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I shall keep this brief. I hate Christmas in Los Angeles. I am content to be called a precious little East Coast prep-school twat if it means not being here in December. For me, California can’t win; if it’s warm, that deadens everything awesome about Christmas, and if it’s cold, you wonder what the fuck you’re doing in California if it’s not warm.

The neighborhoods try to compensate for their lack of snow – and their utter lack of magic – by stuffing every animatronic Rudolph and Santy Claus they can find into their lawns, and festooning their gutters with rainbow sparkle lights. I give them points for trying, but as I have said for years, I’m a dick, and it only makes me long for the fjords.

Perhaps I was scarred by my post-parents’-divorce Christmases held in various Marriot Inns and Extended Stay America joints around West Covina, CA because of my mom’s job. We did our best with little plastic trees and cassettes of Xmas Favorites, but it always felt like masturbating with sandpaper. note purple trees in background

My wife and daughter, who are better humans than me, never go this depressive route and choose to make the best of LA while we’re here. On Sunday, we went to the W Hotel, where they have a “skating rink” made out of Glice™, which is basically a synthetic oil laid onto particleboard. You can’t really go, you can’t really stop, and god forbid you fall down, which requires a trip to the drycleaners. You can achieve the same effect by stepping behind the register at the Krispy-Kreme in Raleigh.

Thank the heavens above we board a plane tomorrow for New York, where we shall be until the New Year dawns upon us all. The weather will be shitty, the ice needles will blast into my eyeballs, the traffic will be ghastly, and the nights will be unbearable, and I for one, will savor every minute of it.

3 thoughts on “up on the housetop, opossum paws”
