Morning Walk

We took Dusty, the dog, for a morning walk. We walked up out of the valley, mostly on neighborhood streets, but near the top of the hill we walked on a hiking trail. We got pretty sweaty as the hike was steep. At the top of the hill, there was a lookout over the freeway and part of the Glendale valley.

Lizy and Nick talked about social media. Lizy had gotten into an argument with someone she didn’t know very well on Facebook over something she had posted. The person had wanted to have a debate with her about what she had posted, and she was not interested in that. Nick said he got that. It’s not the point of Facebook to have debates. You want to have some fun, post a little, and scroll through some photos.

On the walk back down the hill, Lizy pointed out a ripped bag of tortillas that were lying on the sidewalk.

“Look, Adam. They’re free,” she said to me laughing.

“Too gross even for me,” I replied.

Getting Ready

Nick was taking us to see his friend’s art gallery, but before we left, we had to get ready.

Lizy was used to being the slowest to get ready, so when she finished showering and dressing, she came down to the living room ready to be apologetic. But Nick hadn’t even started getting ready. He was still contemplating whether he needed to shower at all. He started thinking out loud while we sat on the couch. Did he really need a shower? Maybe what he needed was a shave.

“But didn’t you say you got sweaty on the hike?” Lizy said.

“Yes, but what really makes me feel the cleanest is a shave,” he said.

“But that doesn’t wash your body at all,” Lizy said.

“Exactly. Then I won’t have to reapply sunscreen,” he said.

He ended up deciding to shower.

On the drive to lunch, I told Nick he was keeping alive the spirit of our Uncle Eddy with the way he was so slow to get ready.

Nick told us his girlfriend was always waiting for him to get ready.

The talk of Uncle Eddy reminded Lizy of a story about him, which she recounted to us from the backseat as we drove out of the valley. I’ll repeat what I can remember of the story here:

“Adam and I were picking up Uncle Eddy from his house downtown to have dinner at Adam’s parents’ house. We left with an hour to spare, so we assumed we would have plenty of time to pick him up and make the family gathering.

“But once we got to his place, he wanted to give us a tour of his place since I had never been there before. He pontificated on multiple pieces of art in his collection.

“I finally had to rush the two of them, since I knew neither of them were keeping track of the time.

“On the drive back uptown, I sat in the backseat with Eddy in the passenger seat and Adam was driving. Adam always makes defensive driving decisions. When I’m driving, I like to be hyper-aggressive, and it always annoys me how passive and slow he is when driving. But on this drive, he kept getting immersed in a conversation with Eddy and he was barely paying attention to the road, and he was driving the slowest I’ve ever seen him drive. He didn’t even attempt to make one yellow light or swerve around any car stalled at a left turn.

“There was one intersection where Adam was stalled in a turning lane and too engrossed in talking to realize he could switch lanes. Adam’s mom called me to ask where we were, and I told her Bathurst and Bloor. Ten minutes later, we were still at the intersection and she called back. His mom was confused why we still weren’t at the house if we were at Bathurst and Bloor ten minutes ago. I had to tell her not only were we not at the house, but we were still at Bathurst and Bloor because her son wasn’t paying attention to the road. We were at that intersection for maybe three cycles of red lights.”

Night Gallery

We ate lunch at a Tex-Mex place and then drove to Nick’s friend’s art gallery, Night Gallery. We walked into a building that looked like a warehouse. At the front desk area, there was a bullpen where a few people were working. They looked hip and trendy in a way no one I’d ever worked with looked. I thought about all the nerdy people I’d worked with. These people looked like they were from a TV show. It could be called “Hanging.” (The pun is too good not to use for a TV show.)

The warehouse was divided into sections using white dividers. In the first section with the bullpen, there were pots of dying trees on display. I assumed they could afford living trees, so it must have been an art piece on the fragility of life or something.

The next room was larger. It was white except for the art. On pedestals throughout the room were giant pots with cartoonish designs, like the Cookie Monster. They looked like supersized versions of the cookie jars you’d find in a typical suburban family’s kitchen. Some of the other designs besides the Cookie Monster were a slot machine and a cartoony cat.

Next, we walked out of the main warehouse of the gallery and went across the street to a side building that was also part of the gallery. The whole area was being used to show paintings by a British painter of Nigerian descent, Kemi Onabulé. The paintings were of landscapes that always included naked Black figures interacting with nature. I would say they weren’t too concerned with the nitty-gritty and instead used a coarse stroke to focus on the forms and colors of the scene.

The gallery had one additional building around the back, a short walk from the main building and the side building. Just outside this last building was a trellis wall next to a gazebo. The trellis had tons of passion fruit vines growing on it. Lizy saw some ripe passion fruit, but they were really high up, so I had to climb the trellis to get them for her. As I climbed, the metal links dug into my hands. I told Lizy I was unsure if I could reach the fruit.

“What was the point of learning to climb at that gym of yours if you’re not going to use it?” Lizy said.

So I pulled myself together and climbed until I could pick the fruit for her.

The actual gallery building had some mixed media works. They also had a room that was a recreation of the little room that was used as the original Night Gallery before it had grown to fill three warehouses.

Drive Back to the House

On the drive back to the house, Nick told us he had read recently that people don’t know how to drive over speed bumps correctly. Most people slow down to drive over speed bumps, but actually, according to Nick, speed bumps are designed to be driven over at the exact speed limit of the road. So if you’re driving the speed limit, you shouldn’t have to slow down at all. But you have to be careful because you have to drive over them at exactly the speed limit—not a little faster and not a little slower—or else the speed bump will be uncomfortable for you and the car.

“Have you tested the theory?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Nick.

“Maybe don’t test it on us,” chimed in Lizy from the backseat.

But despite the protest of the pregnant woman, Nick couldn’t resist the temptation to test the theory on the first speed bump he saw. We didn’t slow down at all for the bump, and the car was uncomfortably jostled up and down.

“I guess the theory is wrong,” Lizy said.

“No, that was my bad. This is a thirty-five-mile-per-hour road and I was driving thirty-eight miles per hour,” Nick said. “We’ll have to try again.”

Lizy looked annoyed, but Nick couldn’t see her glare from the backseat.

At the next speed bump, Nick didn’t slow down and again the car was uncomfortably jostled up and down.

“I think that’s the final nail,” said Lizy.

“I was going thirty-six that time. Next time I’ll get it perfect,” Nick said.

After the third time, Lizy gave up protesting. There was no stopping his madness. Well, it was stopped anyway because LA was mostly freeways, and after not too long we were back on a freeway without any speed bumps.

“Oh man, driving on this LA freeway is reminding me of this one time I was driving on the 401 with my dad,” Nick said. “Where were we going? This is going to eat me up if I can’t remember.”

“Every drive reminds you of something like this,” I said.

“Just the freeway. Maybe because I haven’t driven on the freeway much recently. Not since I moved back to Toronto from LA. And I haven’t driven on the 401 in a long time either, not since before my dad passed away,” Nick said.

“I don’t think driving causes me to be so reflective,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s why I ended up in the arts.”

Ice House

That evening we went to see a comedy show at the Ice House. We got there just as the show was starting. At the beginning, the host did some funny jokes, then brought up the first comedian—Putty from Seinfeld (I forget his real name). He told a bunch of stories about his show-biz life. The next comedian was Arsenio Hall. He seemed like a seasoned professional compared to Putty. He was so confident in his timing. He had a lot of really funny material. Two elderly Black women sitting to the left of the stage seemed to be laughing the hardest in the room. The third comic was sort of a filler act. He told some jokes that Lizy didn’t like. He had a confrontational demeanor that rubbed her the wrong way. The last comic was George Wallace. He was the funniest of all the comics, even funnier than Arsenio Hall. In addition to cracking up, I also learned that Black people don’t eat pumpkin pie like white people; instead, they eat sweet potato pie.

After the show we were too tired to eat dinner, so we went back to the house and went to sleep.