Day 5...Down & Out in LA - 1st July

We are already picking up the lingo. Bathroom is 'restroom' and holidays is 'vacation'. Its all starting to come naturally.

Tried to get up early, but put the alarm on snooze every 10 minutes for 2 hours because we were fucked. Our systems are all out of wack still. We skipped the crappy breakfast and did another 2 hour mission to the beach, this time to Venice. Nathan nearl y had the same spac attack that I had in San Fransisco when I was in the USA last, but instead of crapping on an dlosing it, he held up a bit better than me and got all quiet instead.

Unlike the fabulous write ups about the stunning beaches and eccentric people, it was a simply miserable place. The homelss, the crazy, the poor, the fat, the ugly and the occassional young girl and family chucked in. The beach was lined with crap stores with stuff you'd never buy and food you'd never eat. Lot sof crappy t-shirts, pipes, CD's etc. I ended up thinking it was an experience in itself and had a bit of fun trying to get geurilla shots of some goobie looking people. We ended up seeing a street basketball game at Venice beach and that was highly enjoyable. Lot of shouting, laughing and yelling at the rep angrily when a side didn't win, complete with "fuck, shit and nigger" everywhere. One tall black guy grabbed the ball in one large hand, took him about 3 strides across the court and dunked it. Amazing.

Oh and this is the best part!!! We left for the 2 hour bus drive back to Hollywood right? Well I passed out on the bus and woke up to the driver ordering everyone off the bus and all the passengers protesting loudly. He was saying that it had broken down bit I got the story from the passengers sitting up front: two nice black ladies, an old gay white american guy, and sian guy with a massive purple tumour covering about 3 quarters of his face, a Jewish man who had about 60 star of david necklaces, and another black lady who had Michael Jacksons pigment disorder but only on her arms, so her arms were completely white. (And she was waving them around quite animatedly screaming that she was late for work and the bus driver was a pussy).

It turns out that a crazy lade up the front had threatened the bus driver (I couldn't figure out exactly what but there was possible mention of a bomb) so he chucked us all off the bus and called the police.

Another bus turned up after that upon which the crazy lady, our angry black/white lady and purple tumour dude got on and left. Nate and me stayed behind because we were broke bastards and the other bus that had turned up was from a different company and would have cost us another 75 cents so we waited for another one. I wished we had got on that other bus now!

About 10 minutes later in another bus, we drive past the second bus! It was hauled off the road and surrounded by about 6-8 cop cars with their lights flashing wildly and cops running everywhere and all that. What a laugh! Just for a crazy lady. I guess they take their bomb threats quite seriously. It would have been so funny to be on that bus, and the cops pulling the bus over with idiot tourists leaning out of the window taking photos of them - actually if I had done that I might have been shot so never mind. (I'll tell you about Vegas later!) That black/white lady must have gone nuts! She would have been really late for work now!

America is a lot (especially LA) grittier than the movies show. There is poor quality shit everywhere. And the gap between the two is great, there is no middle ground. You are either charged $60 bucks for a meal or $10-15 bucks and its shit. LA is dirty and grimy and poor and there is no cafe scene in America at all, I don't think they've discovered those joys yet.

It's hard to be healthy. You think a banana smoothie with yoghurt and a chicken salad sandwich would be a good choice right? - WRONG! The smoothie is some weird flavoured iced shit and the chicked is most likely fried. THe salad is simply a think mayo with some green coloured flecks in it. Urgh!

We then headed for Beverly Hills. The bus dropped us off in the suburbs so we had to walk a fair way to get to Rodeo drive. Saw some great mansions and it had a much better neighbourhood watch sign than in Australia! It had a masked bandit comic strip looking dude (whom Nate imitated in a photo, I'll put it on, he looks like a tool. I luv him!) Then we bummed around Rodeo drive but didn't go in the shops or anything, we weren't in the mood. Then we went home to bed coz we had had enough. We are kind of over LA. It's a love/hate relationship.