To beat the late afternoon heat in my apartment, I decided to go see District 9. As it is friggin' hot here, I slathered on the sunblock and then went out to wait for the closest bus. It was several minutes late. Some YMDs1 in mom's minivan yelled something out their window while they drove past me. Look, morons, if you're going to be That Kind of Asshole Who Yells at Strange Women on the Street, at least make what you're saying intelligible. All I heard were random phonemes. Also, there was no shade at the stop. Fortunately, there was a brisk breeze blowing, which, while not cool per se, was still cooler than the sun.Anyway, I bought my day pass and then went to the intersection with the 780, which I had to race across the intersection to catch, but I made it. I went into Pasadena. I got there with a few minutes to spare, got out my knitting, and settled in. About halfway through the film, my ball of yarn fell on the floor and I couldn't seem to reach it in the dark. As it did keep feeding me yarn without snagging, though, I kept knitting. (I recommend the film, both for some great action effects and for a thought-provoking, if somewhat generic "why racism and mega-corporations are evil!" plot.)
After the lights came on, I extricated my yarn ball, which had fortunately not rolled anywhere and didn't seem the worse for wear. (Fortunately, no one seems to have spilled sode or dropped nacho "cheese" in that spot recently or even not-so-recently.) The movie had been longer than I thought, as I got out around 8. I went into the restroom before leaving the megaplex and noticed some bright pink patches on my left arm. They felt rather warm to the touch. I apparently missed some areas with the sunblock, and even though I couldn't have spent more than 15 minutes in direct sunlight, well, the sun was that bright and hot, even late in the afternoon.
When I got out, the sun was down, but it was still really warm, although not unbearably so. I got some chai at Starbucks and read my compu-nerd book a bit, then when out to the bus stop. I proceeded to wait a really long time. I knew the 780s had almost certainly stopped running, but I was there at least 15 minutes before a 181 showed up. It turned out to be standing room only, too, although at least the aisle wasn't packed like a sardine can. And of course, there were the standard dumbasses who stand in the front of the bus instead of moving back, thereby forcing people to push and squeeze past them so everyone can get behind the damned yellow line so the driver can move again. Bah.
One of the dumbasses standing at the front was a guy in his early 20s wearing an enormous backpack, the kind you use for camping with a bedroll and all that. He was wearing a chambray oxford shirt and one of those dorky driving caps. He was talking to someone sitting next to him. When he started telling them about how one time he was up near Pak Mann arcade2, which, while it did close a couple years ago, he made it sound like this Stone Age-era archaeological site. Anyway, he was saying that he was up near there with some of his "homeboys" and they were getting shot at by guys in a Honda Civic. WTF. We're talking Mr Wonder Bread white boy here. He didn't dress or use typical gangsta inflections, either. My mind was boggling. I missed some bits, but then he was telling the person about how he had seen some guy wearing a t-shirt that said, "So Cool, So Rad," and he "wanted to slap the shit out of him" for the "besmirchment" of... I couldn't figure out what, because my brain was boggling at how such a t-shirt, while not particularly cool or rad, could be so offensive, but mostly I was just in shock that such a fucking poseur was so up-in-arms about some other poseur, without having any idea of the hypocritical irony of his own poseur-ness. At least when I'm being a poseur, I'm well aware of it, although, let's face it, I'm so superkewl, I can get away with just about anything. Anyway, I'm sorry to deprive everyone of the rest of this spectacle, but this guy was just such a ridiculous, self-important, dumbass dickhead that I couldn't take the pain anymore. It is probably more entertaining to read about than it was to experience in real life. I got out my headphones to block out the stupid and the pain.
Oh, and then I came home to a jury summons! Um, woot? No, probably not. I go on call the week of September 14th.
1Young Male Dumbass
2An enormous video game arcade maybe a mile or two from Tech. They had everything. I vaguely seem to recall feeding enough quarters into the old Simpsons game to finish it one evening about six zillion years ago.
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