L.A. Story

I flew into LA on Sunday afternoon and headed out to Pasadena in my rental F150. As I drove through downtown LA, I was listening to Green Day, and the lyrics were quite appropriate for what I always feel when I arrive here:

City of the dead

At the end of another lost highway

Signs misleading to nowhere

City of the damned

Lost children with dirty faces today

No one really seems to care

This town has always seemed depressing to me. Everything is concrete, but not like New York. Everything here is new and disposable, it seems. Tired of your car? Leave it on the side of the road. Need a new office complex? Another one is sprouting up just down the road. The clouds that roll in every morning seem to suffocate any hope when you awaken. I cannot see how anyone can love something or someone in this city.

Every monument you see in this city is a shrine to the almighty car, or that which makes up 60% of every human on this planet: water. From the air, you see viaduct and highways, canals and overpasses, spillways and offramps. In my most depressed times, I wonder which will cause this country more harm: the international wars over oil, or the inevitable internal war over water.

We're staying in Pasadena near the old downtown area. There's a lot of local restaurants here that are just terrific, and then you look across the street at a Cheesecake Factory........and you wonder why you're the only diner in a mom & pop italian joint, and there's a line around the building at that abomination across from you. Oh well.

Man, I've got to stop reading Ann Rice and listening to Bauhaus.....

On a brighter note, the Audi RS 4 is about the most amazing sedan I have ever driven. I always felt that the E34 BMW M5 was the greatest all-around car ever made. Sorry, the RS 4 just took that title. 420 HP out of a 4.2 V8 that revs to 8250 rpm, quattro all wheel drive, drool................ Maybe if I moved to LA and opened a Starbucks...........