Dear Angry/Vicious Note-Leaving Neighbors:

Dear Neighbors:

Clearly, we the residents of the Fairfax district know the unique hell that is finding a parking spot on the street in our neighborhood. Well, at least some of us do, as I am fortunate enough to have a driveway that can not only accommodate my car but those of visiting guests. But I certainly feel for the rest of you, forced to duke it out for the precious few spots available.

Most of the sections of curb on the streets between driveways are two cars long. Yesterday evening, the driver of a black Audi took it upon himself to park smack dab in the middle of a section, thereby eliminating any chance two cars could park there. I specifically say him in this case, as it appeared the driver's seat was far enough back from the steering wheel to indicate the driver was a man. And FAR be it from me to stereotype, but when one sees a poorly parked car whose driver's seat is in what must be its forward-most position, (essentially assuring whatever petite person behind the wheel would be instantly decapitated if the airbag was to deploy), one might be inclined to utter a "surprise, surprise." But for your average six foot tall male? There's no excuse for such a flagrant disrespect of neighborhood parking mores.

Clearly, all hell breaks lose when someone displays a lack of courtesy of this caliber. Not one, but TWO of my neighbors took a page from the Dear Crabby book, adamantly blasting this disrespectful individual with strident indictments:



AND


(My favorite part of this one is the "P.S. I pissed on your door handle." In my opinion, that's taking it a little too far, but I admire the author's alacrity.)

The the glove-compartment napkin admonishment, while undoubtedly raw and effective, I find a little cruel. Often they're scribbled in malicious haste, and later you're haunted by visions of remorse, that note you left on the poorly-parked Buick potentially telling cataract-riddled 87-year old Great-Aunt Evelyn to go fuck herself. Darling old Evelyn, while she might've parked like Helen Keller, doesn't deserve that kind of bullcrap at this advanced stage of her life. That's why I prefer the official-looking citation put out by my personal heroes at youparklikeanasshole.com; this gets the point across, cuts down on regrets (such as pissing on a door handle), and also allows one to, much like a Citizens Arrest, to essentially issue a Citizens Parking Ticket:


It gets tiresome being the self-appointed enforcer, quixotically meting and doling unto a savage race time after time, and in this case it was a pleasure to see someone else throwing themselves on the asshole grenade. I was able to stand by and merely chuckle, my car safely ensconced in my driveway, above the riff-raff jockeying for the precious few parking spaces on the street; my crabbiness reservoir remaining blessedly full for next time the dam is released - it can't be long from now anyway. In the meantime be compassionate in your Citizens Parking Citations, and think twice before leaving a nasty note for poor Great-Aunt Evelyn, even if she can't park for shit.

Best regards,
Dear Crabby

Dear Major Motion Picture DRIVE

Dear DRIVE:

You presented me with a singular movie-going experience recently. Ryan Gosling is undoubtedly a hugely talented actor with a broad range, but it was especially enjoyable to watch him play a role that included a very small amount of actual talking. I find the striking figure that Gosling cuts undermined whenever he opens his mouth - as he consistently sounds very much like the actual character he played in DRIVE: a guy who might roll out from under your car covered in grease and say in his signature breathy, phlegmy cant - "brakes'r shot" - a masculine, recently awakened Jackie Kennedy with bronchitis.


Be that as it may, it was a pleasure to watch him flex his muscles (theatrical and otherwise), crack his knuckles (his signature move in the film), and watch a buncha people get blown to high heaven. The body count to character ratio in this film is alarmingly high. By my count, nine people were killed (shot, stabbed, stomped to death, forcibly drowned, impaled or otherwise eviscerated) in a film with approximately eight major characters. There was a A LOT of violence in this film. So much so that it presented an all-too clear divide in theater 1 at the Landmark at the Westside Pavilion; a theater that is, for whatever reason, lousy with the elderly at all shows starting before 9pm. Navigating the sheer number of walkers, canes and wheelchairs in the lobby and Lexuses with handicapped placards in the parking garage is a tricky exercise requiring a Gosling-esque deftness of hand-eye coordination.

While many members of the audience were hugely engaged, even bursting into spontaneous applause at one point as Gosling made short order of a pair of armed, malice-perpetrating hooligans by turning their own weapons against them, at least a dozen people left the theater. These dissatisfied patrons included one elderly woman seated in the front row, who, while lurching into an upright position with the aid of her walker during a particularly quiet scene, ripped a very loud fart, easily audible from our seats in Row J. (This classic old-person-getting-out-of-a-chair fart was particularly favored by my late grandfather, who, while not acknowledging that it was happening in any way, would look you in the eye as he farted, testing the will of your decorum.) This set off a burst of muffled tittering amongst quite a few patrons as, her verdict on the picture audibly rendered, the woman walkered her way out of the theater.

In spite of the gratuitous violence and near pants-pooping of a fellow theater patron, I enjoyed the film, and, more importantly, was hugely proud/unnerved to be seeing it in Los Angeles. This movie pulled no punches on the city, presenting a gritty downtown, Echo Park and far eastern reaches of the Valley; neighborhoods of which I've barely plumbed the depths, neighborhoods I wouldn't be comfortable hot-air ballooning over. The thing about this movie is that it totally validated the deep, institutional unease I feel about this city. For a movie with a Canadian star directed by a guy from Denmark (outsourcing as we do every job in America these days), it handily put its finger on the pulse of, if not my Los Angeles, but the Los Angeles I fear and know is out there. And that was the crux of it - the kind sof violence shown in this film is violence I feel on a very deep level is happening somewhere in LA all the time. People getting stabbed in parking garages? Check. People getting shot while robbing pawn shops? Check. Christina Hendricks getting blown away by a shotgun at extremely close range? Double Check. (This scene was particularly disturbing, as someone stood in a parking lot outside the bathroom window of a motel she and Gosling were in, aiming at her through one of those LA-special Venetian slat windows that have always inexplicably freaked me out. Now I can bolster this irrational fear with a little legitimacy.)

One of the films' strengths was that it so gracefully captured the pleasure and Lone Ranger-essence one feels of driving on LA's empty roads at night. In a few scenes, Gosling goes for a ride in his customized, 70s El Camino-ish thing, and I very much got it. I've felt that feeling, granted, not on the way to or from a bank heist, but regardless, it is liberating.



Driving home after consuming a prodigious amount of Mexican food (and margaritas) later in the day, I channeled my inner Gosling and flew down the newly resurfaced stretch of Wilshire Boulevard by the Los Angeles Country Club, a view of Beverly Hills and Downtown twinkling in the distance glimmered before me. I rowed through the gears, pushing my car's wheezing turbo to its limits -all I needed was a pair of driving gloves, some phlegm in my throat, and the doll from Lars and The Real Girl in the passenger seat, and I just might achieve Gosling status.

And then, acting up as it has over the past couple of months, my ten-year old gas gauge failed me. The light never having even come on, I straight-up ran out of gas, and chugged to a stop on Beverly Drive. Ryan Gosling I'll never be. I sighed, and called AAA.

Sinerely,
Dear Crabby