Metro Journal: Last Day!

I guess most people with the option would have driven on their last day at a job, but I had been carrying my belongings home a little at a time, so I didn't need to worry about carrying a big box of stuff on the bus. And, honestly, I was going to kind of miss the ride.

There was no one else at the 780 stop, which was odd. The bus pretty empty, too. I don't know what was going on. Maybe everyone was playing hookey from work.

I don't feel like work today
Hell, I won't go
-Kristin Hersh, "Houdini Blues"

That's what I had gotten to saying, or wanting to say, just about every day. Well, I had to go, as it was my last day!

I got off at Vine and the DASH was there, waiting on the driver's break. He was on the cell phone. He was still on the cell phone when we left. It was a handset, too. Then he pulled over after he turned onto Gower. I was trying to figure out if I should be grateful that maybe he was going to try to finish his conversation without killing us, or annoyed that he was still on the phone and we were not moving. Then he opened the door and a breathless woman ran on. He had stopped to wait a minute for her. Well, ok. He hung up the phone and we started moving again.

Unwind, a great yarn store in Burbank, has their big annual sale on Super Bowl weekend. I took the DASH, which I saw coming down Melrose a minute after I stepped out to freedom, to the Vine Red Line Station. As I was walking to the stairs to go down to the station, I thought I heard someone say my name. I turned around and a man I am sure I had never seen before was talking to me while walking off in the opposite direction. "You're beautiful!" Normally I probably would have resorted to my standard half-smile-and-nod, but I was in an excessively good mood because I was, well, free! I smiled and said, "Thank you," then went down the stairs.

The station is decorated with film-related stuff. I waited a few minutes for the northbound train. Damn, that train is quick! At the North Hollywood Station, the end of the line, there was a crowd trying to get on the escalator, so I walked up the stairs. All 6 flights or so. But what the hell did I care? I was free! It took me a few minutes scratching my head at the map, trying to figure out the huge U-shaped bus bay, but I found the right spot, and after a few minutes I caught a BurbankBus to Hollywood Way and Magnolia. I got off, then proceeded to walk two blocks in the wrong direction. I always come driving up Hollywood Way, so I got a little... confused. But I didn't care, because I was free!

Oh, that back room of yarn made me giddy. Well, maybe some of it was the wine I had now had 3 hours ago, and the fact that I was, well, free!

I had a fairly strict shopping list, as I was now unemployed, so this would be my last major yarn purchase for quite a while.¹ I had brought two large fabric shopping bags, and I didn't even fill them, I swear! Except I walked out around 5:05, which means I had probably just missed the 183. It stops at Hollywood Way and Magnolia and stops within a few blocks of my home, but it only runs every hour.² But what did I care? I was... well, you know.

There's a Porto's Bakery at the corner across from the stop. I had never actually been at one, although I'd been at a couple parties where people had brought their cakes. I decided to get a pastry or something (I was going to have dinner with friends later) and a tea and sit and read until the next bus. The pastry line was really long, but, you know, the whole not caring thing. I saw someone picking up a cake with madeleine cookies on top and a little chocolate sign saying "Super Bowl" over the cookies. Um, ok.

I went out about 10 minutes before the bus was to come, because I couldn't afford to miss it. As it was, it would get me there with just enough time to throw Brad'n'Sarahliz's belated Xmas gifts³ in a fake gift bag and drive to the dinner. (No, I wasn't going to take the bus 10 miles to the east side of Pasadena. Get over it.) The bus was more or less on time. I had never ridden it west of the Glendale Galleria, and hadn't really looked up the route. After the Media Center, it went through what was probably a couple miles of small, residential streets, with lots of stop signs, before it got to San Fernando Road in Glendale. And I got home in plenty of time.

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¹ Don't worry; I have enough yarn to last, um, a really long time.
² It doesn't even bother going east of the Burbank Media Center on weekends, which sucks, because it would be great for weekend trips to places like, you know, the yarn store.
³ Magnetic Katamari Damacy, from a free pattern by Amy Shimel.

Metro Journal: Jan 22 Do I Look Like A Subterranean Rodent?

It had rained heavily early in the morning, so the roads were wet, traffic was slow, and the 780 was as full as I've seen it at that time, with just about every seat taken the whole way.

I got off at Vine with about 10 minutes until the next DASH. It was no longer raining, but those stones they use for the Hollywood Walk of Fame sidewalks are incredibly slick when went. A woman whose garb screamed "tourist," wearing cheap plastic flip-flops, made the mistake of walking on the sloped wheelchair access at the Argyle crosswalk instead of stepping off the perpendicular curb, and I saw the horror cross her face as she narrowly avoided a buttplant.

A man came up and asked me if the DASH stopped at the studio lot. I said yes. He asked if I was in The Industry. I figured it was more or less true, so I said yes.

Man: You're a PA, aren't you?
Me: Um, actually, I work in IT.

I didn't add that I was escaping in just over a week.

"PA" is short for "Production Assistant," but it automatically gets translated to "gopher" or maybe "low-wage wannabe-mogul" or just "slave" in my head. Most of them are just out of school. I am not sure if the comment was about my age, my pink backpack, or some look of vacuous ambition on my face, but the DASH came, I got on, and we were off.

There was a 20-something man already on the bus, talking on his cell phone. His nasal singsong whine made me think "narcissistic moron" right off the bat, and the quality of his insights quickly proved me right.

And there was this girl but I think she's a lesbian but she seemed to be with this other girl who was just totally not her type.

You're not sure she's a lesbian (what made you think so, she wasn't interested in you, maybe?) but you know what her lesbian "type" is? Butthead!


The DASH came about 5 seconds after I walked out. Shirley was already at the stop and said she had been there 20 minutes. Ouch. I just missed the 780 at Vine, but only had to wait about 10 minutes for another one. Meanwhile, a small white pickup had stalled in the right-hand lane on Hollywood right in front of the stop, so cars that had been behind it were going around via the bus lane. I couldn't see anyone still in the pickup and the driver hadn't made any attempt to, oh, I don't know, get the thing out of the traffic lane. It would have been trivial to push it onto Argyle from there.

Metro Journal: Jan 15 It's Your Fault

I had horrible timing this morning, so I decided to catch a Beeline that intersected the 780 at Central and Colorado. I've usually had bad luck with this bus, but I didn't feel like walking another ¼ mile to my regular stop since I was pretty sure I would just miss the next 780 there and have to wait.

Yeah, big mistake.

The Beeline was about 5 minutes late. Whatever. But a woman got on at the same stop I did and then remained in front of the yellow line talking to the driver about something. I couldn't make most of it out, but she kept pointing at the meter and he got out a notepad and we were already sitting there a couple minutes when their voices got a little more strident.

Woman: You're stupid!
Driver: It's not my fault!
Woman: Yes, it is your fault!

And so on.

Finally he told her she needed to sit down, but she just stood there saying she was going to get off "right down there." Finally she moved close enough to the yellow line that the driver just gave up. He stopped at the next stop, assuming as I had that "right down there" meant "the next stop." Well, no, she wanted to get off at the next stop, or something. She did sit down and didn't end up getting off until several stops later, but of course as she was going out the front door, she had to say a few more things to the driver. I was getting really close to telling her to call the damned customer service line, because she was wasting the time of everyone on the bus.

We finally made it to the stop a block away from the 780 stop, but as I was starting down the block, I saw the 780 go by. "Fuck!" If that woman had shut her yap, I would have totally made it.

The next 780 did come about 15 minutes later, but not until someone had tried to convert me to something. But the whole thing had thrown off my schedule that I got to work half an hour after I would have if the woman hadn't bitched forever about transfers or something. I was not happy. Window Kitty wasn't even in his window when I walked by, but that bike wheel was still locked to that signpost!

I walked out and just missed the DASH, which actually seemed to come at a weird time. I started walking to Western.

One of the interior decorating shops has this weird robot in the front window. If we're coming back in the shuttle from lunch, we always wave at it because it's Bob's buddy. The other day, Bob was excited because the red light on its head was turned on for the first time! Wow!

A block before I hit Western I saw another DASH waiting to make the left. This one was closer to the right schedule, so the last one must have been really messed up. I decided a bird in the hand is better than waiting across the street for another bus (plus the 780s are usually less crowded at the Vine stop than the Western stop, so I'm more likely to get a window seat) so I just got on the DASH.

Of course, this brought me right back to work. Two young dumbasses got on there. One of them proceeded to thrill me with his cultural literacy and astonishing articulation.

Have you ever heard of that movie 1984? I don't, like, know when it was written, but it was written, like, way before 1984 and it was, like, supposed to be what it was like in, like, 1984.

To think I almost missed that.

As I've mentioned previously, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of my comfort movies. As Ricardo Montalban had died yesterday and the theater named for him is on Vine halfway between Sunset and Hollywood, last night I had gotten off the DASH one stop early to try to walk by and take a picture. Um, not for myself, of course. However, because they're building that ungodly WHollywood thing, the sidewalk across the street from the theater was closed, so I couldn't get a proper angle. I did find Clara Bow's star along the way, but that's irrelevant. Tonight, I stayed on the bus, but because we had to stop almost right in front of the theater, I tried to take a picture. You can't make out the letters spelling out the memoriam, though. Oh, well.

The driver was trying to make the right turn onto Hollywood right as the light was changing, and some dumbass was trying to make a left turn into the same (right) lane, making it impossible for the bus to make its wide turn until the dumbass driver did, except he was stopped waiting for the bus. The bus driver started flailing at him to move, then shouted, "Fuck!" Then immediately apologized to us all (me, the two poster children for expository speaking, and some guy all the way in the back with his headphones on). I told her that it was ok, because that's why I didn't drive. She replied, "Some people are just... Lord help me!"

And then a 780 came a minute after I got off the DASH! Wheee!!!

Metro Journal: Dec 12 You Know It's Time To Quit When...

While I was waiting at a bus stop this morning, I heard a drop of something on my shoulder. I looked, then looked up. Another drop landed on my face. Rain. There was no rain forecast for today! I looked around. Blue sky in every direction, except directly overhead, where it was grey!

You know it's time to quit and turn around and go spend the day in bed when you're sitting in the only place it's raining for miles.

In the evening,

Joe the Bear

^* asked if I was ready to leave.

You know it's time to quit when you were ready to leave work before you even got there.

We walked to Hollywood & Vine and got there around 6:30. Some reasonably groomed man was picking cigarette butts off the ground. I thought he was going to put them in the trash. No, he pocketed them.

You know it's time to quit smoking when you have to scavenge half-smoked cigarettes from Sammy Davis, Jr.'s star. Seriously.

The 780 didn't show until 6:45, but it was in a regular-length orange Local. It was pretty crowded, and I was more inclined to waiting another 15 minutes than being a sardine on the way home. I took out my Blackberry thinking I would send email or cruise the web or something, but I had forgotten to charge it, and the battery was too low to turn on the network. Crap.

A few minutes later, another orange Local was getting towed by a really big Metro tow truck. It was stopped at the red light at Argyle right in front of me, but unfortunately, by the time I got my camera phone out, the light had changed and it was starting to move. I did get this nice picture of the hitch and the lovely coach parked across the street:


The Pantages Theatre is literally right across Hollywood Blvd from the Red Line Station. They've been showing Wicked at least since I started my job and thus taking this bus route. Early on, you'd see lots of wannabe gothlings in line, but now the crowd is very generic and mainstream. A favorite pastime of tourists is taking pictures of the marquee. By the time the fourth person I saw tonight was framing their shot, I had my camera phone ready. Number 4:


(Embarrassingly, I also got a pretty good shot of the marquee in that one.)

Number five, pictured below, was using her flash. I'm sure that was highly effective across the 4 traffic lanes, left turn lane, and the bus lanes on each side of Hollywood. She probably also has a lovely album of the backs of people's heads that she has taken over the years at fireworks displays.


There was no 780 at 7:00. Or 7:05 or... etc. Not until 7:15. By then I had seen no fewer than 9 people take a picture of the Pantages marquee from my side of the street. Well, 10 if you count my inadvertent shot. And even though I was there 45 minutes, the rate of one picture every 5 minutes was seriously some kind of record.

You know it's time to quit taking pictures of that marquee when there must be 6 million pictures of it on the web by now, people. Seriously.¹

Sure, 45 minutes is a long time, but I clearly managed to entertain myself by taking mocking photos of the completely stereotypically predictable Hollywood tourists.

Don't miss our next installment: You Know You Have No Life When...²

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^* Firefox displays this correctly inline in the paragraph. IE doesn't. If it looks like crap, change browsers.
¹ Seriously. Google for "+pantages +wicked +marquee" and you'll get a crapload of pages with pictures.
² ... when you spend 45 minutes taking pictures of tourists taking pictures on a Friday evening.

Metro Journal: Dec 8 Oooh, Shiny

I'm sure something terribly interesting happened in the morning, but I can't remember it.


In the evening, Shirley came out to the stop two minutes after I did. It was close to 6:30 and the DASH is at its worst crapshoot odds, so we decided to walk to the Melrose and Western stop together. (The northbound DASH got to its Melrose/Western stop a block before we did.) We got on a crowded 207 but only had to wait a couple of minutes for it.

I had to wait about another 10 for the 780. When it was less than a block away, some dumbasses leaned out of their low-rider and screamed, "Hooker!" in unison. I looked down. I was wearing knee-high boots, a knee-length black dress which left maybe an inch of skin exposed above the boots, and a long black trenchcoat. I was also carrying my demure pink backpack. I looked around. The only female nearby looked to be maybe 20, wearing an oversized hoodie and jeans which hardly looked spray-painted on. I suppose either outfit might have qualified as hooker-garb in, say, Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, but dude, we were standing on Hollywood Boulevard. Clearly those assholes have never seen a real Hollywood hooker, because let me tell you, I have. If they had wanted directions to one, they could have stopped and I would have tried to help. Well, maybe.

Anyway, I got on the 780, which wasn't too crowded (it was nearly 7 by now) and sat down at a window seat near the back. After spacing out a minute, I realized the outer pane of glass was completely cracked into a fine reptile-skin pattern. I was so out of it that I ended up spending most of the bus ride (a long-ish one -- there had been an accident on Los Feliz) watching the lights make pretty patterns on it.

Metro Journal: Nov 12 Stop Sinus Affliction

I can't seem to recall anything memorable about the commute this morning. I'm not even sure I was conscious, come to think about it. Oh, I do remember some guy at Hollywood & Vine yelling to cars going by.


On the evening DASH, when someone pulled the stop request cord, I noticed that not only did it not ring the bell, but the Stop Requested sign seemed permanently lit. The woman in question did not apparently notice this. The driver either hadn't noticed or no longer cared, so he didn't start slowing down for the next stop. The woman started saying, "STOP! Stop! Stop stop stop! Stop! Stop stop!" And continued in this vein even after the driver did stop and opened the doors. Stop saying "stop" already, ok? Thanks!

Three or four people were standing in front of the Red Line Station smoking a weed. A really stinky weed. If it was actually marijuana, I think they should probably have rinsed the manure used as a fertilizer off first, but I suspect someone picked some dandelion leaves growing next to a sidewalk and rolled them. Between that and the fresh coat of pant on the plywood covering the construction site on top of the Red Line Station (they had been putting up the yellow Caution tape when I walked by this morning), the damned corner really stank.

An LAPD car then made a left turn onto Hollywood Blvd from the south side of Argyle. As it was turning, the officer driving seemed to be leaning out of the window. I wondered if he would make a U-turn and bust the herbalists, but as the turn put him on the opposite side of Hollywood and both eastbound lanes were full of cars stopped at the red light, he would have had to wait. By the time the cars cleared, the police car was gone. Oh, ok.

No, person who was standing in my line-of-sight for the bus, I was not staring at you. I was trying to see if the bus was coming. Now turn around. Thanks!

When the 780 showed, this highly-tattooed couple waited until the doors had opened and people were getting on to figure out which of them had fare for both of them. As soon as they straighten that out, they should really try to figure out which one is supposed to be carrying the clue.

For a while, someone was sitting close to me who smelled like they had just spent the day near a deep-fat fryer. My nose was taking a real beating, I tell you. Almost makes me long for the Santa Ana-induced sinus headaches, because at least I couldn't smell things, even if my head was threatening to explode.

Metro Journal: October 14 Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

I got on the 207 at Western and Hollywood. As I was stepping on, this guy behind tells me he's in love with me. This is generally not a good way to start a conversation with me when you are a complete and total stranger, as "stranger" starts to take on multiple meanings. I gave my polite-but-dismissive smile-and-nod and got on the bus.

Of course, he sat next to me. And then proceeded to try to put the mack on me. I quickly wanted to put a Mack Truck on him.

Him: Will you hang out with me?
Me: Um, no, I need to go work.
Him: You?! You don't work! Hey, give me your phone number.
Me: Um, no.
Him: Can I give you mine?
Me: Um, no.
Him: What, you don't like me?
Me: Um, I am not going to spend the day with you and I am not going to give you my phone number.
Him: Aw, come on! Come over to my apartment!
Me: Um, no.
Him: Come on! I'll clean it for you! Want me to clean it first?
Me: Sure, you can clean your apartment, but I'm not coming over.
Him: Why not?
Me: Um, I don't know you.
Him: Get to know me!
Me: Um, no, I don't think so.
Him: You are the most beautiful white girl I've ever seen.
Me: Um, ok...
Him: I got on the bus just to be with you! Why don't you like me? Am I doing something wrong? What am I doing wrong?

Fortunately, the longest mile-long bus ride was finally over.

I was sitting there wondering, does this work??? On anyone? Do I look that desperate/easy/stupid? Do I look like I'm turned on by people who reek of cigarette smoke?

I got off, and thank whatever deities watch over bus riders, but he stayed on the bus. If he hadn't, I would have been calling someone. Someone large. Or gotten really mean.


That morning was our weekly group meeting. We tend to get radically off-topic, which in this case was welcome because the work situation which has been threatening to make me physically ill has not much improved and I am sick of hearing my co-workers bitch about it non-stop. I forget how we meandered there (I was semi-tuned out, in case I needed to wander off to Planet Karen when someone started complaining again), but I ended up mentioning how someone on the bus had been hitting on me in a rather unwelcome fashion. When I said the guy had told me I was "the most beautiful white girl" he'd ever seen, Bob says, "Yeah, and I just got off the boat from Zimbabwe."

This, after I'd given him this monkey the day before:


(He's been extremely stressed about the situation, too. With his diet of cheeseburgers, I fear he will have a heart attack. Someone two floors down actually did have a heart attack on the lot about two months ago and supposedly required bypass surgery.)

Yeah, Bob, you're going down for that one.

Joe-the-Bear, protector of women (in a way that manages not to offend the self-sufficient feminist in me), said he wished he could ride the bus with me to make guys like that back off. I pointed out that I had survived without baring my fangs.

(Joe's been really stressed, too (no one in the group hasn't, really), and after I gave Bob the retroactively ill-deserved monkey, Joe said I should make him a bear. "No, no, just kidding, you don't need to make me anything." (See this entry on why Joe is Joe the Bear. Well, ok, there the picture is labeled "Bob's Big Boy" for reasons I won't get into, but we call Joe "Joe the Bear" because he's a big guy.) (Ok, I've lost track of how many open parentheses I have.) The thing is, I had already planned to make Joe a teddy bear. I even had the yarn for it. I had planned to give them all these things for Christmas, but, well, because people needed pick-me-ups, the schedule got accelerated.

(Joe's Armenian, so I thought I'd make the bear in the Armenian flag colors of red, gold, and royal blue. I found a yarn that had the right fiber content, felt soft and that it would be easy on the hands doing the tight crochet tension necessary, and came in the perfect colors. That night I sat down to start the bear. I was looking at the label to see the recommended crochet hook size, when I see that... I can't use this yarn. It was made in Turkey. Why would that matter? Well, just read about the Armenian Genocide. Yeah, crap. I'm in a self-imposed yarn-buying moratorium as my stash overfloweth, but I had to order more yarn, trying to guess by the monitor which suitable yarns came in the right colors.)


That evening, I got on the 780 at the Vine Red Line station. As soon as we pulled away, some guy started yelling from the back, saying he wanted the next stop because he wanted to get off now. Ok. He started getting kind of ornery about it and walked up to the driver, in front of the yellow line, yelling (which is the only reason I heard him as I was pretty far back) that he wanted off and that the driver couldn't keep him on. I'm pretty sure the driver really wanted him off, too, but the next stop wasn't until Western, which is about a mile from Vine, so he had to wait. He was ranting and raving the whole time. I'm pretty sure that besides himself (and the driver), there were plenty more people who wanted him off the bus.


This is all making you really want to ride the bus in Hollywood, isn't it?

Monkey pattern from Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden

Metro Journal: May 28 National Bad Day Day?

On the 780, the guy who was sitting behind me was talking on his phone to someone, recounting how he had had a car accident the day before, so he was riding the bus. He asked the person what would happen to his car insurance, since this was his second accident in 6 months. Seems this time the bumper (not sure if it was front or rear) got completely broken off, so they would have to weld it back on. He was waiting for the estimate, but was guessing $2500. Anyway, apparently he's already paying $1020 every 6 months for the insurance on his Ford Focus. I didn't turn to look at him, but he sounded like he was maybe in his late 20s or early 30s, although, well, hard to tell, but that sounds like an awful lot to me. I guess the person on the other end said his premium would likely double. He didn't sound too happy about that. He said maybe he could afford $1500. Um, get used to riding the bus, buddy.

While I was waiting for the 207, some guy was walking down the sidewalk asking where the DMV is. It used to be at that corner, but there had been a sign up for a long time saying they had moved to some other location. I guess the sign is gone now, and, well, I'm waiting at a bus stop. Why the hell would I memorize the location of the DMV?

On the 207, I see a car that has been pulled over at the northwest corner of Western & Fountain. Then one that was pulled over on the southwest corner of Western & Fountain. Further down Western I see another police car and motorcycle. Wow.

(Sometime last year while I was waiting for the morning DASH at Hollywood and Argyle, an LAPD officer (Hollywood is just a district of the city of Los Angeles, although I think I said that already) pulled over a car at the stop. While she was writing down license plate information, two giggly young Japanese tourists with their cameras out walked up to her and asked if they could take her picture while she was writing the ticket. She agreed. I often wonder if that was the high point of their visit to the U.S.)

Did I mention my nerves this morning were still more shot than Dick Cheney's hunting companion's face?


I got some better news this afternoon, so I was less cranky. The porn shop on Western which has "Got Porn" on one side of their sign now has "Honk If Your A Zombie" on the other side. I'm guessing a lot of Harvard English majors don't end up working in porn shops in Hollywood, or the signs might use better grammar.

The 780 at Hollywood & Western left while I was waiting for the crossing light. Oh, well. Then, right next to the sign, I realize there was a man handing out copies of the Watchtower in various languages. He was talking to two people so he wasn't pouncing on other potential converts, but a woman walks up and, lo and behold, actually asks if he has a copy in English. I was floored.

As I've mentioned before, though, during the evening rush, this line, which is supposed to run every 15 minutes or so, can go anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes between buses. I phoned my Aunt Mary (is there anyone who doesn't have an aunt named Mary?) but the next 780 was there in about 5 minutes. And since it was so close behind the last one, it was more empty than not.

The woman behind me, who had seemed relatively normal in the second I glanced at her before sitting down, started making these kind of grunting noises. I began to wonder if she should have honked at that porn shop and whether she was considering what sauce to use when she ate my brains, but then she said, "Hang on a second." She was just on her cell phone, apparently grunting her agreement as the other person nattered on. Then she switched to another call. Eventually she told that person she had lost her phone on another bus. (Pause.)

"You did? What did they say?" (Pause) "Call me back."

I started to wonder if the person on the other end had called the other phone and this woman was asking what the person who answered that phone had said. Anyway, she switched back to the other call after leaving that person holding for about 5 minutes. She switched between a couple other calls along the way.

I was knitting since I had a seat to myself and I was still too spaced to concentrate on the rather dense 18th century horror novel I've been trying to read. The author randomly capitalizes words even more than I do. It's simple knitting, so I just stared out the window, noticing things, like the ducks swimming in the Los Angeles Drainage Ditch, er, River, and the small health food shop in Atwater Village which has not the normal single L.A. County health rating sign posted in the window, but two of them, side by side. The Department of Public Health inspects restaurants, or any place that serves prepared food, and then assigns a letter grade based on their score. The establishment is required to display the letter in their front window. I don't know why this place would have two, but it looks pretty bad when a health food store ends up with a 'B'.

We caught up to the previous 780 in the left turn lane from Los Feliz to Central. We even ended up passing them. I just don't understand how that works. I did also notice that that bus was significantly more crowded than ours was.


Unfortunately, this is prematurely to be the last entry. I leave town tomorrow for a family emergency.