Going Psycho

Little by little, I am starting to fall in love with this town.

I will be the first to admit, I wasn’t exactly keen on LA. Call me crazy, call me stupid, call me spoiled, but there it is. LA just wasn’t my bag- I had already been there, and it seemed less of a metropolis and more like 70 different suburbs in search of a city. I wanted New York, with its steel and concrete and subways and angry homeless people. And I still do. Though I’ve never lived there, I feel more homesick for that city than for Ohio, truth be told.

But I am also discovering more and greater things about this place. Not living in the valley helps immensely (no offense to those that do). Maybe a big part of it has to do with the weather. Since I have been here, New York has faced monsoons, unbearable heat, earthquakes (wtf?) and now a hurricane. So last night, while everybody was battening down their hatches with candles and beer and parts of the city were being evacuated, I braved the fierce streets of Los Angeles to visit the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

(http://www.cinespia.org/calendar/) is an organization that shows movies in the cemetery every week, randomly chosen. They project the films onto the wall of an old mausoleum and hundreds, if not thousands, of people show up to basically enjoy a nighttime picnic in a cemetery. Buy your tickets and get there early, stake out a good spot, and bring as much beer, snacks, and other organic (hint) substances as you can pack, and enjoy.

Most things in Los Angeles are more glamorous than their counterparts in other places (like Ohio) and the Hollywood forever Cemetery is no exception. Giant palm trees lit at the base send the message that despite being dead, the cemetery’s residents command red-carpet respect. What other tombstone-riddled park could you gaze upon the Hollywood sign in one direction and hop the fence to Paramount Studios in the other?

The weather settled to a very pleasant sixty-six degrees and the movie began. I feel like anyone could have enjoyed the evening, but being a long-time Hitchcock fan only made the experience better. As I sat amid the thousands of other film goers, watching Janet Leigh be slashed to bits in her shower and swatting a few hungry mosquitoes, I noticed the palm trees lining the park and saw one in particular that stood higher than the rest. Stick straight, in fact. Most palm trees have a little bend or sway to them, as if to say, “it’s all chill, man,” and I dig that. But this tree, which stood so tall and so straight, seemed to me like an enthusiastic child with his hand raised to answer the teacher’s questions. It said to me, “Hi! I’m here! You’re here! It’s a wonderful evening, isn’t it?” I like that tree very much. It’s a very happy tree.

And I feel that, finally, I am in a place where it is undeniably obvious that this is where I am supposed to be. I am excited to embark on this great adventure toward fame and fortune and very curious to see how far I get. I am thrilled to have found friends that love to go do cool things, and seek to include me on their adventures. It amazes me that I have only been out here two months and that there is still so much more to come. I imagine that life will not always be this easy, or this fun, but I welcome the challenges ahead and for once feel confident and capable in my ability to deal with the “real world.” I am, you might say, one very happy tree.