I'll Take Manhattan

I never look at the weather before I leave the house. It’s a terrible habit I picked up while living in Los Angeles. In LA, the weather just never changes. Today’s weather report in Hell: 72 degrees and sunny, just like every other day. Sure, there are a couple of rainy days in January. But just looking out the window you can tell what the weather will be like for at least the next 48 hours. Besides, everyone drives. So even if it does rain, everyone has an umbrella (along with a sweatshirt and rollerblades) in the trunk just for emergencies. In fact, the flat line weather is such a cliché in Southern California that Steve Martin made it a significant plot point in L.A. Story. It is for this reason that I was caught unawares by the rain in Manhattan tonight on my way home.

Earlier in the day, when I was frantically tearing the house apart looking for my iPod so I could rip Britney’s terrific new CD into it, I noticed my umbrella sitting on the sideboard in my dining room. It came into focus as if a piece of crucial evidence in a Hitchcock movie: a folded newspaper on a motel room nightstand, the flicker of a lighter in a pair of eyeglasses, and now my umbrella lying dormant under a window, a cloudy sky foreshadowing in the background. But I ignored the umbrella to pursue my missing MP3 player. It turns out the iPod was in my backpack all along, right where my umbrella had been until I tossed it out after wearily carrying it around for two unpredictably dry months.

Today I wore my favorite grey wool coat that I picked up last fall at the Barney’s Warehouse Sale. It is a short, fitted jacket that makes me feel like one of the Von Trapp boys in The Sound of Music, my tribute to Gwen Stefani and her “Wind It Up” video. Unfortunately only an old sheep dog smells worse wet than a wool coat. So I ran as quickly as I could through the rain, Britney’s ridiculously hot “Toy Soldier” song urging me along, as I wove a delicate race between umbrella-carrying tourists and the dangerously slippery metal grates strewn about the sidewalks like land mines waiting to fell the unsuspecting with their cruel slickness. Diagram that sentence, bitch!

Britney and Los Angeles were both on my mind as I ran from Rockefeller Center to Grand Central Station. Earlier in the day, Michelle Collins emailed me to let me know that she had quoted me on her Best Week Ever blog. Yesterday on the show, she was raving about Britney’s new album, although with the caveat that it was processed to the point that on some of the songs she sounds like Gwen Stefani. After hearing “Toy Soldier,” I said that it was as “processed as a Kraft single.” Michelle couldn’t believe that I made it up in the moment and expounded on the theory (even further in her blog entry about it), perfecting it for the audience. Her rabid enthusiasm drew me to the Virgin Megastore after the show last night to experience Britney’s collective Blackout for myself. And Michelle is right. It is good. Arguably, the best Britney album ever, especially given how utterly shitty most of her work is.

I will be in Britney’s adopted town of Los Angeles this weekend. I read on PerezHilton.com that she has a new Mercedes SUV, which is good to know. If I see one coming, I will pull over immediately, like when an ambulance is going by. I am in town for my high school reunion. It’s been just over twenty years since I walked out of that school for the last time. It is strange for me to be going back this week since it is also the twentieth anniversary of my lost virginity. What does one give as a gift for that anniversary? A shop-worn, empty box?

All I really care about is looking better than everyone else who comes to the reunion, which is the only reason to go. I remember Cindy Crawford bringing her House of Style crew to her ten year high school reunion and thinking that there is no finer revenge, or better use of a television crew. No doubt her former classmates ran around telling everyone what good friends they had been with the supermodel, only to have those lies ripped to shreds right there on TV for everyone to see. Cindy confronted all of the popular girls who had been so mean to her, and cornered the boys who had refused to ask her out. And she killed them with kindness, a brand of torture porn the makers of the Saw movies could only aspire to. People were more relaxed at the Nuremburg trials. Cindy is my hero.

I don’t have a camera crew to follow me around, nor do I have a TV show. It is unlikely that anyone in my suburban LA high school would be impressed with my lowly satellite radio career. It’s not like I am in the movies or something, as most of them doubtlessly are, even if it is below the line. Then again, I still look pretty good for my age, mostly the product of vanity, no kids, and lots of product. I have a cute suit to wear and I am approximately the same weight I was in high school. Unfortunately, there isn’t anyone from my school that I care to torment. I wouldn’t mind seeing the guy I lost my virginity to. And our pompous class president. Neither of them came to the ten year reunion. Oh well. At least I will get a meal out of it, and a long weekend in Los Angeles. I hope it doesn’t rain though. I already packed nothing but shorts and t-shirts, and true to form, I didn’t bother to check the weather.