Gigglewagon

July 16, 2004

A while ago. I mentioned a trip to the golden coast of sunny California filled with dramatic scenes of sunshine and seashores; bikinis and roller skates; bubble gum and bare feet. Well, today's the day. Here's the plan: I leave this evening and arrive in San Francisco an hour after midnight. The lovely and ever popular Pink Ninja will pick me up at the airport and we’ll immediately high-tail it down the Freeway to the City of Angels -- an over night road trip in her patented Gigglewagon. Destination: an inflatable mattress in our friend and fellow blogger, Anti's, living room. After the weekend in LA, the Pink Ninja and I will take a leisurely drive north, to San Francisco. Pit stops and photo ops. The script falls apart at that point. We'll have to see where the improvisations take us.

July 23, 2004

When I finally fell off the plane at 1 a.m. in Oakland, I checked my phone for messages. "Hi James, it's Angelina. It's one o'clock and I'm still at home, so I'm obviously running late. There's been a change of plans. I'll be there soon and fill you in."

As I waited outside the terminal doorway watching the passengers come and go, I tried to figure out what exactly the change could be, imagining all sorts of ugly scenarios in the process. Finally, I saw a Jeep pull up, and I squinted through the windshield to see if it was Angelina. It was — squinting right back to see if I was me.

Angelina stopped, threw open the door, and bopped out, skipping around the Jeep to hug me hello. "Hi hi," she said with a giggle.

"Hi," I said back with a squeeze. I opened the door, threw my stuff in the back, and we were on our way.

Although we'd seen plenty of pictures of each other and spoken on the phone a bunch of times, we'd never met before. So we had familiar faces and voices, but seeing the two in sync took some getting used to. Most of what we said at first was said without looking.

"Okay," she said. "So here's what I was thinking: Instead of driving all night to make it to LA by daybreak, why don't we just go back to my place, have a nice sleep, and head out first thing in the morning instead?"

I hadn't slept a wink on the plane, and it sounded great to me. We called Anti and filled him in on our updated itinerary.

"Yeah, I back you on that," he said. "Give me a call tomorrow when you're leaving."

It was a flawed plan from the get-go. I mean, why would Anti want us rolling into his place at nine in the morning? And why would we want to miss out on all the beautiful coastal scenery?

After a decent night's sleep, we meandered down the coast the next day. Arrived at 6 p.m. or so and parked at a broken parking meter in front of Anti's apartment. Anti came out to meet us. Angelina and I grabbed our bags from the back of her Jeep, and Anti poked a small hole in the white plastic garbage bag that someone had tied over the meter. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a group of three Asian ladies came running over and started giving Anti the business for poking the plastic. The bag was tied over two meters -- one for the spot where the Asian ladies were parked, and one for the spot that Angelina had just taken. "Stop, stop," I heard them yelling.

"What are those ladies screaming about?" Angelina asked me.

"I have no idea. Something about the parking meter," I said.

Angelina and I stood off to the side and let Anti handle the situation. Angelina had never met Anti -- I mean, not formally face-to-face -- and she was eager to finally do so. But the ladies were holding things up.

"I wish they would stop monopolizing our friend," she said.

I never got the whole story, but the matter was settled and we followed Anti into his lair: ashtrays and beer bottles; bong smoke and novelty lighters; skateboards and photographs. And one big ugly oversized work of art. I couldn't keep from commenting on it. "Dude, that is one ugly painting."

"I know," he said. "I love it. I got it from my mother. It's great because it's so big. It takes up a lot of wall space."

"I kind of like it," said Angelina.

"I like that it's so tacky," said Anti. "If I went out and tried to find a tacky peice of art for my wall, I would've fucked it up. I wouldn't have gotten something tacky enough, you know what I mean? I would've accidentally gotten something kind of cool. But this—" He waved his hand across the giant square frame “—this is perfect."

Did I tell you that Anti lives a block away from a Tilt-A-Whirl? When his girlfriend Tanky came by, we all headed down to the pier. I can't go on those fucking Tilt-A-Whirls because they turn my inner ear into a dishwasher, so I just watched and took pictures as the kids laughed and tilted and whirled.

A couple of Mai Tais, some deep-fried dough, fish 'n' chips, and candy apples later, we all headed back to Anti's place. I was slightly jet-lagged and out of whack, and Angelina was feeling the same from driving for eight hours straight, so she and I crapped out early. But the others were still going strong.

"Is there a motel nearby?" Angelina asked of no one in particular.

"You guys can sleep at our place," Tanky said. "I'll clean up our back room."

"Where's your place?" I asked. "Is it nearby?"

"Right down the street."

"The spider room?" Anti asked. Tanky got defensive. "I'll straighten it up. I'll vacuum up all the spiders first."

"Wait a second," Angelina said. "I'm not gonna be able to sleep with spiders crawling all over me."

"It's not like that," said Tanky.

"The spiders are huge," said Anti. “Remember that big one that attacked me?"

"Because you tried to pick it up. You thought it was weed."

"Well, yeah, but it was being sneaky, disguising itself as a clump of weed," he said, then turned to us, "I'm telling you, beware of the spider room ."

Tanky was getting irritated, and Angelina was getting tired.

"All I know is that I want to be asleep within the next twenty minutes," said Angelina.

"I'll vacuum out the room," said Tanky. "Seriously. It's a nice room."

Considering that Angelina and I had never met before and we were about to spend a solid week together -- never separating for longer than it takes for a shower -- it was inevitable that we'd get a little cranky. She was irritated that I wasn’t able to commandeer the situation and find a nearby motel, where I could deliver her into a clean, spider-free bed. I was trying, but I wasn’t trying hard and fast enough.

I figured riding side by side in her Jeep for 800 miles or so, that eventually I'd do something dumb, like try to play Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio or something. We discussed this possibility before I ever got on the plane, but I told her on the phone that I was a lover, not a fighter. The likelihood of our having a serious row was minimal, but we agreed that we were bound to have a little fight sooner or later. It came sooner. And primarily because I’m a lover and not a fighter.

As we sleepwalked our way to the spider room, we hit the crankiest of the cranky patches. "Shit," I remember thinking, "This trip is gonna be trickier than I thought."

But after a solid sleep, all was forgiven and everything was gravy. "This room is nice," said Angelina the next morning, waking up in a beautiful sunlit room free of any visible insects. "I don't even want to leave," she said.

But all-you-can-eat brunch at El Torito was calling.

"I love this brunch," said Tanky. "I haven't done it in so long. We keep talking about it. I'm glad you guys came to visit. It gave us an excuse to finally make it."

The restaurant had an ocean view, and we laughed at the group of people on the shore who had rigged up a ragged bed sheet as a tent. "Yeah," said Anti, "this beach is kind of ghetto. But who goes in the water anyway?" Funnily enough, despite living a hop, skip, and a jump from the beach, Anti doesn’t like sand.

Angelina had been lost in a moment of thought, "Dude," she said to Anti, "I can't believe you live right down the street from a fucking Tilt-A-Whirl. "

"I know," he said. "It's good to be me."

July 23, 2004

California's Highway 1 is one of those drives that everyone says, "you just have to take." Having driven that coastal highway once before, I'd often been the one saying it. So, as we headed north out of LA, there was no way that we weren't going to drive that scenic route. We were on vacation after all. And having driven it before, I was fully prepared to say, "Wow," every other second. But saying, "Wow," and feeling, "Wow," are two different things. "Holy shit," I'd say to Angelina, "Look at that." She'd make some noises as a substitute for the words that escaped her, then ask, "You wanna take a picture?"

"Nah. It won't come out nearly as good as it looks in real life." Sweeping vistas were never something I had a knack for photographing. If we stopped to take pictures, I could only imagine the disclaimers I'd have to spew as I showed them to people: "You should've seen this in real life. I mean, it looks cool here, but shit, it was amazing. The colors don't do it justice. And this one, that looks foggy? Well, you could actually see the cliffs. They looked like a watercolor or a pastel drawing. I'm telling you, man, it was mind-blowing." Meanwhile, whoever I was showing the photos to would politely nod as they struggled to hide their regret at having asked about my trip at all. You know the drill. It's a cliché.

The highway tightens into a single lane as it snakes up the cliffs and drops down to hug the shoreline. Like I said, we were in no rush, but occasionally we'd get stuck behind a slow-moving camper lumbering along and obscuring our view. These monsters were tricky to pass because there were plenty of speed demons on the road as well, ready to push us off a cliff in their rush to get who knows where, coming at us at supersonic speeds every time Angelina made a move to pass. After she played chicken with a certain BMW, which caused us to count the seconds until our death, we made a group decision that the campers weren't so bad after all.

We climbed and descended through the sunshine and the fog, past the taco stands and the art galleries, listening to CD mixes, until evening, when a sliver of moon hung in the sweet, misty air. We pulled into the pink hotel nestled on the hillside. I'm tempted to call the Madonna Inn a time machine or an anachronism, but it isn't so much a trip back in time as it is a step outside of it. The fixtures and furnishings seemed to be pulled from a prop house, and the whole place felt like a period movie set. Though which period is hard to say. A movie made in the 70's about the 1800s written by a Harlequin Romance novelist and directed by Peter Fonda.

After we checked in and unloaded our suitcases, we ran around the room calling over to each other: "Did you see this thing?" or "Check that thing out." Gold painted cherubs hung from the ceiling, blue vinyl chairs against the wall, a pink vinyl ice bucket on the ornate carved wood table. There was a spiral staircase that led up to a small lookout. The description of it on the back of the postcard that I bought at the front desk referred to it as a, "cupola," but since I'd never heard that word before, and it wasn't until after our stay that I read the postcard, I used the term Angelina chose to describe it: "The Shenanigan."

"Where were you this morning?" she asked.

"Up in the shenanigan, looking at the horses in the field."

Each room was funkier than the next, so we split our two-night stay between two rooms. Which meant that by the next afternoon, all that delicate blue paint and bright blue vinyl was a distant memory. Crushed by the color red. Red leather bedspreads, painted red brick walls, and red-tinted glass windows. I mean, seriously, when this place chooses a color scheme, they go balls out.

Although neither one of us had much money to splurge, the dining room of the Inn's fancy steakhouse was pink. And since it's no joke when I tell you that Angelina's suitcase was overstuffed with pink clothes, we had little choice but to hit the restaurant. I mean, look at her. She's in her element. We didn't lollygag at the steakhouse, though, because the Drive-In was showing Dodgeball at 10:45, and Angelina was hell-bent on seeing Vince Vaughn on the big screen while nestled in her car smoking a cigarette. So after we overstuffed ourselves on meat and potatoes, we were out.

"Okay, but wait. One more picture," I said. "Sit over there in that pink chair, okay?"

The old Drive-In was located on a desolate road that bordered a cemetery. "I hate cemeteries," said Angelina with a shiver. "I hope we don't get attacked by zombies during the movie." Though it hadn't occurred to me, I didn't want that to happen either. Thankfully, it didn't, and we lived through the night to push off from the acid trip hotel the next morning. Or next afternoon, rather. The front desk called to nudge us along. "Check out is noon," they reminded us. "C'mon, Angelina, we gotta go," I said.

"After all the money we spent at this place?" she said nonchalantly, brushing her hair, "Fuck 'em. Let them come and drag me out."

Since we'd blown our budget for the entire trip on two nights at the Madonna Inn, from then on out it was all about greasy spoons and cheap seaside dives. And when I say, "greasy spoon," it's not a metaphor. My spoon at Denny's was so greasy that when I pulled it from my coffee mug, it left an oily film swirling on the surface. I tilted my mug to show Angelina. "Yumm."

Goodbye California. Farewell Angelina.