I Love LA

When I'm on the subway, I make a concerted effort to avoid eye contact with anyone, because locking eyes with someone will occasionally be misinterpreted as me jumping up and down and loudly exclaiming, 'Come over here, mumble incoherently under your breath, and lick my face.' The subway was packed last night, so it was harder than usual to avoid looking at people, particularly since I kept hearing these short staccato indiscernible screeches. Were they the loud protests from a pre-verbal child? Or, more likely, the odd vocal outbursts from a disheveled, unmedicated adult?

Neither, it turns out. It was the squawking of a large parrot perched on the arm of a smirk-faced man. I made eye contact with the parrot, and because I was so captivated by the bird, it took me a while to realize what Smirk Face was holding in his other hand -- a long rectangular cardboard-and-wire-mesh carrier with 3 or 4 rats in it. That's when I had to get a big long look at the guy who thinks it's completely normal to get on the subway with a large untethered bird and a box of rats.

I looked him up and down. He was kind of a slob, wearing big faded jeans that were cut off mid-shin -- ratty man capris that looked like he was just so annoyed by the discomfort of wearing full-length jeans, he grabbed a scissors and hacked off the bottom part in a fit of comfort over convention.  He was ambiguously middle aged, falling somewhere in the range of 35 to 55. His head was covered with an  unruly mass of chin-length brown hair, except for the small bald spot in the back. Then I noticed he was wearing a gold band on the third finger of his left hand. Smirk Face is presumably married. WTF?! I know many wonderful LA women, who have their shit together, who aren't married, and not all by choice. But Smirk Face -- a walking human game farm -- is off the market. I want Randy Newman to write a song about *that* LA.