Like: The High Holidays

Why?

Well, aside from my approaching foray into Judaism (which i may tackle in a like at some point later), there’s a much more simple and incredibly selfish reason to love the High Holidays in Los Angeles:

There’s no traffic.

Seriously. It takes me roughly 35 min (on an awesome day) to 50 min on average to get to work.

Today, on Rosh Hashanah?

17 minutes.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Happy New Year Everyone!

(note: the only time I had a quicker commute was during the immigrant rights march where the entire hispanic population of the city congregated downtown. This was not nearly enough to change my pro-immigrant rights stance I guarantee you… but I don’t think it helped the cause since there were a good lot of people talking about how great it was to have no commute.)

Don’t Like: Leaving For Work A Half Hour Earlier and Getting Here One Minute Later Than Usual

After a couple weeks of taking it easy, I’m back to blog on! Hardcore style. And to commence with that I’ll start with some good old fashioned bitching about nothing.

So this morning I left a half hour early to get to work and catch up… and I got here one minute later than usual. Traffic is always a crap shoot in L.A. but it’s relatively maddening. There was no apparent reason for any of the back-up I saw. It’s why so many people show up late to work in this city. It’s also why people are relatively fucking nuts around here.

Good day! More posts to come!

Don’t Like: Failure to Signal

I bitch about traffic a lot on this. But this may be the worst.

Attention fucktards of the universe. Use your turning signals. It’s easy and it lets drivers behind you know what the fuck you’re doing. I have no idea what you’re doing if you don’t. I just see you screech to a halt then move across five busy lanes to take a left on red. Today coming to work, I saw 14 people NOT use their turning signals. 14. It only took me 30 minutes to get to work today too. This is horseshit.

There is a great scene in “Shoot Em Up” where Clive Owen is driving and someone fails to signal. He proceeds to ram this guy off the road. I wish I had that kind of courage.

Don’t Like: That Asshole Behind Me This Morning Who Beeped His Horn Loudly Because I Wouldn’t Dart Through a Turning Red Light So We Could Both Be Stuck In The Middle of An Intersection Because of Backed Up Traffic

Dear Asshole,

What could have been going through your mind to convince you that it was a good idea to do the aforementioned? I mean really, unless you had a birthing woman in your backseat there’s no excuse to wildly beep at me and wave your hands in disgust for not performing a wildly needless, and frankly complete-asshole thing to do to the drivers in the perpendicular lanes.  Are you that self-centered? It’s not like a screeched to a halt or anything. We were all in traffic and I just sat there and didn’t move as the light turned red. Not Yellow mind you, but red. You are probably a ridiculous person who needs to re-examine your values. Hope you like being blogged you colossal asshat.

You weren’t even turning right.

Don’t Like: How the title of my memoir will be “Accidents on Pico Blvd, Or How I Lost My Fucking Mind”

While there’s many bones to pick with Los Angeles drivers, here’s one of them: They feature no ability to look away from an accident on the far side of the road and continue driving. Today, when I was expecting to be a good 15 to 20 minutes early, I was 20 minutes late. See to encapsulate the traffic experience, the woman in front of me had actually moved ahead of the accident, realized there was an accident, stopped, stuck her head out the window and said: “Gosh that looks real bad don’t it!” To which I honked loudly. She seemed confused as to why I was honking and then slowly sped up. I realize there’s going to be some backup due to this kind of event, but these Angelino looky-loos drive me freakin nuts. It’s a system! Don’t they realize they’re ruining it for everyone! Gah!!!!!

END RANT

Don’t Like: Lane Closures

Lane Closures are awful. Especially in Los Angeles. Your normal route to work is in inexplicably ruined by giant DPW truck and/or sign with 9 guys standing around putting out cones with no visible purpose. Sure, there’s the occasional fallen tree branch or accident, but generic “work” seems to be the most popular culprit in making me 30 minutes late.