The Cool Cars Of Santa Monica, California

Santa Monica: It's all about the designer sunglasses you wear, the private schools your kids go to and how tight your jeans are. And if you don't have the black Birkin bag? Tragedy! But this is the land of the upper middle class, the rich and the very wealthy.They have stuff. LOTS of expensive stuff. Including cars.

Over Super Bowl weekend I saw these beauties standing silent on the street, waiting for instructions.


A truck from the 60's? The inside is black leather and when's the last time you saw white walls? I have no idea what that silver tank-like item is that hugs the back window. I hope it's not a nuclear bomb. I've often loitered beside the truck, hoping the owner would come out and tell me to stop breathing on it, but alas, no such luck.

I'd be scared of these people if I didn't seriously think they owned the Hello Kitty franchise.

The license plate reads MPATHY. Something no one has for a person who drives a Mercedes for the love of God. I only noticed this car because it's the same color as my 1998 Ford Contour. I was so ahead of the color curve. And way behind the Mercedes curve.

This car is sitting on Adelaide, long considered one of the wealthiest streets in all of Santa Monica. It's around the corner from my sister's building, on a one way street that is mostly used by runners, dog walkers and the people who live there. It's peaceful, quiet and has spectacular views. The houses are all architecturally different, old but fabulous and overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But how this station wagon got here tells me someone is either A. Very old   B. Very, very old.  C. Visiting from 1982.

Some of the homes on Adelaide:

The house below was so big I couldn't get it into one shot.

You can see my sister Lindy's building off to the right below.

 When the recession was in full swing, about two years ago, a family on Adelaide lost their home. They moved into a van and parked on isolated streets at night. It was the talk of the neighborhood because, ON ADELAIDE??

These are all Old Money homes. There are grander, newer homes in Brentwood or Beverly Hills but it's all Nouveau Money and you know how much we hate Nouveau Money. Although I could use some Nouveau Money right about now. Don't hate me, have MPATHY for my bank account.

Baby You Can Drive My Car - Part Two

I found a description of the difference between men's cars and women's cars. Men keep their cars spotless and their homes a mess. Women keep their homes spotless and their cars a mess.

I keep them both spotless but I'm a known liar.

I've noticed that a guy will cry if his car gets hit by another car. A woman will cry if she has to tell a guy that his car was hit by another car. That she was driving.

I really don't like any man driving my car.

I don't care what they claim but they have no idea where they're going. My ex-boyfriend and I took a trip to Palm Springs, in the desert. I fell asleep for 10 minutes. When I woke up there was snow everywhere. I said, "Where are we?" and he said "I think we're almost in Palm Springs." And I said, "Well, why don't we pull over here and ask this Canadian Mountie exactly where we are?"

When he's driving, it's always "We'll take a right at the light then turn left at the exit." When I'm driving it's “Get in the southbound lane and go west at that intersection." Like I'm Davy Crockett and there's a sundial in the car.

Moses wandered in the desert with the Jews for 40 years. I'm guessing that was supposed to be a 10 day trip. And Moses' wife probably spent the whole time saying, "Moses, don't be a schmuck, stop and ask Achmed where we are."

I have an elderly neighbor who I drive around so he can do his errands. He's 89 years old and reads every road sign out loud. FOOD GAS LODGING, 65 MILES PER HOUR, 280 MILES TO CALIFORNIA, which would scare me because he'd distracted me so much I'd crossed over into Arizona.

I'm still amazed they sent men to the moon with a car. What did they want to prove? That they couldn't ask for directions on two planets?

Los Angeles is a big city, 10 million people, and every one of them has a car aimed at you. The only time I was hit by a car I was standing in the bedroom. Of my apartment. On the second floor.

Everywhere you go you have to valet your car and depending on where you go, it can be very expensive. I once valeted at the new Wolfgang Puck restaurant and then couldn't make rent.

I hate to give them money to park a car. Maybe if they changed my oil I wouldn't mind so much. Of course if I go out with a guy and he won't valet, I think he's an asshole.

Another thing that drives me crazy about Los Angeles driving is when the stoplights go out and they send in police officers to direct traffic. Instead of, you know, catching killers. The cops start talking to you through your window. They’ll make 2 circles in the air and then point to the left and I’m thinking I got a 10 yard penalty and am offsides.

I understand why minivans put TV screens in the backseats for kids. Nothing is more boring than taking a long trip and having nothing to do but listen to the radio or CD's. Last year I started doing books on tape. Only once by accident I rented a dirty one and had to pull over and get a motel.

Which was embarrassing because I was alone.

End of chat.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

No one walks in Los Angeles. You drive 45 minutes, buy a carton of milk, drive 45 minutes back. If I drive anywhere for 45 minutes, I feel like I should spend the weekend.

That's what I liked about New York. You didn't need a car because everything was a block away. The store was a block away, the bank was a block away, my apartment was a block away from where I lived.

My first car, a Ford Festiva. Née October 1990-Died April 2000

I spend so much time on freeways. A week ago I took the 101 to the 110 to the 405 to the 134 back to the 101. I never did get back home. I don't know why they even erect houses on streets out here. They should just build them along the freeways.

And it takes forever to get to a good car crash. Two hours to go one and a half miles. And when you get there, what do you see? Nothing. If it takes me two hours to go one and a half miles, I want to see a head suspended in mid‑air. Show me a pancreas flopping on the pavement.

I'm one of those women who will drive weeks with my car making a pinging sound. I'll even offer to drive people places just so I can ask them what they think the pinging sound is.

This is a bad plan because I've come close to believing:

1. It was the engine grinding up kittens
2. It's the noise you hear right before a plane crashes
3. I should look into purchasing a bicycle

When you take your car to a mechanic they ask you to describe the noise. I always sound like a beatboxer saying aho ho ho, ssst ho sssta ringa, dinging, ring. Then I have to say, "My car has ho-hos and ring-dings."

When my mechanic fixed the pinging sound he managed to throw out this random fact, "You need new shoe boots for your front axle." I don't know why he thought I was gullible enough to believe that a front axle could wear shoes and boots at the same time.

Men.

Regulating the car heater is a task best left to NASA. Why do they only have two temperature settings, flame broiled and microwave? You're either hot or you've exploded. I can never get it right. I turn it on and five minutes later I think, "Gee, I must be in the wrong lane because we're orbiting the sun now."

Don't ever make the mistake of going food shopping and then put all your groceries on the floor if you have the heat coming out of the floor vents. By the time I got home I had cooked an entire roast beef medium‑rare. Twenty more minutes and the baked potatoes would have been done. If you're on a long distance trip you could use the car as a crock pot.

And some cars have the dome light on the ceiling in back of you. Who designed this, Cirque de Soleil? And that blinding light, what's in there, a 9 watt bulb? Why doesn't the car just come equipped with candles?

Before I traded in my Festiva I was at Nordstrom's and a woman sold me a cream that was supposed to reduce the visible signs of aging. It didn't do a thing for my face but the car looked brand new.

End of chat.