• ⬜ The Getty Villa
• ⬜ Erewhon
• ✅ in-n-out
• ✅ Venice beach (boardwalk)
• ⬜ Laugh Factory
• ✅ Brother's Cousin (westwood/ucla)
• ✅ Barney's beanery (popular with friends)
• ✅ taco truck
• ✅ ask everyone if they work in pictures
• ✅ crush on a girl in the record store
• ✅ sawtelle (little osaka)
• ⬜ the bungalo (90401)
• ⬜ jump off the H of the Hollywood sign

monday october 28th✔

every muscle in my body is sore, i have moved too much. i am going to need a holiday to recover from this holiday. it's 7am. i've had another night of broken sleep and strange, strange dreams. my guts are burning because i keep eating wheat. my whole bed is soaking wet from sweat. i draft an email, but do not send it. i have a quick shower, take my medication, head to denny's to get a little 1400 calorie breakfast. coffee and eggs. maybe the santa fe grill. maybe the all american slam with pancakes. back to the hotel, check out and head to Santa Monica.

ok, ok. b to union, change at 7th, southbound E to SM, switch at westwood for Shelby and little osaka. the right stem of my glasses snapped off during the move so i can barely see a thing. i'm wearing sunglasses now. i can see about 5 inches. i have a little pocket bottle of tequila i picked up on hollywood boulevard. at 7th i stop by a restaurant that opened that week and have a shot of clase azul añejo, $70 a shot, it's the first they've served since they opened, he cuts the plastic off the bottle with a pocket knife. i didn't know tequila could taste like bourbon. very smooth, sweet too. thanks danny.

book it. back down the stairs. girl in a mickey mouse hoody. two guys have disengaged the alarmed gate and i catch it on two fingers as it's closing and slip back through. folks are coming from the santa monica platform over to the long beach platform. ah, westbound platforms is closed but santa monica trains are still leaving just from long beach. okay. the next train says santa monica. okay. we roll along. the voice says "exit here for walt disney concert hall" and the man next to me nearly jumps up out of his own skin to get off the train. must be late to meet the mouse. a few stops later and it says "east los angeles". now, that doesn't seem right. so i take a look at the map. yeah, this train is going to long beach. a poster on the train tells me men 18-25 must register with Selective Service to qualify for student loans or citizenship. we're doing pandemic and we're doing global warfare. centurys seem to live their twenties like i did.

slip out and catch one going the other way. i meet a couple guys in east l.a. and they tell me theyre from east l.a., which is no mystery because they tell me in that east l.a. accent. my favourite english accent in the world, i think, so pretty with all those buzzy spanish vowels and ice skating smooth esses. they tell me to bring some irish women next time, i tell them okay. and we talk about the legality of street drinking in los angeles. it's on the level of "it's illegal but just don't take the piss and you'll be fine" which is a good level. different than mexico city where it's legal for a fee. bribes are okay though, right? they're just a less alienated, more direct version of a universal truth that nothing's illegal if you can afford it.

this new train, also labeled santa monica, changes its mind at 7th street and starts going back the other way. we all get off and i get outside and smoke a cigarette. can't seem to get west of 7th street. the coffee roulette bot on future of coding slack has paired me up with someone who also happens to be in l.a. this week. so we meet up in person. i get an uber to the first stop west of 7th, then take the metro a few more stops west, then hop off and get picked up in a rented car and we head to westwood.

we park in any little round corner with two tiers of restaurants and a parking lot. head to a hong kong eatery where the gentleman proceeds to order a series of things i've never heard of and a bowl of birds feet and i get two beers and some fried rice. we eat well and then head back to the car and head to my hotel where i check in, step out on the balcony, it's beautiful. the sky is cobalt blue and the beach is dirty snow.

we go for a walk to venice beach boardwalk. it's a long walk going through the sand. just kilometer or so, but it's through the sand. i sit down on a bench to rest my feet. there's was an old italian american lady from new york on the bench next to me, name's lucy. she's the second person to tell me where she's from with an accent that means she doesn't need to tell me. we talked about life and ireland and the sunset and everything beautiful and children and the sea and the election and abortion and mexico and long beach and i wished her luck. he was only listening and afterwards he said "i see how it is for you". the boardwalk's pretty, it's like brighton. we get right out to the end. some piers you feel like you're standing alone right at the end of the world but here you feel like you feel you’ve got the world around you. land curves around in both directions, you can see the lights twinkling humanity on each corner. "embraced" he said, he was right. i said that's what i meant when i was talking to lucy about the sunsets, about how they feel true to where they are. the sunsets in london are navy and orange. sometimes a stripe of teal, or a stripe of purple. legacy, regal. but here, like promise, all the colours you'd use to set a scene here. a place where we expanded outwards, towards infinity, before reaching the material reality of the water. no coincidence that nasa and silicon valley are both here, trying to find new frontiers. out to space or inside our souls. i mean that both ways, it is beautiful and it is depraved. humanity will always strive for more and capital will always need more real estate. i feel like jumping into the water and washing away. we walk home. half the way. then i book a lyft.

i sit on the balcony drinking Patrón and wondering about tomorrow.

tuesday, wednesday october 29th, 30th

same hotel today but a different room, i need to dip out for a few hours so i stow my bags and head to the pier. there's a guy practicing lip slide to ollie impossible in the parking lot, i stop a while to watch. he tells me he's practicing until he’s ready to do it at... “you see that pearl hotel over there? they have the best spot for it but here’s it's like a practice ground,” same shape. “i’ll tell you, skaters? we the most… i unplugged from the matrix when i was like twelve” and i wonder what age he is now. maybe three years older than me. i'm wearing my daffodils jumpsuit that’s short sleeved on both ends, i'm not wearing underpants and there’s way too much wind. i wonder if he has a red hot chili peppers tatoo. i liked him, he seemed nice and true.

only, only, only, only...

seems like there's a coast line every direction some how. i’m dry heaving on a corner. maybe a little cheesecake factory meatball will come up. i get excorted down an alley by two cops from the weed store. they tell me, you can't be doing that here. i say, i’m sorry i'm not from around here. they say, that’s okay no liquor no marijuana no tobacco right here and they point at a sign and “enjoy your stay”.

i walk up to santa monica pier. down under the pier and around the i meet a guy called greg and he is fishing. we chat a long time about cities and why we do what we do. he shows me a fish he caught today and tells me there is better catching up on redondo, there you can even take away a crab most days.

at the bar on santa monica pier the bar man tells me “i hope you miss your flight and come back tomorrow”. he tells me i should go watch sunset at point dume. i ride the west coast coaster. maybe everything's beautiful. there's still something missing. i go to a little bar while i'm waiting for the bus and i drink a beer and a tequila. the girl behind me is from back home. she keeps trying to work out if i'm catholic or protestant and i hate every second of it. must be forty-something and you're in Los Angeles with this sun bearing down on you and you can't leave that alone? let it go, please. this is why i fucking left. part of it. afterwards when she's leaving she asks if she can pray for me. i tell her yes you can in the comfort of your hotel room, i'll pray for you too. she goes into some conversation with the lord and i get another tequila.

kayleigh said go to the promenade, shelby said hit up barney's beanery. barney's beanery is on the promenade so i do both at once and i get a bowl of chili like colombo.

christabel sends me a message asking if she could use my sperm to have a baby. i'm not sure if i actually have any sperm due to the hormones, but i tell her okay.

at the bus stop for the bus point dume i meet a nice fella named Zach who tells me he's going somwhere to buy drugs and asks if i can cover his bus fare. on the bus we get talking to this other guy who looks like hollahan who asks me if i want to try a drug he has. he hands me a brown piece of paper and tells me to pop it under my tongue. this other guy from the other end of the bus pulls up and tells me i do not want to take it, it's basically fentanyl. and the guy who looks like hollohan says "nah it's not, this guy's just a christian" he says "i'm not a christian" i slip it under my tongue and thank them both sincerely and step backwards off the bus and then i turn around trip on something and go flying across the ground and catch myself on my face and get a massive scrape on my eyebrow and left cheek and my sunglasses. a mexican guy sitting on a wooden barrel offers me a cigarette and we watch the sunset and talk about palestine and he gives me the rest of his pack and heads back into the kitchen.

i slip over rocks and lose my footing and catch it and down by the water i send a video to a friend. i leave 3 missed calls for 15 people. i'm not enjoying the drug. when i get to the restaurant they give me a menu and i order the corn. the night manager comes over and tells me i have to leave because i'm bleeding. he walks me out and i say something dark to him and go on about my way. i tell him i hope one day he experiences 1% of the kind of pain i've experienced so that he'll have some empathy when somebody just wants corn. a crazy thing to say, and one of the four things i've done that make me feel shame on this trip. that being said, what the hell man? i just needed some corn.

taco bell, traffic, busy roads, sand, water, sand, water, roads and hills and beeeeep bweerrrp the doppler effect and i've walked 3km from malibu now and i look at my phone and i don't know if the time is a.m. or p.m. talked to an early morning runner and he was cordial but i think i might have freaked him out which is fair because i have blood all down the left side of my face and i've walked 4km now. i get back to the hotel. 4.1km from point dume to here.

and i have to switch rooms again. and some of the stuff that happened today might have happened tomorrow. and i draft a few more emails and do not send them. i can't remember too good. i spend a lot of the second day sleeping and eating hot dogs and being sad. defintitely an opiate, i wake up feeling like i left my soul somewhere.

thursday october 31st

to the airport hotel. i introduce my taxi driver to snow tha product and that's a good time where we roll down the streets of L.A. with snow blasting out over speakers. hell yeah. i order a tequila and they give me an orange liqueur. i can't have that much sugar. i go make myself throw up and camp out in the hotel room listening to podcasts and crying a little. i'm not ready to go home, but i can't stay here, i miss my best friend, this fucking sucks.

friday november 1st

first plane drops me in seattle. in the aiport a guy tries converting me to christ and i tell him to fuck off. his daughter tells me she likes my outfit and i say thank you. i liked hers too but i was annoyed at her father for not leaving me alone when i asked him to nor when i told him to and not leaving until i tell him to fuck off. it feels horrible. i eat more than i'm interested in eating. i don't drink anything. i'm sober on the plane to london. i finally draft an email that i actually send. i immediatel wish i'd sent one of the better ones but this one is okay. it's a follow up to a letter i sent before i left.

saturday second november

when i get to london i call her, she doesn't pick up. i should probably take that as a message. i don't. heathrow express. yeah, i sent an email on the plane. yeah, a follow up to the letter i sent in the post before i left. the twenty fifth version of an email i drafted over and over again, some sweeter and some deeper. i'd managed to prevent myself sending any of them in the past by drinking until i stopped feeling anything. but now ive been sober for two full days and i am live right here inside my feelings thoughts and memories. i get off the plane, i switch to a train, and i get off the train at paddington and i exit by the canal. and im listening to john dolan read from celine. and i feel compelled to walk to her apartment and ring the buzzer. and i hear from Hawthorne via dolan “be true ✅, be true ✅, be true ✅, show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be discerned” and i think you know that's what i mean when i say i'm trying to do total honesty on the blog and it's nice to hear that from someone from a couple hundred years ago. and i walk and i walk, and i feel so stupid that im living this life right now when i know i will have to write it and to "be true, show freely" this trait of my very worst. and so i walk to her apartment and i ring the buzzer and there is no answer and i should take that as a sign and i do not. i go and sit down on a bench at the entrance to the park and i call her for the nineteenth time. it gives that european beep this time instead of the trusty british ring ring. i try again. a french voice tells me the call could not be completed. so she’s in france? maybe she’s happy

home, home. i don’t want to go home. but where else is there? my hands are tearing apart carrying this bag everywhere and my shoulder is still and dull and stinging. i drink a little beer, and walk to charing cross (accidentally passing that comedy club... and that bar with the pulley system... i didn't even know where these places were i was just following back then), and i get on the train. and i think about how nice it would be just to hear her voice tell me she doesn't want to talk to me. and the train pulls into blackheath. and on the walk home i pass a window display of sausage dog socks. this is the place i bought the warthog socks three months ago when i got home to find a taxi in the street and she was furious and crying and carrying boxes and i helped her with the boxes and we held each other and we cried and we said we would see each other soon.

so i go in to the little shop and i buy the sausage dog socks. hearing this story, the girl behind the counter says “this is why i live in a bright orange camper van” and she tells me about her art and her music, and i buy some of her art (she’s undercharging) and i ask about her music. she pulls a row of dresses aside and reveals a piano and she starts to play a beautiful arrangement of Sound of Silence, but is interrupted when a lady comes in to return a garment, but when the transaction is done she jumps up and clicks her heels together and plays a beautiful arrangement of Sound of Silence and then she improvises for a while around some chords. i tell her it is very wonderful (it is very wonderful) and i leave and i go home to think about the little arab.

after clanking up the stairs so tired that if i lose focus for a moment i'll become a roack by the ocean, i enter my apartment and i hate it bitterly. i don’t want to be here, i don’t want to be any place but least of all here. this couch is where she sat on my lap and we cried and i told her she is so beautiful and i told her this is not what i want and she asked “what DO you want” and i didn’t feel like i could tell her and i told her “it doesn’t matter what i want” and i told her “Goodbye, Lucky.” and we held eachother tightly and we cried and her taxi came and she went downstairs and the car vroomed off and i thought i heard her coming back up the stairs and i wondered what she’d say when she rang the doorbell and the doorbell rang and it was not for me, and the pizzas weren’t for me, and i pressed #5 and said don’t worry about it mate have a good night mate and went back in to sit on my own on my couch in my exceedingly empty apartment and i felt like a piece of crumpled paper balled up and thrown away and it DID matter what i wanted and i should have said and maybe she just wanted to hear that i still need her… but i won't realize any of that until it’s too late and she’s in france a month from then.

i go back out to see the girl in the shop again and ask her about commissions and we write our details down on pieces of paper and it’s very cute and very sweet. i’d like to commission a drawing of a sunbird for an album i’m working on. i’d like to use the piano in the store for part of it. and she says that's okay as long as she's working (she used to own the store but sold it recently so she could be more free, but she still works there) and out i pop to the bar for a tequila and a beer from Freckles, and then i take the train to city. i get a tequila and a beer at various old haunts. meet someone with a pretty icelandic name. walk through a tunnel. shiver with cold because i’ve dressed for LA. i’m so cold. i don’t want to go home. i go back to Freckles and i watch a band and i tell Freckles we’re going to get matching tattoos and i ask the guitarist if he is okay and he sighs deeply and he says "damn thanks for asking, i'm going through some stuff, but i'm okay.". and i call an old friend to come over and make out but when we start to make out i feel wrong like im cheating and i apologize and we talk for a while and then eat chicken and they go home. i lay down on my bed and it’s bitterly cold and i look at my messages and there is a Read notification now but no reply and i call one last time and it rings in france and i feel like a fool and it’s bitterly cold and i hate this place and i fall asleep

sunday the third of november

so that brings us to today. it has not been possible to connect your call. please try again later. it has not been possible to connect your call. please try again later. it has not been possible to connect your call. please try again later. do you ever feel these days when you catch a bit of news that it's like the start of shaun of the dead? like we're already living in this world war but we haven't noticed yet. it was like reading cory's tweets about the outbreak in wuhan in january he's like "this is serious, it's actually happening" and you're like "huh". maybe i should have stayed in the states so i could go to the border to give my life protecting mexico.

there's some fine writing in this entry, i think, but it needs some editing. way too many sentences start with "i". sometimes that's one purpose, for a rhythm. but other times it's just lazy.

so is that my life? winding up in strange rooms with strange people, none of us really liking each other everything kind of sordid and disgusting, until somebody falls in love with the character i play outside and that love makes a place for me where i can be safe and comfortable and happy... but then in not so long the both of us end up missing the character so much, the character that got killed because in love it's like sugar in warm water, that we tear each other apart and then i'm like this again? that doesn't seem like a life. and how long can it last? it does mean for some good writing and some okay music. nothing's ever enough.

well here's something i made in a hotel room in los angeles. it's only a demo, but it's a hit:

yeah, it'll be a hit. it'll be on the one before #2.

The Apprentice is a good movie. a movie about rape, richness and the importance of sponsorship. it's a horrible watch.

i'm going to Belfast at the end of the week for the first time in 8 years. anyone wanna come with?

does anyone wanna go to that tequila bar that's hidden as a speakeasy through the kitchen of the breakfast club outside borough market?