Point #9: The L Word

The family vacation to Disneyland in '02, like any other vacation we took, was product placement for Disney, my parent company. This was our first time in California, so we were all psyched.
On the way to the Disneyland hotel, my mom pointed and gasped appreciativley at Anaheim's lovely Spanish townhouses with moss on the walls. After checking in, I went into my air-conditioned room, unpacked, sniffed the fresh Mickey Mouse soap and started reading the new issue of Spin magazine that I picked up from the Downtown Disney newsstand. Some article that I read about an LA band, concert or something gave me a frisson: I was in California and could finally visit LA and Hollywood!
With the Phantom Planet song appearing as an auditory hallucination, I strode gallantly to the concierge and asked him how to get to Los Angeles.

"Did you just say the L Word?"
"What?"
"Just kidding. I call LA 'the l word.'"
I let out a sheepish chuckle.
"Why would you want to go to LA when you are in Disneyland?"
Quizzicaly creasing my eyebrows, I said "Uh, because I have never seen Los Angeles before?"
"Well, LA is big, what part would you want to see?"
"Whatever's close."
"Yeah, LA is far and it's big. Might as well wait till tomorrow when you are well rested."
"Well, I respectfully disagree. What buses run to LA from here?"
"I don't know."
"Well, you are the concierge. Aren't you supposed to tell me?"
"Tomorrow I could-"
"LISTEN-HOW THE FUCK DO I GET TO LA?"

Embarrased by the shrillness of my own voice, I stormed out and hung my head when I got into the elevator. I waited by the bus stop near California Adventure for a ride to Los Angeles. After waiting a half hour, I lit up a cigarette hoping that the bus would come simultaneously, like it did in New York. In Anaheim, however, this was an open invitation for people to stop and give you dirty looks. Two hours passed and not one bus came. Inspired by Grand Theft Auto III, I began to walk over to the nearest standing cab and put my hand on the driver's side handle. Before I could have pulled him out and stolen the cab, a bus magically appeared. Running to the stairwell of the magic bus, I gave the bus driver the same speech I was going to give to the cab driver:

"Take me to LA now, motherfucker."
The bus driver laughed and said "LA is huge man. What part?"
Like a cop from a failed TV series, I said "Let's go downtown."

Two hours later, I got off at some residential district near Wilshire Boulevard because the ride was too long. The first place I wanted to visit was the bathroom. Down each impossibly long block I walked, there were no pedestrians to be found. All the houses looked uninhabited, which made me wonder if they were facades.
My first thought was "You could murder somebody here."
My second was "You could shoot a film here."
Indeed, downtown LA looked like one big movie set that was crudely built while I was waiting for the bus.
The fact that I had to walk fifteen city blocks to find one bathroom convinced me of this.
Even Hollywood Blvd., which I visited a few days later, was impossibly short. The market district was perhaps twenty city blocks long. And supposedly everything closed at 2 AM, including the bars. That there was nothing to do and everything closed at two made me feel like I was on a soundstage that was supposed to make LA look boring in comparison to Disneyland.



Between the creepy concierge that wanted to keep me in Disneyland, the two-hour wait for the bus and the fake LA movie set that the bus took me to, I was convinced at this point that my whole life was on television. Everything that came after was a small piece that completed the puzzle.

Note: Linfluenza wrote in the comments for point #8 that Disney bought shares in Infoseek, trying to convince me that Disney might take over the web. I realized today that the link he sent me was from 1998. Perhaps Linfluenza is working for them, trying to scare me from using the Internet. Well, I'm not scared Linfluenza. I will continue writing this blog on the Internet. And I promise, one day I will break out of the confines and see the real LA.

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