Coffee Talk

I’m not sure at point writers actually began holding court in coffee shops, but I’m going to go ahead and give credit to the Beats. Personally, I like to write at home in my sweatpants with my lights dim and my headphones loud, but over time many of my favorite writers have used their local coffee shops as venerable Bat Caves. Since I’m much better at procrastinating than relaxing, I’ve spent a good deal of my time in L.A. holdup in a coffee shop sandwiched between my friends' apartments, where a day of internet only costs a cup of coffee. Though I haven’t really spoken to anyone, I’m going to say about 80% of the people in this room are writers of some sort: bloggers, journalists, budding novelists and, especially, on strike screen writers. The glass door that just opened even reads “We Support the Screen Writers Guild (this is L.A. after all).” Someone also told me the famous blogger Perez is in here right now, but keeping with blogger rules of edict, it seems more appropriate for me to ignore him in person and the write about him online anyway.

Even though I’m blowing through my last few Relix vacation days visiting my friends out here, I still kind of feel like I’m playing hooky and that my high school principal is going to bust in here in any minute and give me a Saturday detention or something. So I’ve actually been pretty productive while my friends are slaving away at their day jobs, if you consider string 25 Cold Turkey IDs together for our 150^th episode being productive. Oddly enough, this coffee shop also seems to have blocked MySpace, which is another reason why writers seem to congregate hear. And they play some pretty good music, which so far has been a nice blend of Secret Machines, Modest Mouse and Fleetwood Mac. Since this place seems to be a few cups of coffee ahead of the curve, I’m going to go ahead and declare Fleetwood Mac back in that ironic, Yacht Rock sort of way. Either that or they just like bands whose names begin with the word M.

Since I like to relate every city I visit to New York, I now know that I am staying in West Hollywood, which is the Chelsea of L.A.. Last night we had dinner with my friends’ friend who lives in Silver Lake (the Williamsburg of L.A.) as apposed to Marina del Rey (the Lower East Side of L.A.), Bel Air (The Upper East Side of L.A.) or Brentwood (The Upper West Side of L.A.). Though I don’t think I can ever live anywhere outside the four block radius I currently call my home in New York, I really, really like L.A. if only because they serve this drink which I can only describe as a mixture of ice tea and lemonade, two of my favorite childhood cocktails. I didn’t know that you could even get those two flavors together outside of a Snapple can, let alone at every restaurant we’ve visited, but apparently that is how advanced they are out here. I also like the fact that since this place in three hours behind New York, my body will let me go to sleep before 2 AM and get up at a reasonable hour without the aid of the three alarm clocks and two phone calls I need to get out of bed by office hours. But, despite missing my friends out here, I’m glad to be going home tomorrow. Otherwise I might start to feel like Larry David trapped in some sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm alternate reality where everyone smile and no body understands sarcasm. ‘Till I return next season….