10. I can whine about mid 80s temperatures100 degree weather and not be pummeled (in both the physical and verbal sense) by the eavesdropping public.
9 1/2. Prostitutes are generally indistinguishable from the rest, or rather a large portion of the normal female population is generally indistinguishable from prostitutes… guilty.
9. It’s 50/50 whether she is his date or his daughter…
8 1/2. We are the melting pot of the US melting pot… just divided into various districts and subcultures. Little Ethiopia anyone?
8. The street signs in the neighborhood actually say “Little Ethiopia.” (That’s right, LA is legit.)
7. We can drive (but we fly) to Vegas.
6. ANYONE wearing large sunglasses and red lipstick in Hollywood or Beverly Hills is a magnet for tourists and cameras.
5. Gay Pride, Bitches!
4 1/2. Other cities: OMG IT’S A FILM CREW! DO YOU SEE ANY MOVIE STARS?!? WHAT ARE THEY FILMING!?!? OMG I DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE, BUT I WANT THEIR AUTOGRAPHS!
Los Angeles: FUCK FILMING, AGAIN!?!? HERE’S TAKING ANOTHER DETOUR…
4. Other cities: OMG I SAW ON TMZ LAST NIGHT, BRITNEY SPEARS TOTALLY RAN OVER A GUY’S FOOT! THAT’S LIKE SOO CRAZY!
Los Angeles: FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! MY FOOT!
3. Yellow traffic lights actually do mean speed up.
2. Los Angeles people aren’t snobbish like San Francisco “Northern California People.” Though we may eat 100% organic, we are 100% FAKE, and we don’t give a damn about it.
1. Los Angeles is an addiction, the greatest love/hate relationship of all time.
For my first blog post on our newly redesigned site, I find it perfectly fitting to tell you the tale of my maiden voyage to THE ORIGINAL STARBUCKS. Perhaps I did not emphasize that enough.
The Original Starbucks
My tale begins with three college students piling into my roommate(Leigh!)’s car at the wee, early hour of 9:00am. After many miles of sleeping traveling, from city to city and climate to climate, the three students arrive at Berkeley (read: sssssssss) for room and board–specifically couches and the most amazing bread from a small restaurant named La Note.
P.S. I’m just kidding about the sssssssss thing. Between football seasons, I ♥ Berkeley.
Two days of glorious fun in San Francisco pass, of which include miniature tales of dinosaurs, skulls, middle-of-nowhere-sushi, bar hopping, drinking, Saint Patty’s Day celebrations, Leigh purposefully provoking a debate with Brandice so she does not freak out that she is under millions of tons of water in a NON-WATERPROOF tram-thing, and much much more.
Alas, after many more miles of traveling and mountainous driving, the three students arrive in Seattle, which is where our real tale begins…
The first scheduled tourist destination is Pike Place, which for all of those unfamiliar with Seattle, really just means PIKE PLACE STARBUCKS, AKA:
The Original Starbucks
Well, maybe it is the Farmer’s Market of Seattle… but Pike Place is the home of the very first Starbucks EVER. And really this post is just an excuse venue for me to post pictures and brag because anybody who knows me will name my Starbucks addiction as one of my most defining qualities.
As we are walking through the quirky Pike Place, which smells of fish and fish, I see it. There. Without being told this is the original Starbucks (because I am retarded and failed to correlate Pike Place Roast with PIKE PLACE BEING THE HOME OF THE ORIGINAL STARBUCKS), I know. I know this Starbucks must be the first, the original. I walk near the intimidating yet welcoming entrance, one foot slowly following the other, and then stand in awe below the historic uglysiren. (←Must read link to your left)
Immediately upon stepping within the store’s handsomely aged walls, my nostrils fill with the sublime and heavenly smell of… well, STARBUCKS COFFEE. (Geez, what did you expect?) I approach the counter and, with my heart fluttering, order my usual–yet it is completely unusual and intoxicating. Then magically from across the store my drink appears.
A Grande Peppermint Mocha Frappuccino just for me. With a beautiful covering of mocha drizzle, also just for me. The first sip, as it moves from cup to straw to tongue, tastes of complete delight. The frappuccino’s pure magic elicits this behavior:
Before I get into a juicy pawn shop (or thrift store, when I feel like cheating) breakdown, let me just say how much I love Los Angeles. People watching is never boring in the Hollywood side of town, and there are more odd shops, pawn shops, and even Russian Souvenir (soon to be reviewed!) shops than I could ever hope to explore. California may be the Golden State, but Los Angeles is certainly the Eclectic City.
Now then, your favorite pawn shop investigator and mall speed dater sure got her hands dirty (literally) today. Our first stop of this series is Out of the Closet, a thrift store chain benefiting AIDS treatment and care. You know, that big thrift store on Fairfax north of The Grove. I bet you have seen it while driving past hundreds of times…but have you ever gone inside?
Honestly, the best feature was the parking located in the back. Beyond the advantage of convenient parking, this thrift shop did not have many appealing assets. The furniture was few in number (and altogether undesirable), and the books revealed little redemption. Sketchy looking clothing for both men and women seemed to be the focal point of the thrift store, hoarding most of the floor on the scary racks of the unknown. Actually, the scary part was the dressing rooms, or should I say, graciously provided cloth closets-i.e. a small room in the middle of the store made from a sheet that did not hang all the way to the ground. It might have also had a revealing crack or two, but I was too frightened to look. Nudity was not a part of the deal when I devised this series.
The electronics were present in the masses, though not surprisingly; where else would you sell/get rid of them? The resale value of a used electronic rivals that of a used tissue, which would actually be quite useful because, as I mentioned before, the place was not too clean. My hands became quite black after searching through the most promising loot of the building-the vinyl.
In fact after what seemed like forever, I finally claimed my conquest, a small little gem among the piles of rubbish, and for the grand price of …one dollar. Hey, I never said the prices were bad.
I even managed to sneak in a small “speed dating” snippet, though not really, when one of the workers at the thrift shop decided to be not-so-smooth about hitting on me. As I was sifting through the small collection of vinyl and he was returning men’s clothes to their hangers, the conversation went something like this…
Guy: Hey, excuse me. Does this look like women’s or men’s? (holds up a women’s sweater)
Me: Uh, women’s. (weird, quizzical look)
Guy: Oh, thanks. Hey, you must be a DJ too.
Me: Nope. Just looking.
Guy: Oh. (pauses…for a long time) Hey do you know what sea monkeys are?
Me: No. (even larger weird, quizzical look)
Guy: Oh, well you probably think I am strange (yes I do), but I am not. Really, let me show you what I am talking about so you don’t think I am crazy. (but I already do, as he runs off to some secret part of the store and then returns with some “insta-grow sea monkey aquarium set”) See what I mean? Crazy huh?
Me: That’s ridiculous.
So what did I learn from today’s little outing?
#1) Bring hand wipes/sanitizer to next pawn shop (and maybe mall speed dating outings as well).
#2) I should probably consider being slightly nicer if I want this whole mall speed dating thing to be a success (and by success I do not mean land a boyfriend. No. NO. NO. NO! NO!)
What should you learn from my experience? If you plan on visiting Out of the Closet, save your money or spend it at Family Books and/or Canter’s instead.
In case you have not already noticed, I blog and edit for AngeLingo, a USC literary and academic online publication. So yeah…to catch you up on my latest adventures:
With the new year, I have settled on a fresh blog topic of “Mall Speed Dating and Pawn Shops” for your reading pleasure. This semester, in order to make you a more informed Angeleno, I will be scouring the streets for tasty pawn shops hiding precious treasures and delectable jewels. I will be searching high and low from Silver Lake to perhaps even Orange County just to find for you the most outrageous pawn shop owner or manager, full of colorful stories just bursting to be told. I might even squeeze in a 10 minute speed date at a local mall, just to keep things interesting. Drop by the Beverly Center, and who knows, I just might go on a date with you…
One of my many faults (gasp! I am not perfect, oh no!) is that I clutch onto grudges with my sticky, pissy little fingers until my dying day, and I mull over these grudges and their circumstances continuously until they are imprinted into my mind the same as should be the alphabet. Lately, I have been thinking about the time I was rebuked for my sarcastic attitude. Nay, not sarcastic attitude, but more like a sarcastic sense of humor with a spicy touch of sardonicism.
When asked to characterize the perfect significant other or good friend, I am pretty sure that no one would prefer for the person to LACK a sense of humor. Perhaps not always the first quality listed, it usually makes the cut…eventually following rich, handsome, boobs, hot, or dependable, nice, and fun. However, not all humorous sixth senses register as equal on the laugh-o-meter, and the preferred type of funny remains a subjective matter. Not everyone prefers puns to sarcasm or corny jokes to references, but does that mean that a quantitative population of people could entirely dislike a specific type of humor, i.e. sarcasm and sardonicism?
Apparently so since Thomas Carlyle, a nineteenth Scottish historian, claimed, “Sarcasm is the language of the devil, for which reason I have long since so good as denounced it.” Ouch. Not strongly opinionated at all.
I have had run-ins with quite a few people who find my comments disrespectful and offensive. Unfortunately I cannot remember the exact wording of the harsh words spoken to me in my tender junior high years, but I do remember the meanie was a high school boy quite unimpressed by my repartee. We were at a pool party, and I believe I might have said something to the effect of “Ha! That was an amazing hit” in reference to his attempted serve over a volleyball net. He said something similar to “You should really stop it with the sarcasm. People don’t like it, and it’s rude.”
This really hurt. He did not allude to one person’s opinion of my humor, but people’s opinions. He generalized. I was mature, smart, and confident enough to recognize the generalization, but I could not completely fend off the broken feelings that usually accompany being told that a large fraction of one’s personality is undesirable. Sarcasm and sardonicism are not lousy tricks I pull from my back pocket in a desperate moment; they define me, a part of me that I strongly embrace, and are heavily interwoven into my literary voice.
Furthermore, my automatically generated commentary spews from my brain to mouth for the sole purpose of intellectual humor, not to degrade or belittle by any means. After all, had I wanted to be condescending, I could have just recounted the truth: “That serve sucked.” But this judgmental boy brings to question the general public’s perception of sarcasm. Ignoring sardonicism for ease of discussion and narrowing our lens to that of sarcasm, is it considered offensive and disrespectful outside of the snotty collegiate student realm?
Perhaps the perspective changes between generations or regions, same as addressing one’s elders as “sir” and “ma’am”. Truly in my opinion, calling a woman “ma’am” should be considered the cruelest of all insults, considering the person could not bother to take the time to pronounce the full “madam”. I obviously respond only to “mademoiselle”. This demonstrates (loosely) that the rhetoric of respect or lack thereof exists in the eye of the beholder. Language remains a flexible vehicle of communication, traveling extensively across endless terrain and acquiring a plethora of idioms along the way. As the vernacular changes, so does the expression of humor. Nevertheless, in this new generation to which I belong, I still seem to find resistance to my form of wit.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky defined sarcasm as the “last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded”. I do not disagree that some may resort to sarcastic remarks for this purpose, but I honestly cannot recall an instance that I used sarcasm in this manner. As natural as sarcasm comes to me, I use it flippantly not defensively. But I cannot speak for the whole of the planet on the common use of sarcasm. Perhaps majority of the people fall onto sarcasm in desperation for a red herring or to belittle another. Perhaps the general motive is to be acerbic rather than cunning. In fact the Sarcasm Society boldly describes their namesake as such:
never [...] gentle or endearing, but rather as caustic and bitter, describing situations, persons, or things in a derogatory way in order to be funny. Appropriately, the derivations for this brutal form of wit come from the Latin ’sarcasmus,” which stems from the Greek “sarkasmos” and “sarkazein” which means literally “to bite the lips in rage.” [...] Throughout much of history sarcasm was considered a “lower form” of wit because it was considered so unabashedly disrespectful to the person or object being described.
Nevertheless, assuming the existence of proper context clues, should the phrasing of intentions be judged if the intentions themselves are pure? I cannot answer this question, and I have no right to attempt as much. I can promise, though, that the insanely loud sarcastic and sardonic demon controlling the neural communication wires of my brain will never surrender to an alternate form of humor. Or perhaps I should move to Britain, where people celebrate an extensive history of sarcasm.
*Not that I consider Shakespeare to be “urban” but this phrase is actually in the Urban Dictionary. And you thought I failed to include UD in this post. Ha! And yes, I know that is not the actual line.
Rolling Stone, America’s Rock n’ Roll magazine, kicks out its high and mighty top [insert arbitrary number here] lists on every category imaginable-classifying, quantifying, and qualifying things barely tangible enough to be ranked-pertaining to the music industry (and popular culture and politics). A moderately current list of note is Rolling Stone’s “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
Now forget the current lack of credibility floating around Rolling Stone’s aura, and forget the obvious criticism concerning this list. Simply focus on the exclusion of Slash, a.k.a a certain Mr. Saul Hudson. Let us also ponder on the fact that the term “guitar slinger”, or even “legendary guitar slinger”, was practically coined specifically for this man. My bias aside, even non-rocker-musically-ignorant-extra-terrestrials know that the name Slash belongs to a talented and widely respected guitarist; this reputation alone should have at least afforded Slash the ninety-ninth percentile. Let me remind you, he was not number thirty, not fifty, nor eighty-two. He was not ninety-nine. Rolling Stone, for whatever reason, completely and entirely slashed him from the history of rock, guitars, and … Oh and I forgot to mention, he also has his own guitar line.
A list in which Slash HAS been included: The second subcategory of the first definition for “slash” in the Urban Dictionary. Glad that is settled. Oh wait, never mind because also within the category of “slash”, rounding out number six, reads the following British-English definition:
Urinate (chiefly British)
“I’m dying for a slash, but there’s a line for the bog.”
Ignoring the “bog” and diving straight in for the “slash”…peeing? Really? No, not enough terms for urinating exist; let us add a few more. Because PISS, PEE, URINATE, DRAIN THE LIZZARD, et cetera are not sufficient.
Sadly the body’s balancing of water and electrolytes and the legendary musician battle it out throughout the numerous definitions listed. Long live the contributor who wrote:
“Slash f***ing ROCKS! When he’s on stage playing his Gibson Les Paul guitar with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth – you can see true Rock N’ Roll right in front of your eyes!”
Thus, next time you see Slash walking down Sunset Boulevard, stop and give him a hug. He seems to be experiencing difficulty and harsh times, failing to win over the hearts of American magazines and the British vernacular.
P.S. Jack White stuck at number seventeen? Weak-he too deserves a boost. Not that I am biased or anything.
It has now become official: Urbandictionary.com has killed my dreams, betrayed me, and permanently crippled my preferred vocabulary. I can no longer flippantly and obsessively rely on the term “mad hatter” at my convenience for describing any trippy, psychedelic, or curious observations. Truly I have relied on the phrase far too extensively; however, I do not appreciate now having to go cold turkey off the term.
Or perhaps I should blame the urban public and its constant alterations of contextual meanings. So many common words in the English language have acquired so many different vernacular meanings, all entirely unrelated to their proper denotations, that even natively speaking English-folk can no longer properly and efficiently communicate. Notice the subtle difference between “the shit” and “is shit”. Since when does “deface” pertain to an online action rather than a physical show of disrespect, i.e. destroying with intention? No, no. “Deface” means to defriend someone on Facebook.
Wait. Did I just use a previously non-existent word (defriend) and misuse the word friend? You see, the term friend at one time applied to a person known extremely well and considered loyal, fun, and dependable. However, with the dawn of Facebook, the term has been devalued to mere “acquaintance” or “person convenient to make me look popular like I have, like a ton of friends”.
But I digress. This pertains to “mad hatter”. Once such an inspiring character, full of endless literary opportunities, the term now flatly refers to a hand job. Actually, a bad hand job. Not even a good one. In fact the hand job in question, of course called a mad hatter, goes something like this according to Urban Dictionary: “A poorly performed handjob. Usually by a girl who says she is experienced. Yet, in actuality, she jerks you off like a crazed sea dragon.” I myself, as a chick, have never received a “hand job” nonetheless a bad one; however, I can see where the crazed sea dragon would be somewhat of a turn off.
If this were not a horrid enough redefining of my precious, ALAS! Urban Dictionary has provided yet another defacement of the term:
“In this situation, a man would be in the process of getting head from his Partner, while he is standing and she is on her knees. Right before ejaculation the man would pull out, cum in her eyes, sit on top of her head and drop a deuce.
Last night I picked up this ho at the club and when she was giving me head I pulled off a mad hatter.”
See this is the maddening part of it all, the term “mad hatter” is not even necessary for this situation. This event already has a name-”Blumpkins”. Also, a beauty of the English language: numerous and never-ending supplies of words, all to describe the same phenomenon.
Yes, I realize Urban Dictionary does not fully deserve the blame. The convergence of all languages helped form the English language, thus providing multiple words with the same meaning. This I know. I also know that pop culture leads to references that lend to the rewriting of pages and pages within our dictionary bible. Did you like my aforementioned “my precious” reference? Lord of the Rings has officially contributed to our language, our vernacular; however, I must note that the definitions provided on Urban Dictionary for this term are shoddy at best.
Nevertheless, for one cause or for all, the term “mad hatter” has become stricken from my vocabulary archives for fear of a misinterpretation. Contextual clues do not always save the day, especially when the phrase is employed in a vague manner, as I usually intend. Nor does the typical accompanying of sarcasm.
Let it be known that I refer not to a blumpkin when I say that Urban Dictionary and our modern tailoring of the English language have some mad hatter connotations.
Trent’s new website hurts my computer. (Side note: Cannot wait for new computer!)
What did I say? Benedict Metallica. Told you so. (Hint: They changed their minds about the whole downloading thing.)
Absolutely in love with Robert Downey Jr. at the moment.
Apparently it is now my responsibilty to blog elsewhere. So yeah…
MySpace sucks ass. Nothing but freaks and pathetic self-promotional advertisement.
I really hate MySpace.
A message I received on MySpace:
Hi Dear,
am *******, single never married, just saw your lovely profile, its quite interesting. I will so much love to meet you, you can hook me up with my yahoo…….. *******@yahoo.co.uk (Not an actual email, but try it if you like.)
- you can as well mail me you yahoo addy for quick contact. I shall be waiting to hear from you, thanks.
Comments within this WordPress community, also mostly pitiful attempts at self-promotion.
