Like anyone born between 1973 and 1989, my decision-making skills were heavily influenced by Oregon Trail, an educational video game in which the player leads his family of five on the titular journey westward in 1848. I spent days in my elementary school’s computer lab, absorbing all the knowledge the game had to impart, but gaining absolutely no relevant experience. As such, I have no idea how to ford a river, but I know when it’s ideal to do so. I have only fired a gun on one occasion, skeet shooting off the side of a cruise ship when I was 131, but I know that bison provide the most meat for the fewest bullets.
Neither of these things matter right now. Neither of these things matter ever, at least not in the fiercely modern world which I inhabit. What does matter is that the itinerary for today has me leaving the state capital in favor of the media capital. Tonight, I will lay my head in Los Angeles, and two main routes can get me there.
The first option would have me remaining on I-5. This is the swifter and more direct route, and, if yesterday’s drive was any indication, will present plenty of opportunities for bovine hunting should the need arise (and should I somehow come into possession of a firearm.) However, it does not present many opportunities for the more important creature comforts, such as restrooms, food, and gasoline, as I-5 passes through primarily rural areas.
On the other hand, state highway 99 runs through a chain of cities and towns, exotic places such as Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield. I will never be too far from civilization, or at least a fort where I can barter with the natives for additional clothing or wagon parts, but this route would appear to be significantly slower.
I elect for the former, and pray I do not die of dysentery along the way.
“They say California is a recipe for a black hole,” Jenny Lewis sings in Rilo Kiley’s “Pictures of Success,” and I’m inclined to agree. I do not like Los Angeles, and the Bay Area seems fine, but while my opinion of this state skews negative, I see the appeal for others. To the west, there’s sun and coastlines and wineries, while to the east, there are mountains on which to ski. For a great many people, California represents the American Dream.
My father’s life, too, was the American Dream for many. The first half, anyway.
The story of Saul Mark Rosen ended with what was supposed to be a routine business trip, but it began 35 years and 27 days earlier in Wakefield, the Boston suburb where we buried him. He was born to Simon and Ethel Rosen a full decade after the younger of his two siblings, leading to speculation amongst our family that he may have been unintended. Despite that, he was not unloved.
Simon was a high-school dropout who washed windows for a living. My father pulled himself up from this working-class background: Starting with both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Northeastern University, then an extended stint at Exxon, before leading the American branch of a small British software company called Prosys Tech. In his final years, he lived a life that was so idyllic it bordered on cliché: wife, two kids2, a house in the suburbs with a pool in the backyard, a basketball hoop in the driveway, and a company car in the garage. He ran and cycled, having taken his doctor’s advice to heart, and possessed a talent for photography that he inherited from his award-winning father.
It seemed as though everything was going according to plan for my father, that he was in the prime of his life.
The summer before he was killed, in July 1988, my dad had to go on a business trip to the Bay Area. My mom’s family had a long-standing tradition of gathering at her parents’ place in Memphis for the 4th of July, so she decided to fly down there, drop my sister and me off with her family, and fly out to San Francisco for a getaway with her husband.
Five years ago, a cousin got married the Bay Area, and my mom, sister, and I met up there for the wedding. Over the course of the weekend, my mom reminisced several times of that trip, speaking glowingly of the wineries they visited and the fun they had without us kids. I could hear the nostalgia in her voice, the longing for a different time in the same place.
The last time my mom had been to San Francisco, my mom was trying to get away from my sister and me. Six months later, we were all she had left.
An hour outside of Los Angeles, I-5 and 99 merge into one mega-highway, with four lanes each way, and then proceed through a state park. Only in Southern California, I think, a disdainful sentiment that won’t leave my head until I leave the region 40 hours from now.
I do not like Los Angeles.
I cross into Los Angeles County at 4 p.m. on a Saturday, and moments later, my GPS warns me of upcoming delays on I-405. I ask it to divert me around the traffic, and, at its suggestion, exit onto a surface street with curves I believed impossible—the kind of curves that I thought only existed in car commercials and perhaps under Scarlett Johansson’s clothes. I glance up as the street passes under the highway, and see cars flying by, not delayed at all. Los Angeles’s traffic, like the rest of the city, appears to be mostly an illusion.
As my GPS instructs, I continue driving down this winding road. At one light, I come to a stop next to a man of indeterminable ethnicity blasting from his 4-Runner what sounds like either polka music or bad salsa. A few lights later, I look around and see a BMW SUV ahead, a Mercedes SUV behind, and an Acura SUV beside me.
I am in Los Angeles.
I do not like Los Angeles.
After the passing of either an eternity or half an hour, I arrive at my hotel and park my Sebring behind a Ferrari at the valet stand.
I do not like Los Angeles.
When I reached out to Maurice about setting up an interview, he recommended this hotel, the Hotel Palomar on Wilshire, if I didn’t have somewhere in mind already, and, well, I didn’t. Now I’m here, and I’ve yet to leave my car, and it already strikes me as excessive. But then, I have low standards for the kinds of places I’m willing to rest my head—I once slept on two chairs pushed together in Honolulu, and another time, in a bathtub in a Newark airport hotel3.
At the front desk, the agent tells me that they don’t have any of the rooms I booked left available, and asks if he can upgrade me from a room with two queen beds to a “vista suite,” which, moments from now, I will discover is a marginally larger room with two queen beds. He then offers me directions to the pool, which I decline, and he provides anyway.
On the way up to my room, the elevator doors open on the floor where I could find the pool, if I were so inclined, and two women in bathing suits enter. One of the women has the most blatant breast implants I’ve seen since that time my college roommates hired a stripper for their friend’s birthday party. When I finally make it to my vista suite on the 17th floor, I discover it features a view that would probably be spectacular if it consisted of anything other than sprawl and smog.
Two letters from the hotel await me on one of the beds: The first acknowledges that today is Earth Day, and warns that the hotel will join in the worldwide lights-out effort between 8:30 and 9:30, turning off all non-essential lighting and other electricity in a conservation effort and asking that guests do the same. The second note warns that the hotel restaurant will be closed for a private party tonight.
I fear I’m the only person within 100 miles who sees just how ridiculous this all is.
I do not like Los Angeles.
- Not only did I miss with all ten shots, but one of the clay pigeons I missed struck a dolphin swimming alongside the ship. The dolphin seemed to be okay.
- My parents were considering having more kids, but wanted to wait until my sister was out of diapers.
- Both of these incidents were my way of ending disputes about my mom and sister sharing beds.