A Chili In The Air
Here’s the thing. Forty hours ago give or take I’m cruising home from Canoga having wrapped my latest — a real high-concept piece of shit with a three-day shoot in an ungodly hot industrial building. If you don’t know what goes on in industrial buildings out Canoga way then Google it because I’m not your teacher.
My bike is purring between my legs down the 101 under the Barham Bridge then up over the Cahuenga Pass and I’m 80 miles per hour out of the valley heat and into into the westside cool and life is good. Real good. I’m on my way back to my place off Alameda south of downtown where my latest Desiree or Delores or Delana or otherwise-named delight de soir probably got her ass up out of bed perhaps about an hour ago and has probably already sniffed herself through my stash of pharm grade and is borderline OD’d, more fixated on the blood from her nostrils spilling down the drain instead of getting focused on getting herself cleaned up so we can trip over to take our seats at Staples and watch Kobe & Kompany continue kicking the ass they started before the all-star break.
Then something makes me exit the freeway south of Silver Lake. Out of fucking nowhere. Some urge or intuition, and I always heed such unexplainables. So I’m off and in a brief span I’m downtown bound on Beverly Boulevard. I pass the county social services building on my right, a fortress prison I vaguely recall having to visit on many occasions with my mother when I was a kid. Tommy’s goes by busy on my left. I get a whiff of the chili in the air and a glimpse of a security guard who must be all of five feet tall and packing a .45-caliber revolver with an eight inch barrel that dangles practically all the way from his hip to his knee.
It’s troubled times when you need Yosemite Sam to stand guard , baby. Troubled fucking times. I don’t care how good the burgers are.