyboys.)