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breakfast in Malibu
Tuesday, February 29 2000
Kim and I walked out to the end of the Santa Monica pier this morning, watching a little old lady haul in an eight inch fish among other things. The Santa Monica pier is a whole commercial district on stilts out in the Pacific. Set up on the planks are sushi places, coffee shops, fancy restaurants, and a full-sized ferris wheel. Unfortunately, none of the juice bar type places were open yet and Kim was in one of her low blood sugar grumpy moods. Off in the distance to the north we could see the mountains and beaches of Malibu, and Kim suddenly had the idea that that was where we should eat our breakfast.
Kim had actually been entertaining the notion of perhaps living in Malibu, but once we got there we realized it wasn't really anything special; it was merely a fancy sprawling suburb crammed between the ocean and cliffs of dirt hanging above it all like swords of Damocles. Driving the length of Malibu, we couldn't find a single funky coffee shop in which to do breakfast. We ended up at the Malibu Inn, a big old wayside restaurant with a saloon and a large rambling dining room. In classic California form, half of the saloon has since been retooled as a sushi bar. But we weren't there for sushi; we'd come for my least favorite meal of the day: the big greasy breakfast.
There weren't many customers and only one waitress, a youngish pony-tailed blond woman with a matter-of-fact smirk perpetually frozen on her face. The music playing quietly on the sound system was strictly classic rock:
- Pink Floyd's "Time"
- U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name"
- Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion"
- the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'"
- Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla"
- Stevie Nick's "Edge of Seventeen"
- Joe Jackson's "For a Rocker"
- the Doors' "Love Street"
- the Cars' "You Might Think"
- Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London"
A trendy couple in a sporty BMW showed up, soon followed by a hip young man on an ultra-modern red motorcycle. Kim sent her potatoes back because they were too greasy while I picked at my nondescript pancakes. Eventually we got our refills of coffee, which we further extended and took with us on the road back to Santa Monica.
Again we resumed our apartment hunting, this time tracking down a much more helpful real estate agent who actually gave us maps and talked in a friendly, non-condescending manner.
Next on my agenda was a lunch meeting with Evan, the technical genius behind Goddesstemple.com. He's had some trouble with account abuse and management hassles and needs someone to build ASP administrative tools. We did lunch at a little 50s diner somewhere in the eastern fringe of Santa Monica and discussed these matters. Afterwards, I dropped him off at his place of employment (the same company that interviewed me yesterday) and went over to his Goddesstemple.com co-location facility, mostly to examine a product called WebQuota.
The co-location facility was actually a tiny little start-up company of its own housed in a cluttered old nail salon. Inquiring about employment opportunities there, I learned that what they needed most badly of all was front end HTML people and graphic designers, particularly for adult sites. They already had back-end NT people.
Meanwhile Kim was back at Dr. Corynna Clarke's place helping her with a "double goddess" tantric therapy session. I joined them soon after they finished. By them Kim was starving, so we walked down to a local franchise of Wild Oats and bought the sort of food one buys when one shops on an empty stomach: salad, soup, and a chicken breast. Then we hung out with Corynna, waiting for rush hour to end while watching Xena, Warrior Princess. It was corny, goofy, somewhat visually interesting, but most of all, it was about grrrl power. I'm not surprised that official goddesses such as Kim and Corynna enjoyed it so much.
Back in San Diego, under the airplane landing path above North Park, we picked up Sophie at her dog sitter's place (even though no humans were actually there). Predictably enough, Sophie was overjoyed to see us, but later in the evening Kim actually had to carry the little dog to bed. Evidently she was feeling insecure in the aftermath of her weekend abandonment and was in something of a pout.
The Ocean Lodge Hotel.
Kim outside the ivy-covered Chez Jay.
A view of the Malibu coast from Santa Monica to the south.
Looking down the Santa Monica pier.
The Malibu Inn front parking lot, viewed from the west.
Kim in Malibu.
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