Left Coast

Jeez Louise, I love me some New York, but there is nothing like my annual pilgrimage to the West courtesy of Rich Mele's couch.

Imagine a place where it's global warming every day, and all the chicks are hot and in bikinis all the time, and it's perpetual summer all the time. Well, if you don't mind being gridlock'd on the 405 for hours at a stretch, there is a place called Los Angeles for you to live in sedate happiness. As a New Jorker, I shouldn't confess to such thoughts, but after a shitty, sleety winter, some high-ass mercury was just what the dermatologist ordered.

Did I say chicks in bikinis? They're everywhere... all about. Clothing is so goddamn optional, it's delicious. And that shot's just at Hermosa Beach, one of the very small beachy communities outside L.A.

Venice Beach, where my host lives, has a gorgeous boardwalk of note that features a selection of crafts, including this bomb-ass full-scale scrap metal Predator. Awesome.

The view from up on the hills is breathtaking... there are plenty of high points in Manhattan, but none that overlook sheer ocean and volcanic bluff. The gap between mountain and coast is gorgeous, where all civilized life teems in Los Angeles County.

But, when in L.A., why the fuck not take that four-hour drive through the Mojave desert to Las Vegas? We did it on a spontaneous lark, and upon arrival on the Strip at 2 in the A.M. we were greeted by a mirage of phantasmagoric light in the scrub desert.

How can I not go to my birthright and try to claim a bit of my heritage from the capitalist usurpers? Here I am with my namesake, the Gaius, at the door of his casino. Before I was ejected, I tried to claim his $50 chips as my own, but the pit boss wouldn't hear of it.

As I explored the labyrinthine corridors of Caesar's Palace, that boorish, Viagra-filled pig Hef was signing Playboys with those tits-on-a-stick he calls girlfriends. The hat, Hef -- Why? Are you sailing home from Las Vegas? Dousche...

Praise be to my host, Rich, for stashing me on the couch and swinging the doors of L.A. wide open. I plucked every last morsel of meat from those red crustcean legs of hedonistic joy, and I go back home a changed man. Los Angeles unlocks each man's pleasure, be it a line of coke on a model's hipbone or a handful of taco at Tito's on Washington Place. I live for the five days each year I get to live in Fantasy-Candy-Boobie-Summer-Land. Only 363 more days to go until 2008's trip...