Did your life work out as planned?

I try not to think about it.  But occasionally it hits me right in the face.  My dreams and my reality.

I had an unscheduled detour this morning.  Felice’s brother was suddenly leaving town.  If I wanted our skis, I had to go to his house now.  Which frustrated me, since I already had a tight schedule.

I don’t do anything different.  What I mean by that is I’m a creature of routine.  I don’t want to waste a moment.  I’m overworked and I’m underpaid, and I’m not complaining, just telling you I want to be in front of the computer screen, with the world at my fingertips, I don’t want to go to lunch, usually not even dinner, and if you want me to come see your band they’d better be awfully good, or you’d better be an awfully good friend of mine.

I’m in a groove.  It feels good.  Unlike the title character in "Greenberg", which I saw last Saturday night.

Don’t go.  The movie is really pretty bad.  Turns out, like a band, Noah Baumbach only had one good film in him, "The Squid and the Whale", but that doesn’t mean I took nothing away from "Greenberg", what I took away was thank god I’ve got a life.  I’ve got more shit I want to do than time, and it feels fucking great.  Then again, today I had that detour.

I turned onto Mulholland and went left instead of right.  On one side was the Valley, with mountains in the distance, Baldy still holding snow, on the other side, lush greenery, Beverly Hills.

And a matron in a Range Rover drifts across lanes and that’s when it hits me.  Do you have any idea what a Ranger Rover costs?

I’ll look it up.  To be definitive.  Wow, I thought it was more, it’s only $78,425.  It’s the Sport model, which I see regularly, that costs 95k.

Who can afford a poorly built hundred thousand dollar four wheel drive vehicle, especially when they live in Los Angeles, where there’s no snow and if it rains, most people stay home?

I drifted down past Cielo Drive, and that’s when it became clear.  Who I used to be.  The guy who arrived in the seventies and checked out all the neighborhoods, caught all the rock references, who was integrated in the scene without really being a player.  I had hopes, dreams, aspirations.  My life was in front of me.

Now it’s behind me.

Did you know they replaced the sheik’s house?  You know, the one with the painted statues, that burned down decades ago?  There are two giganta-mansions side by side where his dwelling used to be.  Who can afford that?

Sure, some people arrive rich.  But most don’t.  They come to the City of Angels to leave their mark.  They cut corners, make deals until they amass a pile of money and live like kings.

Then again, there are many living like kings who can’t afford it.  Driving exotic convertibles when their income is barely six figures.  I feel sorry for these people, they think it’s solely about image, they can never win.

Then again, not everybody’s a hedge funder, not everybody’s making eight figures a year.  Most people in Hollywood earned their money in entertainment, which doesn’t pay nearly as well.  They struggled.  And their desire delivered…

A house?

A car?

Two kids in private school?

How much money does it take to live this lifestyle?  And why don’t I have it.

I was struggling with that as I drove east on Sunset Boulevard, on an abnormally warm morning that demonstrated that summer was truly coming.  The seasons revolving ever-faster.  Stop the world.  It’s not that I want to get off, but I want time to get my priorities in order, to give it a good go.

What happened to me?  My father started from nothing.  Jumped from being an engineer into sales.  He provided for all of us.

Maybe it was my college education.  Nobody I knew at Middlebury got rich, unless they arrived that way.  Then again, is that east coast ethos bullshit.  Saying it’s all in your brain when really, you don’t have the balls to come to the city and compete?

I turned left on Cory and saw endless house after house.  Do you know how much these cost?

And when I arrived at Chris’ abode, I caught the view.  All the way to the water.

But that’s when my mood changed.  My car loaded up, I got a smile on my face.  It was Ozzy Osbourne’s "Flying High Again". Suddenly I liked my piece of shit four wheel drive turbocharged car, this is what it was made for, the winding roads of L.A.

And then I heard U2’s "One".  And even Journey’s "Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’".  Everything sounded good.  I’d gotten out of my comfort zone.  I hadn’t taken a cruise through the city at this hour in eons.  Oh, what a wonderful world it is.

And then, after dropping the skis at Felice’s, I got back on the 405.  And despite hearing gems, like Def Leppard’s "Bringin’ On The Heartbreak", with its searing guitars, nothing was special, everything was flat, I was on the usual drive, on my way back to the computer screen.