If there's one thing that can be said about the city of Los Angeles, it's that the entire place is humongous.  Remembering that Los Angeles is a city as well as a county, driving from one end to the other can take several hours depending on the time of day.  There are a dozen freeways interconnected across a rolling landscape, cut apart by hills or the LA river, often changing direction, splitting and converging with limited signage and a warrant out for any tourists looking to get lost.  If you haven't grown up in Los Angeles the entire thing can become quite confusing.

So what's the point of having so many freeways?  Well, there are millions of people living in the city and they're trying to get somewhere, whether it be in the middle of the night or during the hot afternoon.  Whenever I get on the road and start driving around Los Angeles I am amazed at how many people there are sharing the road, each car headed somewhere unique, every driver tuned to a different station.  At any given moment, each freeway has tens of thousands of motorists all speeding ten miles beyond the limit to make appointments, meetings, dates, deadlines, you name it.  It's easy to get behind the wheel and suddenly feel like a part of a bigger herd, a single being in a maelstrom of mindsets, personalities, and priorities.  I look out my window while speeding down the 405 and see all sorts of people driving around, ready to shake their fist when I pull ahead of them and bark about their rights as a motorist.

Sometimes I like to roll my window down, pull my left knee to my chest, stick my foot out the driver's side and prop my ankle on the side mirror.  I like to open the rear window on my pickup truck and give people the rocker hand when we're in traffic.  I wave to strangers across the way while sitting at red lights, and am not hesitant to compliment the music choices of other drivers as we cruise down the interstate.  It's not like I'm ever going to see these people for the rest of my life, I figure.  Who knows where they're going today, tomorrow, or next year.  Chances are slim we'll end up at the same diner, coffee shop, bar, or movie theater.  So I say, wave heartily and often, blast your music and enjoy the ride.

Well Here I Am

Where to start.  How to begin.  What the heck am I doing here and how do I ever think that starting a Blog is going to make use of all the time I've found.  For the past ten years or so people have been starting, ending, sharing, following, reading and promoting the blogosphere and although I consider myself a socialite geek (by whatever definition you think fits the term) I have never hopped aboard the blog train and taken it for a ride.  I've spent my time playing video games, writing short stories, playing with graphic arts, and generally spending a lot of time in my pajamas.  I don't think there are that many hobbies I haven't considered or tried, but blogging is definitely one of them. 

I have no idea why I'm writing one now.  Maybe I'll find out later.

I suppose I should start with the basics.

This is where I'm sitting.

I have my window, my lamp, my speakers, some paper, a wrist watch, and several cans of spray paint next to a cup of cold coffee which I drank and enjoyed yesterday morning.

 

This is a most recent picture of me.

My name is Brendan, and I'm a geek.

You're going to hear me say that a lot, I think.  "I'm a geek" has become something of an identity claim of mine.  It means that I can troubleshoot a computer, identify most Star Wars characters by their first and last name, do pretty well with most video games, and I can change the oil in your car while talking about music, movies, books, and football.  I like a lot of things and do my best to stay positive in times of mayhem.

I grew up, and now live, in Los Angeles.  For those of you who are from Los Angeles, you're probably thinking to ask, "Which part?"  For those of you who aren't from Los Angeles, well, I'll let "Los Angeles" be your answer and move on.  It's a hot town with lots of bushes and palm trees, people made of plastic and expensive cars, tailored lawns and sprinklers that run even when it's raining.  This is a credit card town with pollution, parking meters that accept debit, plastic surgery practices across the street from P.F. Chang's.  But it's also an amalgamation of live music, small art, micro-brew, tattoo artistry, pedestrian attitude, and the pewter screen.  There are jugglers, dancers, fire breathers and ballet dancers walking up and down the street between Charlie Chaplin impersonators and night-life addicts.  There are a thousand languages, a million faces, and four million cars with different things inside every one.  It's a real bee hive, and I'm sitting right on top of it.

I didn't always live here.  I spent a lot of time in Berkeley, too, and there are many stories of that town to tell; but I'll save them for another day.

So, seeing as how I've never written a blog before, I'm going to leave this introduction as it is.  Until next time, I'll be wondering over what I've started.

And so it begins, I think.