A Typical Day In LA

Where in Los Angeles can you buy a shot glass, a cheap plastic bracelet and Chinese finger cuffs for 40 dollars? The answer is bar/adult playground Dave and Busters, and that’s what I did with my friends Chang and Mark on a warm July Saturday in Los Angeles after lunch at In’N’Out Burger and almost blowing up a gas station trying to jump a dead battery.

We won the bulk of our gift shop tickets playing Skee-Ball – bowling’s under appreciated cousin – but we did pretty well shooting baskets and playing the classic carnival game where eight people roll balls into holes and each player’s horse clunks awkwardly from right to left across the “track.” “Roll ‘em, race ‘em, horsy chase ‘em!” is the best description I’ve heard.

The modern video arcade features dozens of head-to-head racing games – Formula One, stock car, dune buggy, Jet Ski, Harley Davidson, big rig – and we tried them all. However, you realize pretty quickly that they are all essentially the same game. You just sit on a slightly different shaped thing, and the screen shows a barely modified track or cityscape. In any event, your game is over in 24 seconds and you walk away wondering how you ever got a driver’s license.

Chang drove home, because he won all the driving games. I was in the front seat struggling to get out of the Chinese finger cuffs (Chang refused to reveal the secret escape maneuver, and he isn’t even Chinese!), and watching Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” on the car’s in-dash DVD player. Yes, you heard me correctly. In America, you can have a DVD player installed in your car. It’s probably illegal, but it’s undeniably awesome.

So we’re creeping through LA traffic, losing our cool, and watching Michael Douglas creep through LA traffic, and lose his cool. For my money he gives the most enjoyable performance of his career, with Exhibit A being his disgruntled character’s justification for busting up a grocery store with a baseball bat: “I’m exercising my rights as a consumer.” Don’t try that line on the officer who nabs you for the unlicensed mobile movie theatre.

The rest of the day was punctuated by dinner at a Korean restaurant, watching old episodes of News Radio, falling off a hand-truck and almost breaking my neck, and staying up until sunrise talking about who knows what with friends old and new. Just a typical day in Los Angeles.