In alphabetical order:
Fire
I hate the unstoppability of wildfire. I hate watching helpless as it terrorizes my friends and clients in LA. I hate the Santa Ana winds for dragging so many embers in and so many dreams away. I hate us for failing to defang the chaparral when we had a chance.
I hate, hate, hate Megyn Kelly for blaming these fires on fat women. (I’m not kidding.) As a matter of fact, I hate the entire desiccated, overdeveloped firebelt of Megyn Kelly’s face: the backhoed trenches where her buccal fat used to be, the McMansion of her hairdo, the tacky stucco of her skin.
I hate, too, that I’ve become this mean. Body-shaming another woman? Yeesh.
I hate this age: the wild unreason, the smug and spreading stupidity, the roiling greed, the death, the inescapable glop of it all. I hate inertia—mine and everyone’s. I hate what is going to happen on Monday.
Oh, how I hate, hate, hate. And I hate that I hate. I prefer wonder—the kind I’ve always felt just off the Pacific Coast Highway, where there is (or was) a silly little fried fish shop named Country Kitchen. It overlooks the ocean. I’ve sat there many times over the years, eating fish and chips and staring out the windows at the sea and just…wondering. As weird as this’ll sound if you’ve been there—it’s a modest place, to say the least—it’s my favorite spot in LA.
I wonder whether Country Kitchen burned down.