California as a Final Resting Place for Clichés

I’m driving today. I didn’t even pack a map. I’m going to have to stop at a Wal-Mart and buy underwear. Or maybe I can find some other place, maybe a clothing store, or something. I hate Wal-Mart, mostly on an ideological level. I’m throwing my American Dream, my broken homes, my broken hearts, my not wanting to live another minute without you, my white guilt sold as a revolutionary and moving message, my gay narrative undertones, my true love where you least expect it, and my tightly wrapped happy ending in the trunk. I’m going to Hollywood!

As the old adage goes, “Put a bunch of monkeys in a room with a typewriter, and eventually, they’ll come up with Shakespeare.” Well, I say, “Put a monkey in a barrel, and he’ll eventually crap a Hollywood blockbuster, or Charlie Sheen."

I am fascinated with California as being the place where the world ends. It is a vortex of human involvement, out from which come the little things that brighten our days. There is even something magical about the name, it just falls out of your mouth. It is an endlessly and pointlessly romanticized wasteland of human heartache and despair, bikini bottoms and cocaine, and already a living, breathing, ready-to-fall-in-the-frickin’-ocean cliché.

There are no real people left in California, a state boasting an actor as governor. While to even joke about that is terribly cliché, I must use it to prove my point. I’m driving to a state full of actors with an acting governor who is an actor. We once had an actor for president. Did this not bother anybody? Your everyday politician is born lying, and can do it without batting an eye, how much better then, can an actor be at it? It brings lying up to a whole new level, if indeed, he is a liar, and I’m not accusing him of anything. I personally like him, and I don’t even live in California, so it doesn’t really matter what I think. I’m just saying that other politicians are going to want to step up their game a little bit.

I pass a quaint little rustic scene on my way to the end of the world. A three-legged dog sitting on a porch smoking a pipe, and playing cards with a blind man. I thought my eyes were tricking me at first, but no, I was right. The house did look strikingly similar to that of my uncle’s. Coincidence, or the mystery of the California sands finding its way into even the deepest recesses of my mind?

Hattie Norefield, the unfortunately-named daughter of a Florida real estate king, is forced to leave her beautiful home to become an actress because, apparently actresses aren’t allowed to actress outside of California. She finds a cheap apartment, sells a few cups of coffee, and ends up as Coworker Number 3 in the newest Jennifer Lopez excrement. On her third day of shooting, Hattie, who has now changed her name to Hatalia (it sounds more ethnic), speaks to Ms. Lopez, asking her what happened after she did The Cell. Did she just give up on trying to find interesting parts, or did she decide to try and cash in on her looks? Suddenly, Ms. Lopez rushes off the set in tears, and in walks J. Lo, the hard-hitting Bronx girl who beats Hatalia into the ground with a chain, steals her bracelet, and tells her that she better run home before she really gets mad.

How do I know this? I met Hattie (she’s gone back to Hattie now) at a Waffle House in west Texas. I had stopped at the Waffle House because of their rockin’ cheesesteak omelets which this particular Waffle House doesn’t have. They have all the ingredients for it, obviously, but they just don’t make it. So I listen to her story over a grilled chicken sandwich that, between the lubricating effect that mayonnaise has on grilled chicken, and my malfunctioning mouth which leaves a half-inch gap between my top and bottom teeth when I bite down, continually slips and slides around in my hands until I finally drop half a chicken breast into my lap.

When I do this, Hattie laughs, causing her top left canine tooth to fall out into her coffee cup. She laughs again, reminding me of the beating of a lifetime that J. Lo gave her, and says that she had stuck the tooth back in there with some epoxy she picked up at a Sherman-Williams. She said that if Jewel could get famous with her grill, and if Will Ferrell was still getting jobs looking like he got kicked in the face by a mule, surely she could get work somewhere. But alas, her dentist was in Florida, and she needed reconstructive jaw surgery, and money.

I tell her that in honor of the beating, and the tooth, she can call me M. Ma, and I will call her H. No. She agrees to this, and we pay the check and leave, promising to email, but not promising to tell her that I do not own a computer and do not have an email address. Before I get into my car, I stand there with the door open, letting dust and small animal carcasses blow in freely, looking off into the setting midday sun, waiting for the music to start rolling. When I don’t hear it immediately, I throw out a few totally unnecessary profanities just to amp up the rating a bit, start to cry, and slowly, meditatively get behind the wheel, pull out onto the road, and hit a telephone pole, causing my car to explode as if it were the mutant son of the largest A bomb ever conceived by the human mind.

The end.