trendy Abbott-Kinney - Saturday April 1 2000    

It's never easy staying at friend's house, even under the best of circumstances. Complications during this particular stay include such things as the presence of our dog Sophie and her constant need for walks, the frenzied activity of the internet-driven people upon whose futon we're sleeping, and particular neuroses specific to Kim.

It's easy to feel like we're intruding on Evan and Corynna's space while we're camped out in their computer room, especially when they're trying to get work done. At this point, after all, what they're getting in return is merely promised. So instead of hanging out chattering with each other and disturbing Evan, we drove down to Venice and parked on what we once read described as "trendy Abbott Kinney." I've been down there once before and seen my share of fashionably unpretentious pizza-scarfing cool kids and their dogs. But today all I really saw were the furniture stores, most of which we ducked into to examine kitchen tables a bit more shee-shee than the butcher block we sold to those Mexican worm-eating early birds. One of the store proprietors had what Kim described as "good social skills" when he congratulated us on buying a townhouse in the area. His mid-modern kitchen table with matching chairs was over $4000.

At some point in the day Kim reheated a leftover Taco Bell Seven Layer Burrito, but I could only bring myself to eat a tiny part of it. There was something ghostly and unfoodlike about it. Then Dr. Corynna Clarke made the observation that a Taco Bell bean burrito smells exactly the same coming out as they do going in. "It doesn't even smell like shit!" she exclaimed, adding, "there's something a weird about food that changes so little during digestion." That was the end of my appetite for the evening.