| Jun. 24th, 2007 @ 11:59 pm adventures in solitude |
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Because if I wanted to wear a tie, I'd wear a tie, okay? What? Oh, fuck off, Helen, you are such a -- oh, hello there! Fancy seeing you drop by. How are the families? The new jobs? I have been reading all about them, I assure you. I've just been having a few too many escapades in a few too many large American cities to check in too often myself.
I write this from a hotel room in Los Angeles, where the law firm that employs me this summer has brought me and my colleagues for a week of booze and hands-on legal education. It began last evening, at the firm's annual Rose Bowl party -- one of the strangest events I have ever had the mixed pleasure of attending. Each summer the firm rents out the Rose Bowl -- the large stadium home to the eponymous college football event -- and sets up trampolines, moon bounces, American Gladiators-style jousts, couches, buffets, bars, a stage and a dance floor, and sets its employees, its clients, and, I shit you not, a bunch of pirates, loose for the night. I discovered an interesting kamikaze strategy in the joust that took my opponent quite by surprise.
Hotel showers are confusing.
This morning I went to a water park -- Raging Waters -- with Marc and his law school classmate, and we marveled at the half-assed branding attempts: "Have a raging day!" exclaimed a road sign as we drove in, and the overpriced fast food joints hawked the "Raging Combo." After seeing a sign at the entrance informing us that "Neptune's Fury" would be closed for the day, Marc wondered if all of the rides would be named after some form of anger. It would have been strangely appropriate: while the day was a lot of fun, water parks are, I realized, actually kind of a painful experience, even aside from the increasingly excruciating sunburn I am now wearing. The water slides hurt your back, both because the tubes aren't uniformly smooth, and because you occasionally leave the slide altogether only to slam back into it milliseconds later; the floors scratch and burn your feet to the point where we found ourselves negotiating the walkways by scampering from one shaded area to the next, looking rather ridiculous in the process. (Inexplicably, we seemed to be the only ones doing this -- does everyone else have armored heels or something?) But it was wet, and goofy, and extremely entertaining, and I am very glad to have friends who are still down with a day of water slides, tube rides, and wave pools.
Dinner was with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) peterwiggin and Yael, who were kind enough to pick me up and take me for delicious french-dipped sandwiches, though the latter did not happen until we tried several other downtown restaurants and found them all closed. Downtown Los Angeles apparently does not exist as a destination for anyone who doesn't work in a skyscraper, ever. It's a little depressing.
Most of my time this summer, though, is spent in New York City. I won't bore anyone with the details of my job, which is distressingly (if predictably) unfulfilling despite being well-paying (not that I would ordinarily equate a paycheck with fulfillment), and despite my being good at it. Any doubts I may have harbored about my inability to do this long-term have now been put to rest. That said, I can't say that the summer hasn't had its highlights -- as a workplace, the firm is terrific, with lots of very bright, very engaging, and very capable people; the firm-paid lunches are nice; several fellow summer associates have become fast friends. It's not miserable, exactly. I just can't imagine waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night with the thought that this is what I do. And that's pretty much how I expected to feel.
The cinematic utopia I was expecting in NYC both has and hasn't materialized: there are certainly endless options of movie offerings of all sorts -- it's impossible to see them all -- but it just so happens that 2007 is, in aggregate, the worst movie year in memory. In a desperation move, I did something I never thought I would do -- I went to a test screening. Normally I ignore the people who try to pass out the invites outside the theaters, but when I saw that one of them was peddling tickets to "Stop Loss" -- the new Kimberly Peirce film (she made Boys Don't Cry back when) -- I stopped. This could actually be great, I thought; something that could grab hold of me like virtually nothing this year has managed to do. I was sorely in need of awesomeness, you know? So I grabbed a ticket, and went with a co-worker. It was okay. Angry and political, which was nice, but also kind of artifical and didactic. Like most everything else this summer, a letdown.
The New Pornographers and Midlake are playing a free show in Battery Park on July 4th. I fully expect it to be one of the greatest days of my life. The new NPs album is incredible.
More later, hopefully. I like updating this old thing. Keep in touch. |
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nauseated