You mispronounced ‘Long Beach’
Long Beach made the big time in the Olympics over the weekend by appearing in the closing ceremonies with footage filmed at Rosie’s Dog Beach of Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billie Eilish performing against a backdrop of phony palm trees, beautiful, clear water, gorgeous sunshine and a crowd of extras — all that work done for Long Beach ended up flushed down the drain when the NBC announcer said the scene was Venice Beach, which doesn’t have fake palm stress, so, nice screwup, NBC. Way to ruin my night.
Anniversary holiday
By the time you read this — assuming you don’t get a pirated early copy that’s probably awash in errors because it hasn’t yet been hosed down by my editor Jeremiah Dobruck — my wife and I will be either still in the air somewhere over the Pacific or sprawled on Maui’s Kaanapali Beach with a Captain’s Platter and a jug of mai tais.
The trip is a flashback to the island where we spent our honeymoon 45 years ago this week.
It’s also the 44th anniversary of my solo trip to Hawaii when a new airline out of Long Beach (doomed to failure) was offering a cheap flight to the islands and an editor of the newspaper where I was working thought it would be a good idea to send me over to live on $5 a day.
I knew I was in financial trouble the moment I handed over $5 for a night at the youth hostel (I was a youth 44 years ago), blowing my entire day’s budget and forcing me to reset my goal at $10 a day. In those days that was doable. A fin for the hostel and the other $5 to blow any way I wanted. A rice bowl truck came by every evening selling a bowl with rice and whatever topping you wanted. It was massive and kept me alive for 24 hours and left me with enough money left over to split a pitcher of beer and buy a slice at the local pizza joint along with a couple of my hostel pals. At nights we’d go to see free movies at the University of Hawaii across the street from the hostel.
My stories ran in the paper every day. I wrote them in a notebook and dictated them over the phone to the home office.
The paper gave me $100 to spend in case of emergency, and after five days of living like a hobo, the word “emergency” had taken on a fuzzy meaning and I felt that it would allow me, on my last day, to check into a modern highrise on Waikiki, where I slept in a room not shared with a dozen people snoring all night, and the following day luxuriating by the pool and buying cocktails for a couple of guys who were on a three-month break from drilling oil in Alaska.
This week’s trip with my long-suffering wife has already cost a lot more than those I took back in 1979-80 but what the heck, you’re only married for 45 years once.
International Breakfast Quest 2024
My daughter Hannah is off to college next week, following in her father’s barely discernible footsteps that he left there after one week of classes in 1976 or 1977.
Anyway, her schedule makes it impossible for her to accompany me for breakfast as she has throughout this quest for the world’s best most important meal of the day.
We’ll have to see how it plays out, because the only time I’m happy eating breakfast alone in a cafe is when I’m sitting at the counter with a pack of L&Ms and a copy of The Racing Form.
This week, we chose, for perhaps our Last Breakfast, Eggs Etc., at 550 Redondo Ave. Hannah, as usual, went with her standard two eggs over easy, potatoes, bacon and sourdough toast, while I went wild with a granola fruit pancake, which filled the whole platter and was jazzed up with blueberries and bananas. It was a darned tasty flapjack and I’d happily order it again. I’d recommend the single over the double which, if you can polish off that one you’re a better man than I am.
What I’m reading now
“Glory Days” is the sixth collection of comedic stories by Simon Rich, the often hilarious wunderkind who was the youngest writer for “Saturday Night Live” and frequent contributor to The New Yorker.
This collection, as were his others, was brilliant at times, especially in concept, including his piece on the trials and horrible working conditions experienced by a Tooth Fairy and God expressing his regrets to an angel about how he handled the whole Garden of Eden banishment thing.
“Was that too harsh,” asked God.
“Uh, yeah, probably. They ate one piece of fruit.”
Not all the pieces click, but the ideas remain clever and at their best, you’ll laugh out loud.