mood: mandatory 8-countmusic: 'bizarre love triangle' by new order

the fog is thick. 'i can't see my mitten in front of my face.' it's night in beverly hills and when night hits beverly hills, it takes no prisoners.

the proof is in the trees. the looming palms waving in the wind, dodging in and out of the fog. the sturdy oaks, rigid in their purposes. the beautifully ethereal willows, waving their olive oyl arms in the grayed night sky.

the car is old, but not too old. and the car matters, yes it does. sailing like a lead slab in a faded red convertible '56 cadillac, coasting on pure inertia, the world is magic. putt-putt-putting down the majestic roads in a seafoam geo metro is certainly an experience. mind i didn't say what kind.

but extremes are not the case here, and at the same time they are. while we'd like to be lavish in our 8-mile-per-gallon deuce-and-a-quarter, reality bites hard. a 25-mpg civic is much more desirable, but what kind of california dream is that?

and so we drive, wearing our custom-made salvation army boho-chic gear, and we pretend, because what more is l.a. than a city that likes to pretend? now reality hardly bites. it's a sunny (but not too sunny) day in beverly hills, where we dream within a dream that we could buy any of the million-dollar mansions at the push of a razor thin cell-phone button. cruising along with the top down, the red finish shimmers, but doesn't shine enough to blind us. the perfect breeze rushing down mount olympus nudges the trees, but doesn't ruin our 'perfectly wind-tousled' hairdon'ts. and those same trees bow at the waist at the perfection of our carefully calculated ignorance. we smile. (but not too hard.)

---Goei---