Fatale Abstraction

Saturday afternoon a dust storm rolled through the area. We don't get many of those, but I was thinking this had the makings of some hazardous driving conditions.

I drove home from my real estate class on I-30, and slowed to a crawl at a stop-and-go backup on the exit to I-35. I glanced in my mirror and saw a pickup truck whipping through traffic and then barreling toward the car behind me, fishtailing with no hope of stopping in time, and then the stopped car behind me was hit with such force that it was hurled into the back of mine. My eyes were doing double duty at the time, trying to figure out an escape ahead or to the side and watching the mess unfold behind me. In this time, the traffic backup slowly unclogged and cars were moving forward ahead and I was able to step on the gas a little, but not in time to avoid being hit entirely. LouLou's bumper is toast.

I called the police and they said to exchange information and get off the road. We got off the road, first, so I find myself all dressed up and standing in the parking lot of a liquor store at Industrial and Cadiz and trying to get information from less-than-forthcoming folk. The two other drivers claimed not to speak English. I interpreted this as them having no insurance. I called 911 again and said they needed to send a police car, which they did, at last.

Anyway, I'm ok, and in the grand scheme, it's a minor inconvenience. One more thing to take care of. Goody.

...I never saw the film To Live & Die In L.A., and I noticed it was making the cable movie channel circuit recently, and I set the DVR to record it. It was bad. Really, really, rilly, awkwardly, unwatchably bad. I forwarded through it and amused myself by making up little lines for the sped-up characters. There were icky 80s modern dance routines in weird makeup - cringeworthy reminders of the most hideous expressions of an era. There was one really great scene, though. William Dafoe, counterfeiter, is making some sort of resist etching on a metal plate for printing fake money. They show the inks being mixed and the printing machinery working and the multi-stamping process for the various ink colors - I felt like I was watching Crafters Coast to Coast on HGTV. That part of the film was great, if you like that sort of thing. Crafting with thugs.


One more thing from that awards dinner on Friday night. Here's a conversation I overheard:

Female #1: We really want to see that new listing on Tremont.
Female #2: Which house?
#1: The house with the olympic-size swimming pool. *gushing* Chip
and I want to see it - it's SO us!
#2: I'll tell the agent you are interested, but you know, a pool
that size is really expensive to maintain. You may want to just fill it in
and have a regular size pool put in.

I was marveling at this entire conversation - at the idea that it would be cheaper to install an entire new pool than to dump a few chlorine pellets in now and again. Well, whatever.