Rock 'n Roam

Greetings, friends!  I understand if you’re upset with me, given that it’s been over a year since I last wrote.  In my defense, I did write half a blog post within my first three weeks of moving to LA, I just didn’t finish it.  I might as well have done that entirely on purpose though, because it now makes for a pretty interesting contrast, seeing as how the first half was written on January 20th 2015, and the second half will be written today, July 14th 2016.

So without further ado here’s Part A, with a few of my current edits in italics. After all, what’s the fun in reading an old blog post if you can’t comment on all the things you wish you hadn’t written?

21 days in LA and I’ve already had far too many ridiculous experiences to accurately depict in one relatively entertaining blog post (Really, far too many?  Get over yourself ‘year-ago Elena’).  Therefore, this particular entry will be in list format (lazy) and will only include my most unexpected encounters, rather than the inevitable tourist adventures/the hike I took above the Hollywood sign (am I name-dropping the Hollywood sign?!).  Here goes.

1.) I’ve accidentally eaten like a vegan more than 10 times already.  When I say accidentally, I don’t mean that I bit into a soy burger expecting it to taste like juicy cow.  I just mean that before moving here, I was unaware that there was a universe in which I would not only consider eating vegan, but be constantly persuaded to do so and then actually enjoy it.  Because I love cheese.  I love burgers.  I love meaty burritos.  But somehow in LA, I’ve found it acceptable to spontaneously go to Vegan restaurants, over and over again.  This is mostly because it’s hard to find a list of Yelp search results that aren’t dominated by them, and when you do get the chance to receive a first-hand dinner recommendation from a local Angeleno (I promise to never say this again), they just mention the exact same restaurants.  Then once you get there, everything is so insanely addicting, you decide it must have crack in it.  Somewhere in the hills of Silver lake, a sly, business-savvy vegan crack-dealer is rolling around laughing in a giant pile of money.

2.)Speaking of crack, I accidentally went to a dinner party thrown just for me by a cute and friendly couple, both of whom happened to be former crack addicts.  No offense if they’re reading this, but come on, what do you expect when you mention something like that within 5 minutes of meeting me?  The guy, we’ll call him James, was a friend of a friend and had just recently gotten out of rehab.  He met his girlfriend there, we’ll call her Julia, and apparently it was love at first sight.  James immediately revealed to me, “I thought I was putting myself through rehab because of all the weed; I hadn’t even thought about all the times I did crack in my bathroom.”  For some reason (probably boredom and the fact that I was friendless), I decided to accept their invitation to watch a movie after dinner, which happened to be an erotic French thriller.  Even odder than that, we did not sit on a couch with lots of space between us, but rather on their bed which was definitely intended for two.  I guess James thought this was the opportune time to take off his shirt and boast his six pack, which was probably just as awkward for Julia as it was for me.  In the most heated moment of the movie, he looked over at her, snarled, and said “I can’t wait to ravish you later.”  Needless to say, I left as soon as the movie finished and was unavailable the next time they texted me to hang out.

3.) Despite the fact that I’m not a party person whatsoever, I accidentally ended up at a party in “The Valley”.  Yes, that valley.  This was another, but different friend-of-a-friend type situation, and the apartment was owned by an attractive lesbian couple who were working on creating a web series together.  Their roommate was a 22 year old blonde model with big tweety-bird eyes, who certainly didn’t fight the stereotype when she was asked to do a Bostonian accent during a game of Heads Up.  Her confused reply was “Where’s Bostonia?!” after which everyone laughed at her, but swore they were laughing with her.  A few nights later, the same friend who took me to the valley also brought me to some swanky hotel with a rooftop bar and pool in Downtown LA.  I wasn’t prepared or dressed for the occasion (even if I had been prepared, I couldn’t possibly have been dressed for the occasion), so truly I only got in because this friend had a model friend who had another model friend who happened to bartend there.  I then proceeded to get drunk by the pool (off of 2 drinks) and was somehow hungover for 3 days straight.

….And we’ve made it to present day!  Side note: I definitely went to more parties in my first few weeks than I have in the year and a half since.  Not only that, but I’m pretty sure I only visit a Vegan restaurant about 1 in every 20 times I go out to eat these days.  After all, cheese is way too fucking good to actively avoid.  Moving on to Part B, to pay tribute to Year-Ago-Elena (and because I’m still lazy), I’ll continue in list format.

4.) When I first moved to LA, I vowed never to take any form of group exercise class, whether it be yoga, hot yoga, pilates, Barre classes or Boxing.  Not just because I really detest group exercise, but because it’s expensive and lame, especially when there are hundreds of hikes in the LA area.  Hiking is much more scenic than the backside of a bunch of sweaty girls, and it’s also free. But alas, after a year and a half, I gave in and went to a Soul Cycle class.  Don’t be fooled…Soul Cycle is basically just a Spin class, and before I went to one I would’ve been hard pressed to guess what that even meant.  Do I just spin around and around until I fall on my ass and call it exercise?  Seriously, I had no idea.  But no, a Spin Class is intense indoor cycling for 45 minutes straight, and Soul Cycle is precisely that except on steroids.  It’s the latest craze in LA, and honestly it’s kind of a cult.  The only difference is instead of religious fanatics, it’s filled with famous people and locals who have way too much energy and enjoy cycling to Beyonce at 9 in the morning.  The muscled instructor shouts at you to keep going, to push a little bit harder until you reach inner peace, or at least until you get over that guy who never called you back.  They encourage you to high five the person on your left, and to tell the person on your right how good of a job they’re doing.  And if you’re a “first-time rider”, they speak to you like it’s your first trip to the brave new world and they can’t wait to show you how to achieve enlightenment of the soul cycle variety.  As you may have guessed, I was both a first and last-time rider on that day.

5.) Speaking of first-time experiences, I recently decided to embrace my inner 19 year old by getting my nose pierced with my best friend on a whim.  We didn’t do any research ahead of time whatsoever unless you count quickly pulling up the Yelp app and randomly picking out the place with the most 5 star reviews in Hollywood.  Fast forward half an hour, and a tattoo covered man called “Mr. Spooky” was shoving a giant needle through my right nostril.  “That barely hurt!” I squealed at Christi with excitement like the silly person I am.  Little did I know that the months-long disaster ahead of me would make me want to bash my head against a wall (if it weren’t the fact that my nose would be in even more pain afterwards.)  To sum up, after a few weeks of screaming bloody murder every time I snagged the piercing on my towel, shirt, or my boyfriend’s face, a visible red bump developed under the piercing.  Since that time, and it’s been 4 months mind you, it’s yet to completely go away.  Sure, It hides out for a while when I treat it just right, but it eventually ends up rearing its ugly head.  That’s why I’ve named it Bob.  If you’ve ever seen the Bill Murray classic, What about Bob? you’ll understand why.  “You think he’s gone?!  He’s not gone…Bob’s never gone!!”

6.) On a more serious note, let’s not forget about the time I got attacked by massive waves in Malibu and accidentally almost drowned.  Sure, maybe that sounds (and is) a bit dramatic but at the time I certainly felt it was a real possibility.  Despite the fact that I lived in Hawaii for over two years, I’d never experienced any wave terror like this before.  When I say terror, I mean that they truly made me feel personally victimized.  It all started with me happily wading and splashing about in the water with a friend, and while the waves were a bit forceful they seemed manageable at the time.  As soon as I was immersed up to my shoulders though, they got larger and more powerful as they began to break.  I dove through them as best as I could (not well), but when a particularly gargantuan one started heading my way, I tried to back out of the water.  Worst idea ever.  It collapsed over my head and pulled me back in with such force that I was thrown hard against the ocean floor.  I tried to use my arms as shields to protect my face from whatever hidden pointy object may try to come into contact with it (and luckily never did).  After I finally felt the pressure of the wave subside, I came back up for air just in time for another one twice it’s size to crash down on me and force me back into the abyss.  I won’t continue to go into more cringe-worthy details, but after thrashing about like this for what felt like ages, I was finally able to drag myself safely to the shore.  I remember thinking that the beach was awfully quiet in contrast, apart from my friend reassuringly welcoming me back to land.  Beachgoers continued to sunbathe on their towels as if they had no idea that I’d just battled it out against the wave apocalypse.  Some of them however did lift their heads to gawk at me, as I most definitely looked like a sand creature from the black lagoon.  For weeks afterwards, salt water haunted my ears, my legs were covered in battle scars and I continued to find sand in every crevice of my body.  Suffice it to say, I won’t be braving those kind of ocean conditions again anytime soon.

So now that this is over, I hereby promise to never format a future blog post like a Buzzfeed article ever again.  I also look forward to more unexpected journeys in LA, but i’ll be completely satisfied if I don’t have to repeat any of the aforementioned adventures.  Cheers to my next post, which will hopefully be written in less than 18 months.