Los Diablos Part I

I just bought tickets to go out and visit The Angels, or as they say it in Mexico, Los Angeles. I haven’t been to LA since middleschool when I visited my aunt on Long Beach. Times were simple back then when a plane crash was my most troublesome thought. I couldn't have told you what the Crips or the Bloods were, or that Dr. Dre, that very year, was coming straight out of Compton. I did meet a very nice man on the plane who claimed to be an emerging musical talent. I wished him good luck as we parted ways in the terminal and he replied 'for shizzle, keep it rizzle'. I wonder what happened to that nice man.

This time around the wheel of fortune, I am worried. Not of any gang hailing from Inglewood, Compton or Long beach. But a much more dangerous, more powerful gang, straight out of Hollywood. A gang of sociopathic, morally corrupt, murderous movie stars. Ok, maybe they aren't murderous... yet.

Legend has it that if you turn off all the lights in your house, lock yourself alone in the bathroom and say 'Tom Cruise' into the mirror three times, he will 'apparate' right behind you like Dumbledore and turn you into a scientologist. I don't believe the urban legend myself, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to try to prove it wrong. The consequences are far too dire*.

The power of Hollyweird is so strong that it pulls people on from all over the country. A poor little girl named Britney was abducted at a young age, thrown into the LA combine and spit out into an insane asylum, sans underpants, a few years later. It's brutal. I'm packing extra undies.

Supposedly the gangs roam the treacherous streets of Hollywood boulevard and Rodeo drive. Women so eye-spinningly beautiful, trot down the marlble walks, like a rapala dancing in the light near the watery face of a north woods walleye. Once caught in the Siren's gaze, only a strong man can break free and live normally once again. The unlucky majority become obsessed and blinded, falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole until they reach the soul-sucking, bottomless pit of the Siren's inner ugly, and by that time it's too late. Far too late. You're doing lines of coke, spending each night clubbing, and find yourself on a pseudo-vegan diet. If I've seen it once, I've seen it a million times.

This is the stuff of nightmares.


* To reach level OT VIII (the highest level, like getting all the power-ups in video games), the total costs are estimated around $277,010.00. Says wikipedia.