Things That Are Tightening My Jaw

 

• Crosswalks — When did ROADS, BY-WAYS and THOROUGHFARES become a non-people-moving morass of Whole Foods shoppers, post-gym lallygagging sweat bodies, and that invisible pedestrian every one  slows down for because — there’s a crosswalk. Someone has to be walking, correct? For the entire road to shut down like a dying smart phone, its battery life spinning as you push and slide (brakes) until it dies?  These things are convenient for those who can’t walk the extra block  yet in reality they threaten the safety of everyone that hopes-for-the best when the motorists are playing “Chopsticks” with their feet lurching ahead 50 feet at a time, not sure if that blotchy grey thing is a stain on the windshield for Drunken Don stumbling from the Formosa Cafe…
• Hollywood— As a grizzled production vet and paid observer of the goings-on in Tinsel Town, I couldn’t be more unimpressed by everything happening in my adopted community of almost 20 years — not the idea of Hollywood — but the 3 square miles that’s more and more resembling Phoenix with a purpose, minus the shiny pickups and screw-faced huckleberry psychosis. As in, it’s all freaking beige. And tan. And that gymnasium wall “green”  — EVERYWHERE. Those same boxes with air vents for design accents and balconies to not ever use sans the ashtray for the cigarette that nobody claims  to want to smoke and I’d bet dollars to  Dorals that half the cars in this town have a pack of something in the glove compartment.
• Red paint — If you’re sensing a trend, you wouldn’t be mistaken. WHO THE HELL is authorizing the slathering of red don’t-you-dare-park-here enamel all over choice parking spots across the city?
• Me –– Am I really whining about road-related angst in the nation’s most notorious gridlock, because if that’s the case, I’m requesting someone box my ears with a pair of car batteries, because bitching about driving in Lipstick City is akin complaining that water is wet.