Just Drive.

Song of the day: "It Don't Move Me" by Peter Bjorn and John.

Drive left, turn right, left, straight, no right, damnit I said left, oh it doesn't matter now, we are stuck in traffic. Ever oppressing traffic. The automobile should be the emblem around here, a big black Model T Ford with a big FU underneath it. I miss trolly cars.

If you have lived here long enough you know the secret back allies. If you have lived here even longer, you incomprehensibly choose the slow crawl of the freeway. At least its a consistent 35 miles, those natives will tell you. That is unless you are behind the jackass on the phone, the guy laughing hysterically in his car, the woman refreshing her makeup, the dude reading the paper, the bitch screaming at her windshield, the man playing drums on his steering wheel, the half blind and deaf old person, or the kid making faces at you. I can't even tell you how many children I have flipped off, ha I kid, I have only done that to one toddler, and he totally deserved it.

The philosophy Angelinos want you to believe is that at least they have an hour to unwind before going to work or home. Yeah, an hour of never ending traffic. Not even witty talk shows can keep me from wanting to shove my gas pedal up the guys ass in front of me. And what is with no one actually knowing how to use their horn around here (though I will admit that never using your horn is far better then overtly using your horn; Im talking about you Boston! Those people will honk before the light even turns green). Once I watched a Mini Van honk their annoyance at a Big Rig (minus the Rig) as it swerved in front of them. Wrong move, Mini Van. The Big Rig proceeded to reenact "Duel" with the poor Mini Van for three miles, and whenever traffic came to a stop the guy would get out of his Rig and run towards the Mini Van with a crowbar in hand. He must have been new to LA. Or just released from the overflowing Los Angeles prisons. I say former.

Though when the highways are free, which is about one hour every day, you get speed racers. Highways are not racetracks mister, and the spoiler on your car does not make you a racecar driver. Last night, I was privy to a speedracer deciding to make my neighborhood of stop signs his little drifting racetrack. Grinding brakes at two in the morning, yes please! It's almost as delicious as having to listen to my neighbors having nasty pig sex with their windows wide open.

And if you, for whatever reason, decide to use the highway on the weekend evenings, which you will because everyone needs to drive forty minutes to go anywhere cool in this city, you will be privy to drunk drivers. Thats one thing drunk drivers have going for them, they stay clear of local roads because the cops like to set up surprise check points, so instead they keep to the freeways. Smart thinking guys, you live to drive drunk another day. I guess the PoPos feel that if you drunkenly slam into a car on a freeway going 70 mph, more than likely killing a poor civilian and his family, its better than slamming into a parked empty car on a local road while going 30 mph. Priorities. Save the beamer, kill the family.

Perhaps I should say something nice about the highways. Ok. Here it goes. For one, they keep growing, which I guess stimulates the economy in some way. Two, my friend gave birth to his son on two merging Los Angeles highways; rush hour was so bad that it was almost like he was in a parking lot, which prevented him from actually making it to the hospital in time, but did make it safer for him to deliver his kin on the side of the road. Three, umm...hang on I'm sure there is something there...yeah I got nothing.

We do have other forms of transportation. There is the bus system, which could be decent if you didnt have to switch three buses to get to one destination. And we do have a metro system, but instead of pouring money into that mode, thus greatly reducing the dependency of a car and uniting this large city, we instead poor it into the growth of a highway. I mean, if you dont have nine lanes what kind of city are YOU?

So if you plan to move to LA, plan to own a car, plan to drive a lot, and plan to enjoy the brown haze that floats below the beautiful blue of the sky.