To the Moon and other observations

The other day we decided to take monkey to the Air & Space Museum down by the USC campus.  This accomplished a few things for us.  We got to watch monkey experience some really cool space stuff AND we had the pleasure of bowing to the football god, i.e., genuflecting before the altar at the Church of the Coliseum AND hee hee, watch them prepare the ground for ::angels sing:: the soon to be upon us, new season’s grass.  I am faint with giddiness after just typing that.  FIGHT ON.  And if you don’t understand that, then, well, I am very sorry for you. 

And along this little field trip journey, I invite you to walk with me thru several random observations of the day:

• If you like to eat fried chicken while getting your nails done, Figueroa is the street for you.  These two businesses outnumber all others by a ten to one margin.  Hmmm.  Finger.  Lickin’.  Good . . . goes together like peas & carrots.  Oh, and lima beans. 
• There seems to be a certain freedom in some homeless street people.  I mean, not to make light of what must be a terrifying existence, but still, there has got to be some kind of relief in reaching the point where you just don’t give a rat’s ASS what other people think of you.  I fear I may flirt with that line myself at times.
• If you must take your child into the Natural History Museum store, please listen closely.  There are many amazing and desirable things available for purchase in there and if you do not want your head to explode from hearing the words “I BUY THIS, MAMA?” at a decible of “ONE LOUDER” every three seconds, than please, for the love of god, strap your monkey to a papoose board and buckle on one of those Hannibal Lector muzzles BEFORE entering.
• The McDonalds in the Natural History Museum building is very clean.  Super, freaky-deaky clean.  Clean enough to eat off the floor.  Yep, which I did.  Cause no french fry shall go to waste while I’m around.  Ok, I didn’t just drop the french fry on the floor and then pick it up and put it in my mouth.  I picked it up and set it to the side of all the other french fries because I was too lazy to get up and put it in the trash.  And it sat there long enough that I forgot it had ever touched the floor and I was all ‘hey, there’s another fry, need that.’ 
• If you must use tape to hold your automobile together, here’s a tip:  they make BLACK tape.  Cause nothing screams tacky like electric blue tape.
• I am a big time fritter-er and crap gather-er.
• Our downtown buildings kinda blow.  There is very little wow factor in these tall, faceless towers.  I mean, if I were some big muckity muck and I were paying a GAZILLION dollars for a skyscraper and the architects made a big production of presenting a NEW IDEA FOR A TALL BUILDING to me and then they whipped off the sheet and showed me a clone of the other fifty buildings that are already there, I think I’d be a little pissed off.  But apparently not so.
• It’s best NOT to be driving thru downtown on an afternoon when there is a Laker game AND a Dodger game AND the American Idol Finale. 
• Taggers are really creative.  I mean, how do they reach those places?  Do all gansta cars have a built-in, telescoping ladder and they just stop on the freeway, pop the top and BAM up they scamper to spraypaint CHAKA #792 while their ass is swaying in the breeze?  I’m talking creative here.  These are the guys who should be designing the next skyscraper.    
• Why do they call it the L.A. River?  Having lived a mile from Lock 7 of the Erie Canal, which is on a REAL RIVER, I think this qualifies me to pass judgement.  Come on people.  Who do these California oversized gutter river namers think they’re kidding?
• Why did they add lights, and colored lights at that, to that big water pipe thing coming downhill next to the freeway?  And then, once having added the lights, why don’t they change the bulbs once in a while?  Cause even though I question it’s existence, the reality is, I kinda liked the colored lights.  And who lives in that one house at the base of it?  Are they the water pipe keepers? 

And then we were home.  I know.  Exhausting being me isn’t it?