HOORAY FOR...HOVE THE WEAK?

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Why why why why why why? Why don’t I prep for vacations better? There’s no excuse. I got to bed last night at 2AM after packing like a mad demon at the last minute. My “sleep” included three visits from MissSeven to announce that her eye hurt, a plane was flying overhead, and that she had finished packing her backpack. The alarm went off at 6:30AM. This is an excellent approximation of my mental and physcial state:



But hey, up up and away to Virgin America. This was my first time taking this particular airline and it was purty cool. Nice seats with lots of legroom and a very-21st-Century multimedia touch screen at every seat, where you could order your meal or a movie, watch satellite TV, or shoot missiles at people 35,000 below. I’m lying about one of those things. This is what the system looks like.



They also had a very clever and amusing animated safety video:



I appreciate companies that show me that they are taking advantage of all these nice tech things to earn my loyal business, so I give Virgin America a thumbs-up.

Back in California then, for the 3rd time in a year. Why? Because this is how it looked outside my house yesterday:



Vitamin D fixes are good, and there’s more things to do in California than I would ever be able to fit into my remaining lifetime, so we’re back to enjoy the sun n’ fun for a few days. On La Cienega coming from the airport we see…



And this…



Yes, the famous HOLLYWOOD sign, if you look closely there, says HOVE THE WEAK. I don’t know what “hoving” might be. We could assume that someone who would want to go to such great effort to cover such a huge sign on the side of a very steep and rocky bluff might want to assist the weak in some way, but we cannot be sure. Perhaps “to hove” is to “point, laugh, smite, and push down in a forceful way, such as in the manner of Simpsons character Nelson Muntz.”



But in fact I have caught the HOLLYWOOD sign in a moment of transformation and undress. Activist conservation group Trust For Public Land bannered the iconic landmark for a few days with the words “SAVE THE PEAK” – here’s the story behind their efforts to purchase 138 acres around the sign on Cahuenga Peak to prevent it from being HOVED.I wish them well.

I wish me some rest now, in the land of Rolls Royces, sunshine, boulevard scammers, and, well, everything.