Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Pow! Right in the kisser!

There are no gas stations in Beverly Hills.

Okay, there are two (according to the NFT Guide) - one at Olympic and Beverly Drive, and one at Little Santa Monica and Crescent. There's also one that's not listed in the guide on Wilshire right next to the Beverly Hilton.

All of these gas stations, might I add, are of the "76" variety (actually I think they're a BP company now) and are at least 10 cents per gallon over market price, and there's an impressive stretch of high-end retail that's sans filling stations of any brand. If you pick the wrong part of Beverly Hills to stall out in, you're in for a long hot (or cold, or wet, depending on the time of year) walk followed by and extremely expensive gallon of gas, my friend.

Guess what happened to me today?

I had some errands to run in Santa Monica, so after a quick stroll on the beach I headed back across town in an attempt to beat the rush hour traffic. My gas gauge has been broken for some time now, but it's normally not a problem - I just fill up when I've driven a certain number of miles or it's been a few days, but since I've been working at Paramount and haven't been driving, I forgot about the system and stalled out right in front of Crustacean (the food's fantastic, in case you were wondering).

In the midst of my digging for my phone to call AAA (okay, I screamed "shit" for about a minute first), the driver of the car behind me started to lean on the horn - despite the fact that my emergency flashers were on and I'd had my arm out the window, waving motorists around. For good measure, I'd gotten out and put the hood up - the universal symbol for "Don't honk at me, jackass, my car's stalled."

For those of you not familiar with Beverly Hills, there's a certain type of woman there - bleached blonde hair, botoxed yet somehow pinched faces, overly yoga'd bodies, nose jobs, cheek, chin and breast implants, liposuction, bleached teeth, Hermes bag, blank stare. They all look exactly alike - they've gone to the same surgeon, I guess, but the first time you see it it kind of freaks you out. Once you're used to them it just seems kind of sad.

The one behind me had decided that somehow leaning on the horn of her luxury coupe was going to make AAA get to me faster. If only it were true.

Finally, I walked back to her car to see if I could get her to understand that all she had to do was pull around and she'd be back on her way to, well, wherever.

"You're blocking traffic and some of us are in a hurry!" she yelled as I drew even with the driver's window.

"Well, as you can see my vehicle is currently disabled, so why don't you just pull around?"

"I shouldn't have to! Why don't you get a decent car? One that isn't... polluting the planet!"

As soon as she said it, I looked down at her car and saw the shiny little metal plaque - V12.

No, no, no. You may not sweat me for driving an SUV (a V6, btw) when you're tooling around town in a car with a 12 cylinder engine.

What I desperately (oh, so desperately) wanted to say was "Well, if you could just manage to suck a few extra cocks this month, you could buy me a Prius and save the world!", but I bit my tongue. After all, you never know who's somebody (or married to a somebody) in this town.

What I actually said was "You do know that my truck gets better gas mileage than your car, right?"

At that very moment, the AAA guy pulled up with a gallon of gas and friendly directions to the nearest overpriced 76 station.

I started up my offensive, planet-destroying truck and continued on my way, and Botox Barbie zoomed off to, well, wherever.

Couch of the Day:


Couch

16 comments:

Dave2 said...

And that's where we differ. I would have absolutely said it!

The only time I've EVER run out of gas was in L.A. - I had a rental with a sticky gas gauge that would drop from 1/4 tank to empty with no play in-between. So there I was heading north on the 101 to meet a friend at Universal's CityWalk when the car started chugging. I immediately take the first exit I come to and barely make it off the highway into a motel parking lot. After inquiring and being told there's a gas station "down the road," I managed to get the car to turn over and jump forward just enough to roll down the hill into the gas station's first pump.

Immediately after I rolled to a stop, some guy comes up behind me and lays on the horn... screaming for me to pull forward to the next pump. I get out of the car, walk back to his window, then apologize as I explain that my car had just run out of gas and I can't move it until I fill it up.

His response? "WELL CAN'T YOU PUSH IT TO THE NEXT PUMP?!? I'M IN A HURRY!!"

Only in L.A.

Anonymous said...

Wow...some people are REALLY obnoxious. How dare you slow up their day! :-) She was late for her next botox!

Anonymous said...

I ran out of gas in south central a couple of weeks ago. Next thing I know, a couple of cars pull over and everyone piles out of these cars, a few more come from the side walk and they all push me 1/2 block to the gas station. Hmmm... so a white guy in a crappy car in south central L.A. gets more help than he needs while you get honked at by rich people. This is why I never go west of La Brea.

Anonymous said...

Oh how I wish you would have told that bitch to F off... frankly, even if she was married to/sleeping with some powerful Hollywood type, her brain is probably so clouded from drug use that she'd never remember you in a million years... and how great would it have felt to tear her a new one? Oh well, next time. Chin up! :)

Anonymous said...

Is Beverly Hills the most Honky-est (Honkiest?) place in LA or what? I went to lunch there one day and everyone was honking at everyone like it was a third-world country with no paved roads or traffic lights.

NEWSGUY said...

In L.A. you can put your flashers on a half block from a parking spot and some moron in a Ford Extinction will still drive right up two inches from your back bumper and blast his horn at you the second your backup lights come on.

Anonymous said...

(just hate it when someone beats me to the joke of posting fake comments as one of your antagonists.)

Sal said...

you deserve the Nobel peace prize for not slapping the stupid cow. I know I would've been severely tempted

Anonymous said...

There aren't too many V12's on the market. A Bentley Continental GT sounds like the most likely candidate as this unpleasant lady's vehicle, and it is rated at 11 mpg city, 13 highway.*
It is a reasonable conclusion that your SUV gets better mileage. Hence, her polluting-the-planet comment was especially unfounded.

* = not, like, most Bentley owners are particularly concerned about mileage.

Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights

Eddie Lin said...

Crustacean is good.

Especially when they're still alive. Joking-ish.

Anonymous said...

Peter - Jaguar, Aston Martin and Mercedes all make V12's, and I've seen all of these models FAR more often than the rolls.

Anonymous said...

Makes me wanna carry a large knife (recall that aussie dude here "now THATS a KNIFE) just to modify the bitches tire(s) in a situation like this.
What have we come to?
Problem is, no matter what you said, it wouldn't have registered in that tiny, totally self absorbed mind of hers. You just gotta know you were right and move on...

Anonymous said...

Anonymous (9:27 pm) -
Jaguar no longer makes any 12's and there are only a few such models from Mercedes. I'll still go with the Continental GT as the most likely candidate.

Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights

Peggy Archer said...

I know, I know... it's tempting to say things like that to them, but what would it have solved? She'd have cried or it would have escalated into a fist fight - either way no one wins.

And yes, BH is the capital of rude horn-honkers.

Oh, and Peter - I'm not sure what kind of car it was, but it didn't look like a Bentley (ugly, boxy - and what's with the new body style on those things? Puke-tastic).

Writeprocrastinator said...

There's a Crustacean in L.A? Then there's still hope for Smog Town ; )

BTW, with any luck, her neopyrne (sp?) lip-implants will melt and no one will have to listen to her.

Don said...

There's more gas stations than that in BH. NFT is a piece of crap (and I figured that out flipping through a copy at Border's). There's also a Mobil at Robertson/Olympic (and that's just off the top of my head). The Thrifty(?) cater-corner is in L.A.

Incidentally BP owns Arco but 76 is part of Conoco-Phillips.

I was biking through BH yesterday and I started looking for obviously plasticized women, but didn't see any. I think part of that is that unless it's really extreme (e.g., Angelyne), I'm just not the guy to spot it. Or it might be that the parts of BH south of Wilshire are the wrong place to look.