scary-accurate

So… *sigh* I’m not known for being the best driver in the world.  I wrecked my first car within the first two years of ownership.  My second car (another Pontiac Grand Am) gave me all kinds of trouble.  I also had the occasional close-encounter with poles.  I sold it about a month ago just before it hit 100k miles and its value really plummeted, so I’ve been driving the car previously known as my dad’s old car, and before that known as my mom’s old car.  It’s a 13 year-old pile of American metal with 130k miles on it.  It’s louder and even less fuel efficient than my Pontiac was.  Time to get a new car.

A couple good people from out of town came to visit my family and see the sights of Los Angeles this past week.  We had a blast.  I spent all my time off driving them around my hometown, people-watching like a tourist and enjoying the company of people I don’t get to see nearly often enough.  You can imagine my delight when I was handed a chance to unwittingly entertain them with my notorious ability to cause body-damage to vehicles.

I was telling them all about the LA riots in 1992, and how my family chose to abandon our house when we could smell smoke from all the businesses being burned down just a couple miles to the south.  On our way out of town, we drove through a firefight between some armed civilians and the LAPD.  Just as we were discussing this, BANG!  The rear window shattered.  I was backing up SLOWLY into a parking spot in a poorly lit underground lot, and the back window touched what looked like an air duct.  Apparently safety glass all breaks at once, and with the same enthusiasm as a gun going off.

Even so, it was a fun day.  We went to a museum, had lunch at Umami, visited The Farmer’s Market and The Grove, saw the lights at LACMA, had Korean food for dinner, and gelato in Silverlake for dessert.  The window incident was a source of comedy and proof of the unpredictable delights of backing into front-only parking spots (of course, you could only see the “head-in parking only” sign if you were already going in head-first.  Fuck).

I guess it could've been worse

Dad and I went to the junkyard today to see if we could find a replacement rear window.  No luck, and they wouldn’t let us bring my camera in (fuckers!), but we snapped a couple cool shots with a phone anyway.  Take that, dirty commies!  I’m surprised by how fun it was going to this junkyard.  Those cars that were completely demolished were totally hypnotizing (see above picture).  I’ll have to go back and sneak in a legitimate camera.

We ended up buying a replacement rear window at a nearby junk shop (just $55!), and replaced it ourselves in my folks’ driveway.  And I finally remembered to drop off all that stuff at Goodwill!  Dinner tonight was ramen, strawberry mochi, olives and sweet red wine while watching a three-hour block of Daria.  Overall a really fun day.