Into the Woodland Hills

On Monday, I start a new job as a researcher in Woodland Hills.

It's only a temporary thing, a three-week gig helping a TV producer prepare to pitch a new documentary series. So, I'll still be working weekends and off hours at Le Blaizir. How else would I get free movie rentals? Over the past year, I've developed something of an addict's dependency on readily-available, no-cost DVD's. If I had to pay $2 a pop for these things, not to mention late fees, I'd be bankrupt inside a week. It would be cheaper for me to simply take up smack as a way to pass my leisure time, rather than to rent all these movies.

Anyway, I'm not really sure exactly what it is that a researcher does. Oh, I get the gist of it. Researching stuff. I can do that. I'm just having a hard time visualizing a typical day in the life, you know what I mean? Will I go to this office and look shit up on the Internet all day? Will I go to the library? Do I have to go report back to this Woodland Hills office all the time?

I guess I'll find out on Monday, when I report to the office at 10 a.m. like a regular working person. Although I'll still get to wear jeans and a T-shirt, mercifully. I wouldn't even take a job that requiring dressing up every day, at this point. At 27, I'm set in my ways...I've given up on living a proper, respectable life like an adult human.

So that means a morning weekday freeway commute, a prospect that's like a grim death sentence in Los Angeles. I'd be more anxious to wake up Monday morning and put on a Guiness-record-sized beard of bees than get on the 405 North. The good news is, the majority of the traffic at that time of day is heading in the opposite direction as me - from the (not really) affordable housing in the Valley to cramped, poorly-lit cubicles in Los Angeles Proper. The bad news is, it will still take goddamn forever for me to get the 11 miles north to Woodland Hills.

I wouldn't even take the job if it required going South on the 405 at 10 in the morning. I'd probably be offended if some potential employer even suggested such a thing, without backing up the suggestion with at least a 7 figure salary. It'd be easier for me to get to Jupiter than Torrance by 10 a.m.

Think I'm exaggerating?

By the Texas Transportation Institute's reckoning, the cities having the worst traffic problems are:

1. Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Calif.
2. San Francisco, Oakland, Calif.
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Atlanta
5. Houston
6. Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Tex.
7. Chicago.
8. Detroit
9. Riverside, San Bernardino, Calif.
9. Orlando, Fla.
11. San Jose, Calif.
12. San Diego

Can I just ask...why does anyone live in Riverside, California? Talk about the worst place on Earth. You have all of L.A.'s traffic problems, all the smog that sits over Los Angeles in the morning gets pushed over to your community by mid-afternoon and there's nothing to do in your city but go to one of the local strip clubs that wasn't classy enough for the San Fernando Valley. Do you know how not classy you have to be to not be welcome in Chatsworth or Van Nuys?

In Riverside's favor, I will say that their local UC campus' mascot is the Highlander, which is a pretty badass mascot. Unfortunately, it's just some dippy bear in a kilt, and not an immortal guy wielding a sword. Missed opportunity, if you asked me.