Fast Cars and Fancy Brunches

It’s nice to see the fancier side of things from time to time. Not that my life isn’t fancy in its own splendid ways, but there’s a whole lot of society livin’ I’m just not privy to. But we can pretend, right?

This weekend, a buddy came into town to pick up his dad’s new Tesla Roadster, which, if you haven’t heard, is the world’s first electric sports car. Seriously, it does 0 to 60 in about 3.7 seconds. So far as I could tell, the car has three speeds: fast, very fast and reverse. You just have to plug it in and charge it up every 240 miles or so. The future is now.

(Oddly enough, I’d noticed a story a few days earlier about Arnold Schwarzenegger considering returning his Roadster because getting in and out of the low-to-the-ground sports car is… difficult for a governor of his size.)

First, we had a lovely brunch overlooking the Pacific at the Casa del Mar because, really, if you’re going to have a great big fancy rich folks morning, it’s best to go all the way and start with some papaya slices in “one of the top hotels in the world” (or so the plaque by the elevator says).

Then it was off to the Tesla dealership, where even the bathroom sink is smarter than you. It’s nice every once in a while to get treated like an Important Person. They even offered us refreshments just like assistants do in all those studio meetings I keep thinking I’ll be going on but don’t. (Seriously, 80% of the spoken conversation in Los Angeles County is “Can I get you a bottled water?”)

While my friend sat through his half-hour tutorial required before even attempting to drive the damned thing, I got to have fun trying to park my 2006 Ford Focus in a very tight parking spot between a Roadster and a Lotus. I have never concentrated so hard on something in my life. Never.

But so much fancy couldn’t last, not on my salary, so after this spectacularly glamorous morning, I motored back to my East side apartment overlooking the 5 freeway to work on a screenplay for free and drink myself into a stupor on Simpler Times lager, which sells for $4 a six-pack. God bless you, Trader Joe’s. God bless you straight to hell.

“Drinking in L.A.” is Ned Ehrbar’s look at life as a bleary-eyed East Coast refugee in sunny Southern California. You can see Ned’s other work here, and you’re more than welcome to follow him on Twitter, as awful as that sounds.”