01.20.11 – movin’ on up
Classing up L.A., one palatial estate at a time.
So! The Golden Globes got me a little nostalgic, and now I’m on memory lane as well as on my blog, so hey, join in! I should be embarrassed to admit this to anyone, but I used to keep all the award I’d ever won on top of my fridge next to a box of Kleenex and (usually) a bunch of bananas. The first time my mom came out to visit me in the City (L.A., it was a Big Freaking Deal way back when I left Rhode Island again), she’d remarked casually on how neat I’d been able to keep things (even though I hadn’t) and complimented the location of the apartment (which was over a take-out in WeHo and maybe a little bit left of respectable). But when she got to the kitchen portion of the impromptu tour (there were three rooms!), she’d stood for a full three minutes in slack-jawed awe as she saw my Big Freaking Deal coveted awards lined up neatly above the freezer full of fish sticks.
Apparently, as I gathered during the successive My Son Does Not Appreciate Anything of Value lecture, you’re supposed to put those in a special case. So on the day that she went back to Providence, after fixing me with a steely-eyed Mom Glare and informing me that I basically don’t deserve nice things, ever, and probably other people who are less dickish and ungrateful than me would have found a nicer place for their BAFTA, I toddled off like the good son I am in search of A Nicer Place for My Trophies.
I’d lived in L.A. for about six months at that point, though lived in this context should be taken to mean that I’d been paying rent for an apartment I saw for three hours a day a couple of times a week, maybe. That portion of the Jason Bellamy Experience is over now, though, since I’ve moved on up in the world to Tobyfox’s palatial estate and in that time, I’ve been able to realize that I have basically no concept of what California looks like.
So! Today, all drunk off my Golden Globes fever, I spent three three solid hours wandering and trying to stay out what shadows were floating around at ten in the morning and keeping my eyes more or less to the front before it sank in that I’m actualfacts living in the ritzy part of Los Angeles. It did comes with the picturesque lawns and relatively low crime rates! As opposed to where I’ve been living since about 2006, which was more likely to be voted as a Best Place to Live if maybe the polls were run by drug addicts and graffiti connoisseurs. Within my first ten minutes of walking through my old neighborhood (which I’d been assured was pretty safe, and which I took to mean that there hadn’t been any massive gang wars or knifings going on in the street), I’d heard at least seven ‘scores’ ‘going down’ and was hit up twice for spare change by ridiculously cordial homeless men.
If you’re curious: my trophies are still sitting comfortably in their Place of Shame on the top of the fridge. Except now I don’t have the bananas and I’ve gotten a fancy plastic cover to go over the Kleenex box.
