The Coasts: Old and New

*51


Though the world may seem to be a bit filthy and children in the Central Valley of California may be suffering from extremely high rates of asthma and though it took me fourteen days to drive across town in Los Angeles today, and Max Boot (Fascist columnist) continues to sully my newspaper with fears of the Chinese and our president is a liar and ringleader of greedy bullies and my dog has taken over my life (and I let her) and severely Orthodox Religionists keep building huge, disgusting houses in my neighborhood I still believe, like Anne Frank, that in their hearts, people are good.

As I was driving toward Beverly Hills today to get my allergy shots, I noticed people driving in their enormous cars and I just felt bad for them. They only drive them because they are tricked into it by some sort of collective lunacy expressed by some nuts in Detroit who really want to make money. And the expression on the faces of so many of these drivers is that of wanton fear and unhappiness. I can only just feel bad for them.

But there is hope...and it is in the form of two things: One real, one imagined.

The real one:

From a missive in today's mail:

One of my favorite examples is the New York State Forest Program which started early in the last century when new rail and canal systems sparked an exodus of farmers to the prairies. Beginning with the reforestation of abandoned farms, New York increased its forest cover from about 20 percent in 1890 to 62 percent today.


The imagined one:

As I sat on Venice Boulevard, idling, my old car spewing particulate matter, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, and who knows what kinds of animal membrane destroying heavy metals into the atmosphere, I thought:

Great, our new mayor is going to really try to get this public transportation thing going on. How about this idea: AN ELEVATED TRAIN OVER VENICE BOULEVARD. Why, you ask? Because Venice Boulevard could not be made any uglier, anyway. In fact, some cool train up in the sky along the already established median strip would only beautify this road. Plus, the boulevard is so extremely wide, I don't think the elevated train would bother the denizens living and shopping along its edges. And, this monster road goes from downtown LA to the beach and is not far from the airport. Furthermore, as long as there are terrorists, it's less scary to be in the air than to ride below the ground. The Venice Skyway. Call it the Aqua Line.