Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Break

I've hardly started and I'm already a flake. Psychologically it is impossible to keep this blog until my life is somewhat in order, and by order I mean get my possesions in my possesion. The movers are a week late in getting them here and it's made me unable to focus on anything that has to do with a computer. Don't give up on me yet.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Transition

Captain's Log

First impression of Los Angeles was sun. Lots of sun. I'm reminded how four years in the shadow of skyscrapers has turned my skin its pearly pale, completely inadequate for the desert heat. The second impression was space. Highways and byways and crossways and longways, and of course, the car culture that comes with it... but everyone knows those two factors of Californay. What it did was put me in an immediate sense of vacation and I suddenly understood why the lackadaisical nature of working here is so attractive to some people. New York is my first love but it's much easier on the blood pressure to stress out on the beach than on the manhattan roofdeck.

I found my apartment by moving in with a friend who graduated from NYU two years ago. I didn't know what the apartment looked like really well or, frankly, cared where it was or its size, because I was just thankful I didn't have to bear the search for housing after coming over.


I live in this beautiful condo complex in Burbank, such a far cry in design from my apartment in a Financial District high rise. The apartment itself just stuns me because it has a living room, dining room, kitchen, second floor and separate bedrooms, four times as many rooms as my place in Manhattan, and only half the cost. We even have a balcony (although the only entrance is through someone's bedroom) with the best view of the community pool:


To think that I even have access to a pool is blasphemy to me. In addition to two flatmates there are two kitties as well, one of them an adorable kitten named Lyra that I'm having a blast messing with.

But these treats don't come without peril. I'm barely out of the concrete jungle and I've already had a brush with nature. The kitten ran out the front door one time and I had to stick my hand into a den of cobwebs to retrieve her from behind a flowerpot. Later on my roommate freaked out upon discovering the spider the nest belonged to was a Black Widow. She poured the entire contents of a spider spray bottle on it and it laid on its back with its thick, sticklike legs twitching and the red hourglass like a beacon on its abdomen. It appears I unknowingly had miraculously evaded being bit by the most venomous spider in North America.

Despite such brushes with death, I've accepted LA wholly in a matter of days. I actually very much like it here, and have no real qualms yet about driving short distances in traffic, as long as I have my iPod running which I listened to incessantly on the subway anyways. Many of the major Studios are located in Burbank (Disney, Warner Brothers, NBC), and it is often in a normal commute to have to drive alongside them. It's probably just me being a newbie to this whole thing, but there is a comfort (or maybe an excitement) in being in a place where film is so highly celebrated.

The sun sets in alignment with the street.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Entry

Captain's Log
Moving out of New York was pretty smooth. It happened so long ago I really don't remember it. Instead of going home I went to visit friends at Umass Amherst before missing a bus to take me to Newton, Massachusetts to see the family before we don't see each other for forever (but not really). I got there eventually, of course, celebrated the Jewish new year together in one absolutely gigantic feast of a dinner. My mother and I woke up at the crack of dawn to get an early flight direct to Los Angeles, carrying, due to the weight limit, two suitcases and two carry ons each. Her stuff took half a suitcase, one of my hard drives alone took the other half.

Our plane took off and started making its turn around the bay. But then it kept turning. It seemed to me that we were definitely doing a whole lot of turning. For a moment I was trying to figure out the route we were going to fly to the west cost exactly, considering it's, well... west, when the captain's voice crackles, "Prepare for landing." After only 15 minutes in the air we landed.

We were debarked; turns out some passengers smelled burning and after investigation there had been some electrical issue causing it. As we waited for the mechanics to right our plane, after about an hour they said they figured out the problem, had fixed it, and were going to run the series of rote tests that every plane gets before boarding. Apparently it must have been something freaky, because they followed by cancelling the flight altogether and accommodating all passengers on something else. We took four extra hours and a stop in Chicago to get to LA. The lesson (if I make something out of nothing) is not that American sucks, which it may, but that you should still let attendants know if something's burning or the back of the plane is falling off. I caught "Snakes on a Plane" on one of the movie channels the night before the flight and although it didn't affect my comfort level with flying it may have affected fellow passengers as they were long subjected to terrible snake jokes.

L.A. from the plane is a massive, sprawling metropolis with no downtown visible, highways snaking around like veins on an 80-year old geezer and clay-shingled houses clumped together on roads so that from above they look like those candy necklaces you got in party bags when you were a kid.

It was kind of freaky to be talking about earthquakes with insurance agents.

Also, this guy is a dick.



NEXT TIME: The apartment, the pool, the spider, the car.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Goodbye

Today is my final day in New York.



Damn straight.