The Sermon on Limekiln Pike

I've never slept quite that deeply. It was as if I was in a coma. When you wake up and you have 15 minutes to get to work but you need to shower and the drive is 25 minutes, it's sort of a shock to the system.

But here I am, at the office. As productive as ever. Sentence fragments.

What could I randomly bring up right here, right now? Weekend snapshots? (No - that gets old.) Movie review? (Standard Operating Procedure - good.) Songs I like (That's already gotten old.)

Story from my past? Sequels to famous blog posts? Hopes for the future? What do I write about?

Was that an earthquake? I think it was. Either that or that giant crane on Exposition Boulevard collapsed.

Exposition Boulevard - lovely name for a street. That was one of the street names that fascinated me on my first visits to L.A. in the mid-80s, back when the hope for the future was palpable and the dismissal of the past was a given. You see, my family - we liked to move.

So I remembered Exposition. And Imperial Highway. And the boulevards of Hollywood- Santa Monica, Sunset, and Hollywood. And, for some reason, Century Boulevard. Yes I know this all sounds like that Randy Newman song but I swear this is what I noticed then, from the back seat of a family rental car as we scratched our way into what would come next.

My own hope for what comes next: blurry bliss, conversational tangents, dead end street, sunrise, sunset.

The family vacations to southern California in the 80s came often. If I remember correctly - 81, 82, 84, 86 (twice), 87. We would be anchored in Orange where the relatives lived. We would take day trips to Laguna Beach and Los Angeles and once (regrettably) to the San Francisco Bay Area (can't remember where that hotel was but it was nowhere good). We would visit theme parks and vibrant (or dying) malls.

We would return home to Pennsylvania or, later, Minnesota tanner and sleepier. Depending on my timing, I may have returned home before the postcard of the Hollywood sign reached the drummer in New Jersey or before the postcard with the picture of the pier over the Pacific Ocean reached the girl in the trailer park. Hey whatever happened to her? Let me Google that name. No, it's too common. It's pointless. I'll just remember the time we saw Ghostbusters over in Montgomeryville. Or the time we saw The Karate Kid at The Barn.

Enough reminiscing. What have I done lately? Besides building my iTunes library and honing the screenplay? Not much. I think I'll take a walk.