Rattled

Yesterday Los Angeles had an earthquake.  Not the big one per se, but a 5.4 which is big enough to make you prairie dog out of your cube, but weak enough to keep the kids at school.  What fun is a natural disaster if you still have to go to P.E.?

As some of you know I am fascinated when Mummy Nature gets feisty with homo sapiens.  We as a culture get all flustered and dash about asking anybody who passed 6th grade biology for a scientific answer to the age-old question: What does it all mean? Why did this happen to us?  And the media absolutely loves this stuff.  CNN gets a hard-on and has five video feeds over Anderson Cooper's head with that crawl telling us everything the video is saying only for those of us who are too giddy to listen. 

Even more, I love the You Tube invasion.  Check out this video  - Judge Judy was being filmed during the quake.  Watch as the honorable Judy shows no emotion on her face, as if that is even possible with all the work she has had done, and ducks under her styrofoam desk.  Bert is nowhere to be found.  The spectators scatter like insects and the plaintiff and defendant stand there with a "Wha...??" on their face.  Clearly they are not from the area.  I especially like cute bald guy's expression as if to say "I do so many drugs this shaking is normal for me. What's everyone fussing about?" This is all so priceless and is the reason why I love pop culture. I eat this shit up.

I grew in L.A., so I have been around earthquakes my whole life.  Most of them are forgettable except for three:

1. The San Fernando Quake of 1971. A 6.6 . I was 7 and lived 2 miles from the epicenter. I had a nightmare that night and went to sleep in my parents' bed.  Good thing too as a shelf over my bed collapsed. That could have been the end of me.  That bastard cracked our swimming pool and flattened the hospital I was born in.  How very Californian. We got out of school that day.

2. The Whittier Narrows Quake of 1987. A 5.9. Only memorable because I was having sex at the time.  Damn. I am that good.

3. The Northridge Quake of 1994. A 6.4. I was fast asleep in my nasty Hollywood apartment when that one hit. My cat clawed into me and the bed rolled across the room.  The ground didn't really stop moving for two days and it felt like one was trying to stand on a rocking boat.  The next day I drove down Ventura Blvd. and saw the damage.  It was intense.  I loved every minute of it.

Now today, the day after, all of the specialists are fluttering about saying things like "This is our wake up call." and "The 'big one' is a-coming."  Sure it is.  The big one is always coming and when it finally does, I'll be right there watching every minute of it -  that is if I am not floating in the sea from a cracked-in-half California.