As it turns out, I really like LA!

When a person from the East coast reads reviews of California's Mexican restaurants and sees some mediocre reviews, the translation is basically: "this food is still waaaaay better than any Mexican you'd get at home. And it will be a quarter of the price." Even the ubiquitous roadside stands are better than 95% of the Mexican food available in Manhattan. Ah well. That good food is not completely globalized is one of the main reasons I am compelled to travel as often as I do.

The one type of food that is more prevalent than Mexican in LA is donuts. Donut stands are literally in every single strip mall, no matter how small the mall. You simply cannot drive for more than 5 minutes without seeing yet another independent donut shop. All of them appear to have been in existence for at least 60 years and many are open all night long. On our last night as we were driving through a sketchy looking neighborhood after midnight, we decided to pull into one of these little donut holes in the wall and see what all the fuss is about.

A hand printed sign on the wall said that if you sat for longer than 15 minutes, you'd be kicked out. And the smell of freshly fried donuts was in the air. The man working behind the counter said freshly made crullers would be ready in 2 minutes if we wanted to wait. It is no exaggeration that that was one of the best donuts I ever ate. What IS LA's obsession with donuts? I searched on Google, but all I'm seeing is lists of the best ones. Yes, but WHY? If you know why LA is obsessed with donuts, please let me know. I'm curious.

What were we doing out after midnight, being the old fogeys that we are? Well, we had spent several enjoyable hours at the Comedy Store. It was open mic and here is how the end of that experience went down:

It was midnight on a Monday at the Comedy Store. As you can imagine, the crowd was small. It was open mic night so there had been some good comics and some duds, but we were having a good time, which was why we'd stuck around for several hours. Anyway, this guy gets up and he sits down on the stool and gets right up at the edge of the stage and starts telling this long thing that i can't even call a joke about Batman. It's going nowhere, but we're riding it out because it is amateur night after all.

And then he gets pissed because no one is laughing and he yells, "you're the worst fucking audience! It's just a bunch of dudes out there and you still don't like my batman stuff!" And I threw up my arms and yelled, "hey! I'm right here!" Now, keep in mind that there were only 8 people in the audience and he could totally see me.

He says "what?" And I say "there ARE women here!" So then he starts going off on me, saying who the fuck do I think I am, saying that he's going to be playing a sold out show in Portland and when he saw this audience and was like, shit, I don't need this crap. By this time the audience IS laughing and he says "they're laughing at YOU!" And I just shake my head and people around me are saying "no, we're not; she has a point. The batman stuff isn't funny."

And then the talent wrangler yells from the back of the room that this same thing happened the last time this dude came on and the comic gets really angry and just berates us all for the rest of his time slot.

So, that was interesting. Also, the MC had encouraged talking up, which I certainly wasn't planning on doing until this jerk heckled the audience, for crying out loud.