Did your life work out as planned?<\/p>\n
I try not to think about it.\u00c2\u00a0 But occasionally it hits me right in the face.\u00c2\u00a0 My dreams and my reality.<\/p>\n
I had an unscheduled detour this morning.\u00c2\u00a0 Felice’s brother was suddenly leaving town.\u00c2\u00a0 If I wanted our skis, I had to go to his house now.\u00c2\u00a0 Which frustrated me, since I already had a tight schedule.<\/p>\n
I don’t do anything different.\u00c2\u00a0 What I mean by that is I’m a creature of routine.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to waste a moment.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
I’m in a groove.\u00c2\u00a0 It feels good.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike the title character in "Greenberg", which I saw last Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Don’t go.\u00c2\u00a0 The movie is really pretty bad.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got more shit I want to do than time, and it feels fucking great.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, today I had that detour.<\/p>\n
I turned onto Mulholland and went left instead of right.\u00c2\u00a0 On one side was the Valley, with mountains in the distance, Baldy still holding snow, on the other side, lush greenery, Beverly Hills.<\/p>\n
And a matron in a Range Rover drifts across lanes and that’s when it hits me.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you have any idea what a Ranger Rover costs?<\/p>\n
I’ll look it up.\u00c2\u00a0 To be definitive.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow, I thought it was more, it’s only $78,425.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the Sport model, which I see regularly, that costs 95k.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
I drifted down past Cielo Drive, and that’s when it became clear.\u00c2\u00a0 Who I used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I had hopes, dreams, aspirations.\u00c2\u00a0 My life was in front of me.<\/p>\n
Now it’s behind me.<\/p>\n
Did you know they replaced the sheik’s house?\u00c2\u00a0 You know, the one with the painted statues, that burned down decades ago?\u00c2\u00a0 There are two giganta-mansions side by side where his dwelling used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Who can afford that?<\/p>\n
Sure, some people arrive rich.\u00c2\u00a0 But most don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 They come to the City of Angels to leave their mark.\u00c2\u00a0 They cut corners, make deals until they amass a pile of money and live like kings.<\/p>\n
Then again, there are many living like kings who can’t afford it.\u00c2\u00a0 Driving exotic convertibles when their income is barely six figures.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel sorry for these people, they think it’s solely about image, they can never win.<\/p>\n
Then again, not everybody’s a hedge funder, not everybody’s making eight figures a year.\u00c2\u00a0 Most people in Hollywood earned their money in entertainment, which doesn’t pay nearly as well.\u00c2\u00a0 They struggled.\u00c2\u00a0 And their desire delivered…<\/p>\n
A house?<\/p>\n
A car?<\/p>\n
Two kids in private school?<\/p>\n
How much money does it take to live this lifestyle?\u00c2\u00a0 And why don’t I have it.<\/p>\n
I was struggling with that as I drove east on Sunset Boulevard, on an abnormally warm morning that demonstrated that summer was truly coming.\u00c2\u00a0 The seasons revolving ever-faster.\u00c2\u00a0 Stop the world.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
What happened to me?\u00c2\u00a0 My father started from nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 Jumped from being an engineer into sales.\u00c2\u00a0 He provided for all of us.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was my college education.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody I knew at Middlebury got rich, unless they arrived that way.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, is that east coast ethos bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying it’s all in your brain when really, you don’t have the balls to come to the city and compete?<\/p>\n
I turned left on Cory and saw endless house after house.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you know how much these cost?<\/p>\n
And when I arrived at Chris’ abode, I caught the view.\u00c2\u00a0 All the way to the water.<\/p>\n
But that’s when my mood changed.\u00c2\u00a0 My car loaded up, I got a smile on my face.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And then I heard U2’s "One".\u00c2\u00a0 And even Journey’s "Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’".\u00c2\u00a0 Everything sounded good.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d gotten out of my comfort zone.\u00c2\u00a0 I hadn’t taken a cruise through the city at this hour in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, what a wonderful world it is.<\/p>\n
And then, after dropping the skis at Felice’s, I got back on the 405.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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