'I was supposed to get to Long Beach, 8ish, to a sushi place I'd never seen in a section of the city I'd never been to. Naturally, I thought leaving at 7 would be fine. It was only 35 minutes away, right?

Now getting out to 'Freeway Row' was easy enough, but somewhere around the 110 to the 405 South, I suddenly realized something important: I only knew how to get to Long Beach by the 110 South. I was on the 405. I had no Thomas Guide, no maps. But there wasn't a chance in Hell I was going to make myself late because of a stupid mistake. So I decided to play it by ear, taking the cleverly named Long Beach freeway on a whim.The exits passed by like lines of coke at a chinese hot house: this one to the harbor, that one to the Queen Mary--all of them vaguely familiar from my photo shoots. I finally hooked left into the city proper, hit a street I didn't know, got an idea, threw myself into reverse at a red light, hooked right at 25 and got onto Ocean Blvd. I was on track again. I was also 10 minutes away from show time.

Past the beach and through the palm trees, I discovered one of those quichy niches of yuppie college walkway stores reserved for couples and well-to-do teeny-boppers sporting daddy's platinum card. This was a No Man's Land of fashion and style--My No Man's Land. I shut out the gaudy storefronts and concentrated on parking. I was concentrating so much that I steered into a one-way street, getting a kindly fog horn of protest from three nice ladies on the sidewalk. I thanked them, nearly backed into them, then drove onward toward glory. Finally I found parking along another of those damned one-ways (going the right way), got the photos GE ordered and fast-walked my out-of-style trenchcoated ass to where I thought the sushi place would be. GE flagged me down right as I walked past it. I woulda gotten there eventually. Yeah.

The place was crowded, strewn with christmas lights, faux plants and rail-thin Japanese waitresses. J smiled and gave me a hug while I admired her sleeveless black dress with an accompanying crochet-like green vest. She was fashionable attractive as always (though T takes the cake on that count for obvious reasons--well, at least to me they're obvious). I was still addled from finding parking, going down that one-way street the wrong way, etc., so my offering the photography shots to GE wasn't as elegant as I'd planned--but he took up the slack beautifully. GE and J had some nice things to say about the shots while I tried adjusting myself to the whole being-around-people thing. Took about 10-15 minutes, I think, during which I kept wondering if I was supposed to be making conversation, or randomly offering some insight, or relaxing, or admiring the decor, or this and that and etc. I finally settled on doing all those things and came to a solid decision: I needed a margarita, a really big margarita. J laughed and said she needed one too. It was good to be around those two again. GE even had GE pay for the whole deal, which was fantastic and unexpected; on my budget I appreciate gestures like that very much.

The sushi itself was very good, especially this stuffed tuna sushi that they had. And as I was pawing at my shrimp tempura roll, GE and/or J asked if I had any plans for the later evening. Bingo. I'd saved going to Rocky Horror as a back-up, but I was eager to spend time with 'em, especially since J was only in town for a few days. Now apparently, a mutual friend of all of ours, Angel, was going to be doing Karaoke at an Irish bar down in Aliso Viejo. They wondered if I thought that was cool and if we should go. I'm used to everyone passing me the buck, so I figured talking with Angel and getting buzzed would kick ass, and I put my chips down on that decision.

The only little problem was that I'd never been to the area. Of course, I thought it wouldn't be much of a problem at all, especially since Angel was kind enough to give me detailed directions from the 405 down on past Irvine and to the Drunken Promise Land.

Oh God but I should have realized: you never get lucky with directions twice in the same day.

So permit me to bore the crap out of you with just how I got to Irish McPub.

First there was the mini-puzzle of using alternating one-way streets to go down, around, loop back up and meet GE and J's car to get out to the 405. Not a problem except for one glitch: I got ahead of them, right as they gave me that "wait, was that part of the plan?" look. I had the directions, though, so why worry?! Well the directions kinda slid into the passenger's side footspace somehow. I had the directions memorized, though, so why worry?!

Ahh, but directions assume that the city engineers weren't crack-smoking absinthe fiends. I realized this was the case after I'd been driving for awhile down the right street and straight past 405 and 605 freeway signs. Just like ducks in a row: a 405 N sign here, a cute 605 S sign there, yet another sparkly 405 N sign way the hell over...but where in the good name of fuck was the 405 S? How in the hell could I have missed a freeway on-ramp? Could I have missed it? Should I have turned back? Why was KROQ playing crap on friday night?

"No, fuck that!" I said, easing into my righteously pissed/indignant mood at civil engineering. I decided the 405 N would eventually give me an exit where the 405 S onramp would be just a tad more obvious. It ran parallel to the bastard, after all. By coincidence I somehow ended up getting off where Ma and I go to see our chiropractor. I giggled and jumped in my seat, turning at 30 and flipping the bird to the bastards behind me. I swung around, flipped the bird to a Lexus with some balls two sizes too large for the owner, then cackled as I swung up. 5-0 (i.e. the cops) didn't seem to appreciate this any, since they seemed to be enjoying my paint finish pretty closely as I went an airy 75 MPH to Who-Knows-Where. They pulled off for greener pastures, though, and I got to speed along at 80.

I kept expecting to see a sign somewhere, anywhere for the 405/5 freeway interchange--but nothing came. 10 minutes went by, then 20, 30, 40. Angel had said the place was about 30 minutes away so, finally, I decided I must have missed a sign or something and ducked into this Area 51 suburb called Shady Hills or Shady Grove or Shady End. They had one of those glitzy plazas, complete with more of those jackass teenagers who talked smack and broke shit while pondering philosophy. I suddenly remembered why Friday night sometimes pissed me off. I tried calling collect to Ma and then Gran several times, trying to get some directions from them via a Thomas Guide--and because they'd probably been to Aliso Viejo. I kept getting "you have reached an answering machine", which didn't do any wonders for my mood.

For example: "Where in the FUCK could you be, woman?!", "What the hell? Answer the goddamn phone!!", and my freudian favorite, "Why can't be you useful when I actually need you? Goddammit, mother!" So I was getting a tad snippy, obviously.

The Sav-On Drugs was closed across the way, but a shining beacon of (hopefully) competent store clerks shone out. It was Albertsons. I bought something like a 13 pack of corn tortillas and stood in line for 15 minutes. Some schmuck fuck was trying to buy too much and suddenly decided he could part with his sea salts. Trying to reneg on the sea salts took the better part of those 15 minutes. Toward the end I shot him a look like "if I had a combat knife and some nerve gas, your dashboard would have several new accessories--you". He tried looking indignant, but I obviously wasn't having any of that shit, so he just left. I brushed that away, forked out 4 bucks for the tortillas, asked for some directions, and got something like "oh just keep following this road for 3 minutes; can't miss it." So apparently I wasn't too far off course for my offramp. Hell, I eventually found it. But there was another 25 minutes of getting lost in the actual area itself, since my directions weren't clear on whether being on street A and turning left on street B led to street A again was good, or if I'd screwed up. Well I screwed up quite a few times--especially with which dead-to-the-world plaza I was supposed to turn in to--but I eventually found the bar.

Good God was I pissed off, not at Angel or anyone in particular, but the whole trial just to get someplace to hang out. I was finally there, though, and everyone was more than accomodating. Angel herself was particularly sweet in offering to buy me a drink. She had that air of professionalism, of authority to her that I'd noticed the first time we met at the dinner party back in March, but at the same time she was friendly, talkative, obviously in her native element at this place. The bar itself was your usual open-end fare, with green trim garishly sporting Coors labels, a few maps of the counties of Ireland, and your mostly middle-aged, wiith a peppering of young folk, crowd.

GE mostly kept to himself while I occasionally yelled over Karaoke to talk to Angel or (mostly) J. Angel herself talked about the bar, how and why she'd been coming here for awhile now as a regular, and how we were going to work this baby shower event that she wanted to take me on when June 13th rolled around. She was good people, type of person you'd like to hang out with but don't usually get the chance to. With J it was mostly wise-cracks, smiles, or commenting on how incredible Angel sounded when she went up to do her songs. Speaking of which, at a few points, Angel mentioned that I had a good voice and should have some fun singing in front of people I'd likely never see again. I'd been singing with the songs all night, true, but I: 1) Couldn't think of any songs I knew well enough to do justice to; 2) Just didn't feel comfortable trying that sort of thing. She was polite about it and I appreciated that.

The night kept getting better and better as it continued. I'm sure the drinks didn't do any harm, mind you, but I loved being able to hang out like that: to joke around, just to be around people that I cared about. Even getting there was, in retrospect, pretty damn funny. I was sad to see the night finally end and everyone going back home. That's what I missed about Los Angeles: how groups of people get together and make something cool, how they made a night special. Yeah, I'm waxing sentimental some, but doing stuff like that is rare for me these days. Best way I can describe why is the old Catch-22, "you need a job in order to get work experience, but you need work experience in order to get a job." It's the same way with trying out new scenes and knowing people.

Heading back home, fairly buzzed, losing track of how many miles passed or even if any thoughts did...I felt good. I felt very good.'

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