Kyle Garret's Blog, page 28

Something Different

I think I've been going about this whole blog business wrong.

I approach this and my other blogs as if I'm writing a column.  I think of ideas that could make a good entry, then set to task writing something that's relatively complete.  This can be difficult because I don't always have the time to write a full blown column, and sometimes I just don't have the motivation; you should see all the blog posts that I've started, but never finished.

But this isn't a column, it's a blog.  And the big key to blog success is frequency.

So instead of my usual, rather time consuming blog posts, I'm going to start doing shorter ones that are, well, more conversational in nature -- less column-like.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to do the longer ones because I have a lot of things I'd like to rant about.  But I'd like to update this site more often, so longer entries every time out just aren't realistic.

At the moment, I'm sitting in my half-wall cubicle at my day job.  I've been fortunate to have married a woman who not only makes plenty of money, but also wants me to succeed with my writing.  Basically, this means that I can work part time without financial strain.  These days I only come into the office three days a week, but work from home a few hours here and there.

It's a crazy arrangement, really, and one that I can't imagine having in the future.  I don't make anywhere near the amount of money on my writing that would justify working part time, but Nicole is okay with that (it helps that I make a very small amount of money per hour here, so we're not really leaving much money on the table anyway).  She's okay with it, in no small part because in a few weeks our situations will reverse.

When we move up north, I'm going to have to get a full time job, mostly because I'm the one of us who has varied work experience.  Nicole has plenty of work experience, but it's all in one field, so finding a job in that field is going to take some time.  I, on the other hand, should be able to find something fairly quickly -- in fact, the company I'm with now has an office up north, so I might just end up transferring.

Long story short: the gravy train is coming to an end soon.

And I'm fine with that.  Nicole has been pulling the majority of the weight for the two of us for a while now.  I've written two books while working a full time job in the past, so it's not as if I can't keep up that schedule, too.

No, the strangeness isn't going to be leaving this schedule behind, it's the idea that I still have this schedule for a few more weeks.  So now I feel as if I need to get as much done as possible before the clock strikes midnight.  I need to cram as much into these next four weeks as possible.

Like updating my blog more often.

Los Angeles Part 4

Towards the end of August, 2006, Nicole and I moved into an apartment on Martel Ave. in Los Angeles.  It was still a one bedroom apartment, but it had a balcony, air conditioning, a dishwasher, underground parking -- the little things that make your life so much easier.

I had a friend recently tell me that she considered my neighborhood to be in the heart of Los Angeles which, now when I think about it, is probably a good description.  Our address is Los Angeles.  We don't live in Hollywood, even though we're five minutes from Hollywood and Highland.  We don't live in West Hollywood, even though we're just a few blocks from a very nice strip mall that is called "The West Hollywood Gateway."  We're half a block from Sunset, and maybe a mile from the Sunset Strip.

From this building, I can walk to Meltdown Comics, Guitar Center, and the 7th Veil strip club.

I say "this building" because Nicole and I still live on Martel, albeit in a different apartment, but I'll get to that later on.

I mentioned how this move would usher in a new era of maturity for the two of us, although Nicole was probably farther along than I was.  Apparently, my new found adulthood made me cranky, and as I had no lawn for which children could play on and I could then yell at them to get off, our downstairs neighbor would have to do.

In my defense, the guy was an ass hat.

We were actually kind of sandwiched by problems.  Our apartment was below the pool on the floor above, and anyone who jumped in and hit the bottom of it invariably made a thumping noise on our ceiling.  Even worse, the pump for the jacuzzi was, apparently, situated right above our bedroom.  In theory, this shouldn't have been a problem, since the jacuzzi had hours of operation.  But try telling drunk twentysomethings that they can't use the jacuzzi at three in the morning on a Tuesday.

Actually, I don't need to try; I did it.  A lot.

I won't go into the story about the two naked Russian girls who asked me to join them (actually, that's pretty much the whole story), but I will say that I actually met a lot of people by going up to the roof and asking them to shut the hell up.  When Nicole and I switched apartments, we ran into a number of them, and Nicole was surprised at how many people I knew in this building.  It's entirely because I'm that guy who gets up at some ungodly hour to yell at the kids on his lawn.

Needless to say, the jacuzzi pump and the pool were reasons why we eventually moved.

I also had an ongoing feud with the ass hat who lived below us, a guy we referred to as Abercrombie.  We called him this because, late, late one night, he was talking on his phone while standing on his balcony.  Now, all the balconies on that side of the building face inward, so anything you say while on said balcony carries to all the apartments around it, particularly when you're saying it in the wee hours of the morning and there's no other noise to drown it out.

Abercrombie was informing some young lady that he was on a billboard somewhere in an ad for, you guessed it, Abercrombie and Fitch.  And, let's face facts, if I needed a reason to dislike the guy, that would have been enough.  But he was constantly loud, with complete disregard for his neighbors.  Be it music or loud phone conversations on his balcony at ungodly hours, he had no idea that anyone existed other than him.

Eventually, our property manager arranged to move him into another apartment, that's how bad it got.

I should also point out that the girl he was on the phone with that first night was someone he'd met online.  I guess Abercrombie didn't have a lot of information about this girl, as after a half hour of hitting on her over the phone, he asked her how old she was.  I didn't hear her answer, but I heard his: "Thirteen??"

Aside from my descent into grumpy old man territory, I made an actual big step towards adulthood when I (someone would say finally) asked Nicole to marry me.  The story of our engagement is, of course, rife with eccentricities, but I'll leave that for another blog entry, if anyone's interested.  Needless to say, it was a pretty big deal.

Here's the thing: Nicole and I have always talked about the future.  Part of the reason we moved into a one bedroom when, really, we could afford something larger, is that we wanted to save money for a house.

But this is Los Angeles and houses are really expensive and take a long, long time to save up for.  And when you add in the aforementioned (very very aforementioned at this point) disturbances, staying in that apartment for the amount of time necessary to save for a house would have been counter productive to my quest for sanity.

It was also becoming clear that I really couldn't write in our bedroom and, honestly, I don't think Nicole wanted me writing in our bedroom.  I tend to make a point of submerging myself in the moment when I write, and doing so in a room that had duel purposes was difficult.  Not impossible, mind you, but less than ideal.  Also, I think Nicole wanted to be able to go to bed whenever she wanted and not wait for the muse to pass me over.

Interestingly enough, Nicole had 2 surgeries while we lived in this apartment, both for her sinuses, although the second was a bit more involved.  That second one also happened to fall just a few days before we planned on moving.  Fortunately, we just moved up a floor, to a penthouse in the sky.  Okay, not a penthouse, but a glorious two bedroom apartment, which gave me an office and Nicole a bedroom.

Honestly, moving out of the one bedroom on Martel and into the two bedroom stuck with the theme of stumbling into adulthood.  A one bedroom apartment seemed like the kind of thing that a couple struggling to get by would live in.  It wasn't an apartment that we could really stay in for any length of time.  It was only half of a grown-up apartment.

It was an oddly transitional apartment, and I think the fact that I liked where we ended up makes me like it more than it might deserve.

And now, as always, a few choice songs that were on heavy rotation in that apartment:

Los Angeles Part 3

My apartment on Edgemont would end up being a fairly constant battle.

Not long after I moved in, just six months or so since we'd started dating, I asked Nicole to move in with me.  I fully admit that I'm a man of extremes and I was (and am) in love, so this seemed like the move to make.  Nicole, who has always been the more rational of the two of us, said yes, and a few months after that she was moving in with me.

I had obviously known that this was going to happen at some point down the line, which is why I had Nicole get so involved in the apartment search to begin with.  Since I'd only been there a few months, it didn't seem like Nicole was moving in with me, at least not completely.  The place was, at the time, nearly as much hers as it was mine.

These are the important things to know about that apartment: it was on the 4th floor (top floor) of a building built in the 30's.  It was on the back corner and had a lot of windows, which was good, since it had no air conditioning and heat, as you probably know, tends to rise.  It was a one bedroom apartment, but when you walked in the living room was to the left and the bedroom was to the right.  It really could have been a college suite with a shared kitchen and bathroom, the way it was set up.  There was a spot in the living room where a Murphy bed used to be, which conveniently held my really junky TV stand and everything that went with it.  The bedroom originally had no closet, but at some point whoever owned the building decided to add one by basically just adding a box and sticking it against the wall.  My desk was in the bedroom, which means that if I was writing, Nicole had to be in the living room.

Also, the entire apartment angled toward the center, like it was a sinkhole.  Things constantly rolled off counter tops and tables.

The building had a really old elevator, the kind you see in movies that have that thick, metal door you have to push open yourself.  It was also very small, which meant we had to move pretty much everything up the four flights of stairs.

Just thinking about it makes me tired.

We also lived just a few blocks away from Los Feliz Village, specifically the strip that contains Skylight Books and numerous restaurants and bars.  Being able to walk to that strip was easily the best thing about that apartment.

We also didn't have parking -- we had to find spots on the street, at least until a few months before we moved, when we finally moved up the list and got a spot behind the building.

The parking thing is important only because Nicole was working nights for a big part of our stay.  This meant she'd have to park pretty far away from our building, as all the street parking close by would taken by the time she got home.  It also meant she'd have to walk back to our place in the wee hours of the morning, and I was not a fan of that.

So early each morning, she would call me when she got to the apartment, and I would go downstairs and get in the car with her, and then we'd walk back to the apartment together.  And I'd go back to sleep for a few hours before getting up for work.

The apartment was a battle because it was the hard period of our relationship.  There's a point, I think, after the honeymoon phase wears off and before the bond solidifies that you are both trying to figure each other out, trying to figure yourself out, and trying to figure out how those two things can coexist.  You're merging leagues, but only some of the teams are going to come along.  There's a certain degree of destruction in that, whether we like to think of it that way or not.  There is a life, good or bad, that was fundamentally different than this one, and we have to break it down so that it fits and can come along.

It was not easy.  It was very hard, actually.  The absolute crazy thing about it was that, for some unknown reason, Nicole and I never gave up.  Honestly, I think most sane people would have said, hey, this is way too much work, I'm just going to walk away now before I get in any deeper.  But Nicole and I were determined, which, to be perfectly honest, is one of the main things we have in common.  If either of us sets our mind to something, then we go at it full speed ahead.  If something is important to do, then we do it.

I know for a fact that we came out of that apartment a much stronger couple than when we went in.

This apartment was also where we lived when I started writing my book, "I Pray Hardest When I'm Being Shot At."  My grandfather's death would be the first real tragedy that Nicole and I would weather as a couple.  It would certainly not be the last, and in some ways it was the easiest.  Being with someone as they grieve forms a certain bond, and that bond began between Nicole and I in that apartment.

I turned 30 in that apartment.  Nicole and I spent a week in New York to celebrate.

It was Nicole, of course, who pushed for us to move.  We were both making decent money and we could certainly afford luxuries like parking and air conditioning.

And so, on August 25th, 2006, we began moving into our new apartment on Martel, a building we would live in for years, although we'd later switch apartments.

For all its strife, I do miss that apartment sometimes.  It seems to me that each new apartment has moved me along the maturity scale.  As difficult as living on Edgemont might have been, it seemed simpler.  It still felt young.

Our next apartment would not be like that at all.

Here are a few choice songs that were on heavy rotation for me during my time at the Edgemont place:
(I've also gone back and done the same for the first two parts of this series, if you're interested.  Here's part one and here's part two.)

The Week That Was

Last week was another fun filled one here at Kyle Garret HQ, so here are some handy dandy links for all the action:

Over at the blog for "Pray," I posted another installment in the "Making of" series.

I talk about the two most glaring problems with the DC relaunch on the Destroying Comics blog.

Of course I had to talk about the Indians difficult week over at Ray Chapman's Revenge.

And, finally, this site saw the second installment of the story of my life in Los Angeles, as well as some insights on how comic books influence my work.

I've already got a few pieces in the pipeline, so hopefully this output of content will continue.

The Comic Book Connection

I don't write comic books.

It's not that I haven't tried; I have a bunch of spec scripts and even a few original creations.  But 99% of my time is spent writing other things.

This probably seems weird (particularly to my wife) given how much time (and money) I spend reading comic books.  And, to be honest, they're my number one source of inspiration.

A big part of it is tone.  Because comic books are a visual medium, they can create tone much faster than prose.  Tone is big for me.  I'm not an intricate plotter and I'm not a super genius, so I rely on things like tone to keep people interested.  Right now I'm working on a book that has a very specific tone, and to prepare myself I'm re-reading Sandman, Starman, and All-Star Superman, because they all evoke variations on the tone that I'm going for.

There's also something to be said for the fearlessness of comics.  The comic book audience comes with a certain ability to suspend disbelief in ways that a prose audience doesn't and won't.  Comic books are a language that not everyone speaks, so the audience is specialized, so much so that certain things can be left unsaid.  Since everyone can read prose, the requirements change.  In some ways, this causes writers to take fewer chances, because those chances can fail in big ways.

My evolution as both a reader and a writer has lead me to embracing just how essential comic books are to me creatively.  I have my issues with short stories.  I enjoy a good novel from time to time.  I read a lot of YA books.  But the one staple is, and has always been, comic books.

It's kind of a hard sell, too.  I do a lot of things for the sake of my writing, all of which my lovely and talented wife puts up with.  But it can probably be hard to believe when I tell her I need to order more graphic novels because I'm working on a new book.  It's like saying we should buy a bigger TV or an Xbox for my writing.  It's a particularly hard sell given the current economy; spending money on comics seems excessive.  But the fact is I get more out of comic books than I do out of any prose material.

I like to think I'm taking a comic book aesthetic and applying it to a prose world.  This isn't exactly groundbreaking by any means, but that's what interests me.  In a world where our bookstores are filled almost exclusively with non-fiction and YA, a little magical realism goes a long way.

If I look to comic books for tone, I look to prose for style.  Hopefully the resulting hybrid is something people enjoy.

Los Angeles Part 2

There are things in your life that are nearly unexplainable in their significance.  Generally, these are people, parental figures, heroes, or that special someone who changes your life.  Being the romantic that I am, I have quite a few of these things in my life.  Heck, I wrote an entire book about such things.  Actually, I've written more than one.

My unpublished novel, of which every writer must have at least one, is basically about my apartment at 373 S. Cochran Ave. in Los Angeles.

I moved into that studio apartment on November 10th, 2002.  I would move out on March 28th, 2005.  A lot happened in those two years and five months and, to be perfectly honest, I'm kind of surprised that I didn't live their longer.  It seemed like a big chunk of my life was spent in what was basically one, big room.

I moved up the ladder at my job while I lived in that apartment.  In fact, I worked for the same company before I moved in and still worked for them when I left, which was saying a lot for me at that point in my life.

I wrote a lot.  I wrote a novel.  I wrote "Unrequited."

I found confidence in that apartment; I found self-esteem.  Sanity would come later, but an idea of my worth permeated the walls and surrounded me at night.  I awoke each day knowing who I was.

I dated.  I was never a person who really dated and it's probably a stretch to call it that, but I came as close to dating as someone like me can.  I dated and the act of dating itself was enough for me.

Until I met Nicole.

Funny enough, Nicole loved that apartment, even though I don't know that I ever really cleaned it the entire time I lived there.  It was, in fact, thoroughly cleaned at one point, but that was by this indie film crew that was using it for a movie.  They cleaned the hell out of that place.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would think that one of the things that Nicole loved about that apartment is that it was so completely me.  Walking into that studio was like submerging yourself in Kyle.  And I think that, given that she was introduced to my apartment at the very beginning of our relationship, it was exciting for her.  In a lot of ways, that apartment said more about me than I would ever willingly share.

I can't imagine it was more than, say, 500 square feet.  It was one big room, more or less.  There was a hallway that lead to the bathroom.  That hallway contained the sink, in as the bathroom was just the toilet and the shower.  It was an odd feature to me, but I kind of liked it.  The kitchen was separated by a counter, but was ostensibly a part of the large room.  The far wall consisted of a really large window that basically ran the length of the apartment.  It had vertical blinds and there was an AC unit just below it.  Honestly, that AC unit was plenty for me, as the place wasn't big enough to need anything stronger.

I had one wall painted "Blue Moon."  I had a bookshelf which a girl I dated for a few months bought me for my birthday.  I had a TV that sat on a precarious entertainment stand that has since fallen apart.  Oh, and it was a TV/VCR combo -- I had to be the only person in 2002 to actually buy one of those, but all of my old episode of Buffy and Angel were on VHS.  I had a desk and a computer and a futon that I bought from the #1 Futon Store.  I eventually added a folding table and two chairs.

And that was it.  That was my apartment.  That was my life.  And it was all I needed.

Don't get me wrong, I was as angsty as they came when I lived in that apartment.  My life is far better now than it was back then.  But there's something to be said for how simple that life was.  There's something to be said for having everything right there in front of you.  It was a sanctuary.

It was also something of a prison.

I would have spent the rest of my life in that apartment, I think, or at least far longer than I should have.  I found a certain level of contentment there.  I found security.  It was a place where I could shut myself off, where I could be completely alone and free.  But there was always a ceiling.  There was always a limit to how far I could go, how truly happy I could be, if I stayed in that apartment.  I couldn't keep hiding.

It's not surprising that Nicole was the impetus behind my move, just as she has been the motivating factor in nearly all of the positives decisions I've made since I met her.  By the time I met Nicole, I was making more than enough money to actually afford a bedroom, yet I'd chosen to stay in that studio apartment.  I'd chosen to stay safe.

I moved a good distance away, but by that point I owned a car and could drive to work.  I moved to a completely new neighborhood, one that would bring its own pros and cons.  I made sure that I moved into an apartment that was "Nicole friendly," as I called it.  I wanted her seal of approval on any place I moved into.

It's amazing for me to look back on that time and think about how Nicole helped me come out of my cave and into the light.  She walked me through every step, whether she knew it or not.  And, appropriately enough, the move would be a big step for both of us.



I owe a lot to that studio apartment.  I hope it knows that.

The Week That Was

It was a busy week at Kyle Garret HQ, so here's a quick recap in case you missed anything:

On KyleGarret.com:

I opened voting on the cover of my next book.
I also made some suggestions for post-Harry Potter YA literature.

On Ray Chapman's Revenge:

Reaction to the Tribe being no hit, followed by reaction to the big trade.

On Destroying Comics:

A long overdue review of the first Batwoman collection.

And on ComicsBulletin.com I have a "slugfest" review of the latest issue of Detective Comics.

Busy week with more to come!

Vote on the cover of my next book!

Well, my next eBook, anyway.

Some of you (and judging by the sales numbers, that's not many) have read "Unrequited," as it was the first story in my collection "Unrequited and Other Stories."  Well, I've decided to jump into the eBook game, so I made a few revisions to "Unrequited" and commissioned my very talented friend Roger to come up with a cover.

He sent me the three covers you see below.  So my question to you is this: which do you like best?  Please note that there are actually SIX options in the poll.  I'd love to know what those who have read the story and those who haven't think.

So here they are, the three covers...

#1


#2


#3



<a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/5285137/&qu... cover for Unrequited do you like best?</a>

Post-Potter Depression

"Percy Jackson would kick Harry Potter's ass."

I make this comment to my wife every few months or so.  She generally ignores me.  The other night, though, she actually defended her beloved Potter.  This only made sense given that a) my wife loves all things Harry Potter, b) we were at dinner before going to see the final movie, and c) she was drinking a cocktail that the restaurant called the "Elder Wand."

This is not to say that I dislike Harry Potter, because I don't.  I did introduce the books to my wife, after all.  Basically, I just like to pester her.  Besides, she knows that there are other books out there that are just as good (actually, she'd probably say "nearly" as good).

I should also point out that I know I'm being something of a sellout with this blog entry, as there are millions of "what you should do now that Harry Potter is over" columns on the Internet these days.  I'm also a bit of a hypocrite because I kind of hate these columns.  It's not that I don't think it's great that people are giving exposure to books that perhaps readers have glossed over while in their glazed eyed Harry Potter trance, it's just that writing such things after the final movie came out is kind of silly.  I mean, Harry Potter actually ended years ago, so recommending other books to check out now is kind of late.  Recommending other movies would make more sense.

But far it be from me to stick to my principles or only do things I approve of.  So here are a few awesome suggestions for you YA fans out there.


This is the aforementioned series starring Percy Jackson, "Percy Jackson and the Olympians."  It may be simplistic, I refer to Percy Jackson as the American Harry Potter.  While Harry tends to lean on the angsty side, Percy tends to lean on the "blow things up and figure it out later" side.  While Potter author JK Rowling tends to give a lot of background to her stories (sometimes more than necessary), Percy author Rick Riordan zips through these books at a fast and furious pace.
There's also something of a Huckleberry Finn feeling to Riordan's books.  While Rowling generally keeps her cast at a fictional location or some vague, real world spot, Riordan loads his books up with specific places, and a lot of them.  Percy Jackson travels most of the United States over the course of his adventures, following in a grand tradition of American teenagers hitting the open road (or river).
Riordan is also a prolific writer.  He got his start writing mystery novels and came up with the Percy Jackson books because he wanted to write something for his kids.  For those of you who have spent years waiting for each new Harry Potter book, Riordan currently has not one, but two series being published, with a book for one series released in the spring and the book for the other series released in the fall -- and this comes after his original, five book Percy Jackson series.
Fablehaven is, perhaps, one of the greatest basic ideas I've come across in the YA genre.  The gist, without giving too much away, is that, across the world, there are havens for fables -- animal preserves, if you will, for fantastical creatures.  It's a wonderful idea, rife with potential, and Brandon Mull makes the most of it.  It's actually such a great concept that I wish we got more than just the five books that make up this series.

Mull is an intricate plotter and has a knack for taking seemingly random, fantastical moments and connecting them to something later on.  Like Riordan, and later Rowling, he's also a fan of the quest story, so his characters are often trying to find or solve something.  He's also written "The Candy Shop Wars," which is pretty great in its own right.  The first book in his new series is called "A World Without Heroes," although I'll be honest and say that it doesn't hold up the high standard that Fablehaven established, which isn't Mull's fault -- Fablehaven is a singular concept.

And now for something completely different...

Forget the horrible movie they made of the first book in this series, "The Golden Compass."  This trilogy by Philip Pullman is, as they would say in his native England, completely mental.  The fantastical elements of this series will surely keep most readers engaged, but most of the younger readers will probably miss the theological issues that are raised.  Pullman's biggest achievement (aside from putting in some insanely controversial ideas) is that "His Dark Materials" takes place in a completely different world -- it's not the world we live in, not even a slightly modified world we live in.  Yet he's able to make it feel real, to make us care about these characters, even though they are completely foreign to the audience.

Did I also mention that it's completely insane?


It's hard to saying anything new about a book that is so well known.  The first book in this series is absolutely incredibly, just gut wrenching at every turn, complete with a well earned and fantastic pay off at the end.  The rest of the series...well, the bar was set really high, so it's not unexpected that the later books would fail to reach the mark.  Like Pullman, Collins does an amazing job of getting us to care about characters in a world that is vastly different than our own, but similar enough that we can connect to it.  There's also a lot to be said for the fact that Catniss
There you go, four YA series perfect for anyone who enjoyed the Harry Potter books, and probably for those who didn't.  Lord knows I have more YA books on my shelf, but these are the big, multi-book runs, and should keep you busy for at least a few months.

Los Angeles, Part 1

Most people who decide to move because of a girl do so for that girl -- I did so despite her, or even to spite her.

I landed in Los Angeles on June 9th, 2002. I had never set foot in this city before that night.

The plan, months earlier, had been for me to join my then girlfriend in Los Angeles.  She was moving out here ahead of me and would get us an apartment.  In the ensuing months, however, that relationship ended, and I batted around the idea of simply staying in Atlanta, even though I had already given notice at my job.  Why would I move to Los Angeles for a girl I was no longer with?

I realized, however, that the idea of moving to Los Angeles was easily just as appealing (if not more so) without her than it was with her.  Before I'd graduated from Ohio University, I considered moving to two cities: Atlanta and Los Angeles.  I'd spent two years in Atlanta and was ready for a change.  I had planned on that change.  I was looking forward to it.

And, you know what?  I wasn't going to let that girl stand in the way of that.  I wasn't going to let her determine what I did with myself.  I almost thought of it like staying in Atlanta would be admitting defeat.


The rest of that plan held true: I moved into the apartment that the now ex had gotten for us.  It was a one bedroom.

Over the last nine years I have told this story quite a bit, and almost every time I tell it, people jump to the conclusion that my time in that apartment with my ex was spent being very un-ex like.  And I have to explain to them that they're wrong.  Said theoretical people are always surprised at this, probably because the idea of sharing a one bedroom apartment with an ex over four months seems like it would lead to tricky situations.

But I just turned my Midwest on.

It's weird, looking back on it, to think that I was able to completely shut myself down while I lived with her.  But I did.  I suited myself in impenetrable armor and there was never a chink.

I was jobless for three months, living off of out standing bonuses coming from my last job and, of course, my credit cards.  I spent my days writing and looking for jobs, although more of the former than the latter.  I went for walks around my neighborhood, Little Armenia.  I used the fax machine at the copy place just a block away from the Church of Scientology.

A week after I arrived, I watched the U.S. play (and defeat) Mexico in the World Cup.  I thought it was fantastic to be in a city where such things actually mattered to people.  I watched the game at a friend from high school's house and we drank Coronas.  I think I've only seen him once since then.

The ex worked as a receptionist at a hair salon in Beverly Hills and I started getting my haircut there, even though I couldn't really afford it.  I felt as out of place as could be.

Those first few months were not particularly fun for me, but they were adventurous.  I eventually found a job that wasn't remotely close to where I was living, which meant I had to take the bus.  The Los Angeles public transportation system is a bit of a disaster, mostly because the city is so spread out.  The trains don't really go where you need them to go and the buses are always over crowded because of this.  Every morning, I would wait for my connecting bus on the corner of Santa Monica and LaBrea and watch the transvestites on roller blades glide past me.

My favorite, most often repeated story about riding the bus in Los Angeles is this one:  One day, a fairly old looking homeless man got on.  He stood at the front of the bus and announced to all of us "Today is my birthday! I am 45 years old! And I've been smokin' crack for 20 years!"

All things considered, that's probably a pretty amazing feat.

The lease on our apartment finally ended.  By this point, another friend from college had been staying with us (on the couch), and he and the ex found a new place for themselves.  Since I still didn't have a car, I made a point of finding a new place close to my job.  I managed to find a studio apartment that was only a few blocks from where I worked, which meant I had probably the shortest commute in all of Los Angeles.

That apartment on S. Cochran Ave. would have a huge impact on my life, and give me something of a fresh start.  It would also lead to a lot of changes in my life.