Tour Guide
Imagine you're having a bad dream. Not an over-the-top, watching-your-own-dear-dad-skin-the-family-pet-alive-while-mom-undresses-you-and-laughs-at-your-hidden-reptilian-scales sort of nightmare, but more like a slow burn, naked-at-school/ulcer-at-25 run of the mill anxiety dream.
Here I am... giving a tour of a place I've never really been to in a language I don't really speak. Even if I have something descriptive and informative to say, (which isn't all that often, believe you me), I'm incapable of proper phrasing and inflection. The words come out in a forced, mechanical gurgle as my small lexical reservoir constantly recycles itself like the motorized filter on a woefully neglected fish tank. On account of some technical difficulties for which I feel pretty certain I can't be blamed, the microphone I'm practically shouting garbled factoids in to does not amplify sound in the normal way, adding insult to injurious syntax. My role/gender/nationality is at times unclear, though I get the distinct impression I'm supposed to be in charge and that these people are relying on me even though clearly, I have no idea what is going on or even how I got here.
Not to imply I was wholly unprepared. I got shingles in 6th grade for Christssake. Anxiety is like, my grandmother's maiden name. There was a phone call two days prior, a panicked Southern accent offering a tenuous but clearly desperate solicitation for someone of exactly my famed socio-historic-linguistic expertise. I enthusiastically agree to help the panicked voice of sub-Mason-Dixonian origin, benevolently smiling in to the receiver and pirouetting around the room in a state of morbid excitement. I love a challenge.
The voice gratefully consents to pay handsomely for services rendered. Its in a bind you see, and not in any position to be choosy, or even curious as to my qualifications. Without yours truly the voice is screwed. Following a terrific outpouring of professional niceties, the line goes dead. There's about 30 seconds where this shit-eating grin just won't recede, though the pirouettes lose steam quickly. Plopping down at the kitchen table, I am determined to think this through, to triumph in the face of a pretty painfully obvious crime.
Historically, the public library is a no miss bastion of confidence-instilling educational materials. I feel hopeful. Squinting at the sun as I pedal downtown, I'm determined like so many fools before me to learn everything I need to know from books. Pouring through the catalog, then the stacks, I leave the Recreation and History Departments well armed: Hollywood - A Movie Lovers Guide, Architectural Tours of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Huell Howell's California Gold: A History of the Hollywood Sign on DVD, and a dog-eared copy of Katzner's trusted Russian-English Dictionary. Firmly convinced that in 48 hours time I will be certifiably infallible in regard to the socio-historic linguistic subject matter at hand - I'm naively brave at best, and at worst - a self-obliterating idiot.
I study the materials tirelessly, mapping a route and then committing all the major architectural and anecdotal commentary to memory. The high gloss photos and maps in the Architectural Guide are particularly appreciated by a student of my calibrated ignorance. I consult the trusted Katzner's for any unavoidable phrases not already ensnared by my steel bear trap of an intellect, marking stress and printing very boldly in the margins of a humble notebook.
Not altogether oblivious to the fact that experience is the best teacher, I take a dry run of the route detailed by the Voice's email account, reciting the newly acquired facts about the landscape in an authoritative, yet genteel voice. I'm cursory, but clearly knowledgeable; funny, but seriously engaged. Who would ever guess this is my first trip to Hollywood?
I smirk most unbecomingly. Self-congratulations are in order. A little preemptive own-horn tooting. In 24 hours I've cultivated a body of knowledge designed to hoodwink even the fool-hardiest Ivan Ivanovich. I'm tired. Yawning, I'm prepared to sleep perchance to dream of Russian intellectuals careening through Hollywood at my misdirection.
Then like clockwork, the time is nigh. Regretting that last minute strawberry milkshake and cheeseburger combo, I climb in to a bed of my own making. The bed is more precisely, a bus -- well, even more exactly, a fancy fiber optically enhanced limousine externally masquerading as a bus.
Distinctly foreign forms bisected by bulging fanny packs line the gently serpentining fine leather seats. Beverages are complimentary, but pretty moot since I can barely manage to pack away my own abundant saliva. Seated at the front and facing the right side, my neck aches from trying to make eye contact with the passengers and look out through the front cabin in graceless alternation.
I space my scant en route socio-historic-linguistic knowledge out as much as possible, leaving plenty of room for the occupants to chat amongst themselves. At one point I might even say, “Will be a long ride, 30 40 minutes to Hollywood, enjoy quiet now”, which gets a few laughs, because they think its a joke.
The unspoken pressure is building. One of Them, a red-headed fellow whose name is Dima or Kostya or something other than Boris offers a little pointed levity:
In Russian: “A professional translator goes to a professional conference. He stands up to introduce himself. My name is Dima or Kostya or something other than Boris and I speak five languages fluently: Chinese, Italian, Japanese, French and German.” Then in thickly accented English: “I'm so happy to be here. Nice to meet you all”. Then in Russian again: “His colleagues respond- 'But Kostya or Dima or whatever, that was English'. The translator smiles, 'Okay, then six languages'”.
As the fiber optic dream machine rolls off the 101 down Hollywood Blvd, I tentatively cough into the mike and launch in to a meticulously prepared blurb about the conservative origins of the city, which was originally founded as a Methodist enclave away from the iniquitous goings on of Los Angeles proper. Though less than riveting, at the moment I'm overcoming some fairly obvious shortcomings with a sort of distinctly American naivete, which tends to be very effective in Slav-saturated social situations.
After all, its not like this is some nightmare where I have to speak Swahili to Margaret Thatcher's vagina in front of a Quaker community action committee - this is anxiety realized in a much more subtle, fatally life-like form. I can feel it in my bones, I can even feel it in Their bones. In some past life I really could speak passable, quirky Russian to a person or even a small group of persons.
But conversational fluency should really be called platitudinal fluency. Most people labor under the self-congratulatory misapprehension that polite conversations are interactive: the content original or at least potentially original. They are artfully oblivious to the monopoly of prescribed verbal constructions, which allow a listener to read the intonations and eyebrows of the speaker as much as their words, all too often responding completely in stock phrases. At present, I'm in no shape for a center of attention, Queen of the Sovereign Nation of Bullshitostan type foreign language sitch.
Still, thanks to the previous day's cram session, I know some things about very specific places as they are perceived according to a very specific line of progression. Unfortunately, I know basically nothing about any person/place/thing existing outside of these very narrow confines. My real undoing is not just the surreal circumstances alone, but a soul-crushing snafu I did not predict. They decide to forgo part of the original route, so as to skip Larry King's neighborhood and get a close up view of the Hollywood Sign. For me, this pretty plainly spells Big Mess on the hillside.
Desperately, I point out a randomly selected Spanish style apartment building and lie quite poorly, but with admirable conviction:
“Carol Burnett rented a room there during young time. Judy Garland also young lived through the street from the left side of the bus.”
Stupid American. Not only do I lie, but I misspeak atrociously and pick relatively obscure, dead or nearly so celebrities. I only get a few approving eyebrow smirks from the under 35 constituency when I point to a fairly unremarkable parking lot and gargle:
“And to left you'll see a lot for cars over a night club once had Britney Spears accidentally showed too much of herself Lamborghini of exit”.
The jostle of the bus works in vile cahoots with 15 narrowing sets of Soviet educated eyes, unraveling my generally indomitable poise and contributing to one increasingly unpleasant gastric-intestinal outlook.
The bus ominously ascends in to uncharted territory: Griffith Park, the name of which I announce boisterously along with its spatial relation to the bus, but then volunteer no additional information. At that moment, even the sound of crickets would have been an aural kindness outside of karmically conceivable scope. The Observatory in sight, I wait until the last second to incorrectly boom the one half-fact I could possibly muster about the area:
“Famous American film James Dean actor Rebel Without a Cause at the end goes out of his mind at the world famous Observatory from the right hillsides”.
As They unload for a hilltop photo-op, I run to the public restroom, clutching a purse where I have secreted away the Movie Lovers Guide Book. Out of sheer nervous guilt, I turn on the sink full-blast, presumably to hide the sound of my burning anxiety. Table of Contents... Chapter 10.... Griffith Park.... Shit. Shit. Shit.
I find myself wishing there was not just an iron curtain between me and these attentive sock and sandal loving tourists, but a titanium reinforced steel vault door, the combination to which is only known by a hapless technician, who has sadly but conveniently been sequestered for a merciless top secret experiment involving cryogenic freezing.
After an interminable silence down an interminable stretch of Californian consumer depravity, I see hope in the form of a recognizable street. I instruct the driver, a kind Slovakian with a nose that looks like its spent more time broken than not,
“Turn left and please it would help me out a lot and for Gods sake get back on to the Sunset Strip then to Rodeo Drive”.
Milyosha has been a big help throughout the journey, besides the fact that it was his big bright idea to change the route in the first place. Sensing my subsequent ignorance and feeling what appears to be compassion, he periodically whispers things from the corner of his mouth, like "Such and such place is coming up and you should them such and such things about it". He is mercy incarnate, though strangely insistent that I disseminate certain superfluous reflections, which clearly emanate from his own inestimable experiences as a bus driver. For example, when we drive by the Beverly Hills Police Department, an ornate art deco palace, he adamantly requests that I translate his witticism:
“This building looks beautiful from the outside, but you don't want to see it from the inside.”
Though I tacitly decline to translate, already emotionally decimated and clearly on the outs with my audience, he repeats himself ever more forcefully until They are all staring at me expectantly and I can't avoid relaying the broken joke:
“From out its beauty, from in its bad to see.”
The final sight is the ultra-swank Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
“Straight front of us we see the hotel in where Richard Gere and Julia Roberts made and lived famous world renowned American film Pretty Woman. Very luxurious, well-known hotel for stars and rich people now from the right. Exclusive and pink.”
The bus turns left on to Wilshire. A shell of my waking self, I do what any logical meta-tour guide does when in way over their socio-historic-linguistic heads: I flee the bus.
Tight-jawed and sweaty, I'm caught in the purgatorial space between sleep and waking where the illusion of lucid choice seems to present itself just within reach, but I know from books this is merely the vindictive taunt of a higher power or pleasure principle or what have you.
Fully awakening somewhat disoriented on the very public corner of Wilshire and La Cienega Blvds, I realize to much dismay that I don't have any money for the bus fare back home.
Here I am... giving a tour of a place I've never really been to in a language I don't really speak. Even if I have something descriptive and informative to say, (which isn't all that often, believe you me), I'm incapable of proper phrasing and inflection. The words come out in a forced, mechanical gurgle as my small lexical reservoir constantly recycles itself like the motorized filter on a woefully neglected fish tank. On account of some technical difficulties for which I feel pretty certain I can't be blamed, the microphone I'm practically shouting garbled factoids in to does not amplify sound in the normal way, adding insult to injurious syntax. My role/gender/nationality is at times unclear, though I get the distinct impression I'm supposed to be in charge and that these people are relying on me even though clearly, I have no idea what is going on or even how I got here.
Not to imply I was wholly unprepared. I got shingles in 6th grade for Christssake. Anxiety is like, my grandmother's maiden name. There was a phone call two days prior, a panicked Southern accent offering a tenuous but clearly desperate solicitation for someone of exactly my famed socio-historic-linguistic expertise. I enthusiastically agree to help the panicked voice of sub-Mason-Dixonian origin, benevolently smiling in to the receiver and pirouetting around the room in a state of morbid excitement. I love a challenge.
The voice gratefully consents to pay handsomely for services rendered. Its in a bind you see, and not in any position to be choosy, or even curious as to my qualifications. Without yours truly the voice is screwed. Following a terrific outpouring of professional niceties, the line goes dead. There's about 30 seconds where this shit-eating grin just won't recede, though the pirouettes lose steam quickly. Plopping down at the kitchen table, I am determined to think this through, to triumph in the face of a pretty painfully obvious crime.
Historically, the public library is a no miss bastion of confidence-instilling educational materials. I feel hopeful. Squinting at the sun as I pedal downtown, I'm determined like so many fools before me to learn everything I need to know from books. Pouring through the catalog, then the stacks, I leave the Recreation and History Departments well armed: Hollywood - A Movie Lovers Guide, Architectural Tours of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Huell Howell's California Gold: A History of the Hollywood Sign on DVD, and a dog-eared copy of Katzner's trusted Russian-English Dictionary. Firmly convinced that in 48 hours time I will be certifiably infallible in regard to the socio-historic linguistic subject matter at hand - I'm naively brave at best, and at worst - a self-obliterating idiot.
I study the materials tirelessly, mapping a route and then committing all the major architectural and anecdotal commentary to memory. The high gloss photos and maps in the Architectural Guide are particularly appreciated by a student of my calibrated ignorance. I consult the trusted Katzner's for any unavoidable phrases not already ensnared by my steel bear trap of an intellect, marking stress and printing very boldly in the margins of a humble notebook.
Not altogether oblivious to the fact that experience is the best teacher, I take a dry run of the route detailed by the Voice's email account, reciting the newly acquired facts about the landscape in an authoritative, yet genteel voice. I'm cursory, but clearly knowledgeable; funny, but seriously engaged. Who would ever guess this is my first trip to Hollywood?
I smirk most unbecomingly. Self-congratulations are in order. A little preemptive own-horn tooting. In 24 hours I've cultivated a body of knowledge designed to hoodwink even the fool-hardiest Ivan Ivanovich. I'm tired. Yawning, I'm prepared to sleep perchance to dream of Russian intellectuals careening through Hollywood at my misdirection.
Then like clockwork, the time is nigh. Regretting that last minute strawberry milkshake and cheeseburger combo, I climb in to a bed of my own making. The bed is more precisely, a bus -- well, even more exactly, a fancy fiber optically enhanced limousine externally masquerading as a bus.
Distinctly foreign forms bisected by bulging fanny packs line the gently serpentining fine leather seats. Beverages are complimentary, but pretty moot since I can barely manage to pack away my own abundant saliva. Seated at the front and facing the right side, my neck aches from trying to make eye contact with the passengers and look out through the front cabin in graceless alternation.
I space my scant en route socio-historic-linguistic knowledge out as much as possible, leaving plenty of room for the occupants to chat amongst themselves. At one point I might even say, “Will be a long ride, 30 40 minutes to Hollywood, enjoy quiet now”, which gets a few laughs, because they think its a joke.
The unspoken pressure is building. One of Them, a red-headed fellow whose name is Dima or Kostya or something other than Boris offers a little pointed levity:
In Russian: “A professional translator goes to a professional conference. He stands up to introduce himself. My name is Dima or Kostya or something other than Boris and I speak five languages fluently: Chinese, Italian, Japanese, French and German.” Then in thickly accented English: “I'm so happy to be here. Nice to meet you all”. Then in Russian again: “His colleagues respond- 'But Kostya or Dima or whatever, that was English'. The translator smiles, 'Okay, then six languages'”.
As the fiber optic dream machine rolls off the 101 down Hollywood Blvd, I tentatively cough into the mike and launch in to a meticulously prepared blurb about the conservative origins of the city, which was originally founded as a Methodist enclave away from the iniquitous goings on of Los Angeles proper. Though less than riveting, at the moment I'm overcoming some fairly obvious shortcomings with a sort of distinctly American naivete, which tends to be very effective in Slav-saturated social situations.
After all, its not like this is some nightmare where I have to speak Swahili to Margaret Thatcher's vagina in front of a Quaker community action committee - this is anxiety realized in a much more subtle, fatally life-like form. I can feel it in my bones, I can even feel it in Their bones. In some past life I really could speak passable, quirky Russian to a person or even a small group of persons.
But conversational fluency should really be called platitudinal fluency. Most people labor under the self-congratulatory misapprehension that polite conversations are interactive: the content original or at least potentially original. They are artfully oblivious to the monopoly of prescribed verbal constructions, which allow a listener to read the intonations and eyebrows of the speaker as much as their words, all too often responding completely in stock phrases. At present, I'm in no shape for a center of attention, Queen of the Sovereign Nation of Bullshitostan type foreign language sitch.
Still, thanks to the previous day's cram session, I know some things about very specific places as they are perceived according to a very specific line of progression. Unfortunately, I know basically nothing about any person/place/thing existing outside of these very narrow confines. My real undoing is not just the surreal circumstances alone, but a soul-crushing snafu I did not predict. They decide to forgo part of the original route, so as to skip Larry King's neighborhood and get a close up view of the Hollywood Sign. For me, this pretty plainly spells Big Mess on the hillside.
Desperately, I point out a randomly selected Spanish style apartment building and lie quite poorly, but with admirable conviction:
“Carol Burnett rented a room there during young time. Judy Garland also young lived through the street from the left side of the bus.”
Stupid American. Not only do I lie, but I misspeak atrociously and pick relatively obscure, dead or nearly so celebrities. I only get a few approving eyebrow smirks from the under 35 constituency when I point to a fairly unremarkable parking lot and gargle:
“And to left you'll see a lot for cars over a night club once had Britney Spears accidentally showed too much of herself Lamborghini of exit”.
The jostle of the bus works in vile cahoots with 15 narrowing sets of Soviet educated eyes, unraveling my generally indomitable poise and contributing to one increasingly unpleasant gastric-intestinal outlook.
The bus ominously ascends in to uncharted territory: Griffith Park, the name of which I announce boisterously along with its spatial relation to the bus, but then volunteer no additional information. At that moment, even the sound of crickets would have been an aural kindness outside of karmically conceivable scope. The Observatory in sight, I wait until the last second to incorrectly boom the one half-fact I could possibly muster about the area:
“Famous American film James Dean actor Rebel Without a Cause at the end goes out of his mind at the world famous Observatory from the right hillsides”.
As They unload for a hilltop photo-op, I run to the public restroom, clutching a purse where I have secreted away the Movie Lovers Guide Book. Out of sheer nervous guilt, I turn on the sink full-blast, presumably to hide the sound of my burning anxiety. Table of Contents... Chapter 10.... Griffith Park.... Shit. Shit. Shit.
I find myself wishing there was not just an iron curtain between me and these attentive sock and sandal loving tourists, but a titanium reinforced steel vault door, the combination to which is only known by a hapless technician, who has sadly but conveniently been sequestered for a merciless top secret experiment involving cryogenic freezing.
After an interminable silence down an interminable stretch of Californian consumer depravity, I see hope in the form of a recognizable street. I instruct the driver, a kind Slovakian with a nose that looks like its spent more time broken than not,
“Turn left and please it would help me out a lot and for Gods sake get back on to the Sunset Strip then to Rodeo Drive”.
Milyosha has been a big help throughout the journey, besides the fact that it was his big bright idea to change the route in the first place. Sensing my subsequent ignorance and feeling what appears to be compassion, he periodically whispers things from the corner of his mouth, like "Such and such place is coming up and you should them such and such things about it". He is mercy incarnate, though strangely insistent that I disseminate certain superfluous reflections, which clearly emanate from his own inestimable experiences as a bus driver. For example, when we drive by the Beverly Hills Police Department, an ornate art deco palace, he adamantly requests that I translate his witticism:
“This building looks beautiful from the outside, but you don't want to see it from the inside.”
Though I tacitly decline to translate, already emotionally decimated and clearly on the outs with my audience, he repeats himself ever more forcefully until They are all staring at me expectantly and I can't avoid relaying the broken joke:
“From out its beauty, from in its bad to see.”
The final sight is the ultra-swank Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
“Straight front of us we see the hotel in where Richard Gere and Julia Roberts made and lived famous world renowned American film Pretty Woman. Very luxurious, well-known hotel for stars and rich people now from the right. Exclusive and pink.”
The bus turns left on to Wilshire. A shell of my waking self, I do what any logical meta-tour guide does when in way over their socio-historic-linguistic heads: I flee the bus.
Tight-jawed and sweaty, I'm caught in the purgatorial space between sleep and waking where the illusion of lucid choice seems to present itself just within reach, but I know from books this is merely the vindictive taunt of a higher power or pleasure principle or what have you.
Fully awakening somewhat disoriented on the very public corner of Wilshire and La Cienega Blvds, I realize to much dismay that I don't have any money for the bus fare back home.
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