Sunday, March 04, 2007

Red, Red Wine

As much time as I spend hating LA, I also begrudgingly love it. It's something of an unhealthy relationship, but for now it works for me. This weekend was an excellent mixture of the two.

Saturday I picked up a friend who is in town and we hit the road to go down to Venice. By hit the road I of course mean sat parked on the 101 for 30 minutes. Parked. If I thought peeling off my own skin and running through the streets would help speed traffic up, hand to god, I would have done it. My friend sat beside me, open mouthed and shocked. She finally whispered "Is it always like this?" and I nodded, a tear in my eye and said, yes. Finally traffic moved and we were able to get up to a respectable 20 mph. An hour later we had driven the 15 miles and arrived at the beach. It was gorgeous. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, C & O Trattoria. The reason it's my favorite isn't because the food is all that good, it's because the atmosphere is great and they have free, unlimited garlic knots. And for those who know me I would go to the ends of the earth for bread, especially bread topped with garlic. We had a long and wonderful lunch, lots of wine, pasta and easily 19 lbs of garlic knots. Those are the best kind of lunches, hours spent with a good glass of wine and good conversation. It just feels decedant. Food comas set in and we took a walk down the pier and just stared at the water for awhile.

Later that night I met another friend to go to a photography exibition and meet her new boy. Ah, young love. The show was smaller than we expected so we were mostly standing around and decided we were starving. We hopped in our cars and went to fantastic tapas place. Since the restaurant is located in LA, and every restaurant here is a fusion, this was American tapas. The best one? Mac and cheese in a parmesean cup. Lots of wine and lots and lots of cheese. More cheese than I have ever consummed in one sitting which is quite possibly a new Guinness book record. I think today I am composed entirely of dairy. It's attractive, I assure you.

The best part of the evening actually happened when I was stuck in traffic on the way home. I was zoning out and looked in the car beside me. Inside the lexus were 4 guys dressed like pirates. They had gone all out, head scarfs, eye patches and swords. We stared back and forth for a moment and then traffic started to move. I saluted them and two of them took off their hats and did an elaborate car bow. It was impressive and the perfect nightcap.

Today has been spent lounging and recovering. It was an excellent weekend, and if my neighbor wasn't directy outside my window tuning up his motorcycle and revving his engine, I would have entirely forgotten why I hate LA. But that sadly wasn't meant to be.

2 comments:

gamerbri said...

Hey hey M, Glad to have you back. You were missed big time for sure. Nice to see that you have come to LA. It's not all bad, ok maybe it is but I still love it. There is so much to do and see and you have got to get out and about and have some real fun.

Anonymous said...

i'm so glad you're back! would you ever consider a brief summary of what has happened in the past months? maybe i'm just nosey...but i've missed your blog!