Mike Nelson's Mind Over Matters by Michael J. Nelson

Author:Michael J. Nelson [Nelson, Michael J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061747786
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

L.A. DIARY

Since 1991, I’ve made infrequent trips from Minneapolis out to Los Angeles, for various television pitches, award shows, or simply to get away from image-conscious Minneapolis for a little while, man. The following are some of my completely unreliable memories.

1992: My first trip to L.A. for an awards ceremony, no less. It is a packed flight and I get an aisle seat next to a man who I’m convinced was bathed by nurses shortly after birth, and that was it. He has since then simply added layers of Speed Stick in a losing battle to cover up his odor. He is wearing a sweater made from Orlon, a man-made fiber ideal for wicking away freshness and promoting the growth of bacteria. I immediately become queasy and find I have to hang almost fully out in the aisle in order to avoid passing out. I am hit by the drink cart so hard it nearly dislocates my shoulder. The man takes off his Orlon sweater, and entire galaxies of stink are sent directly into my sinuses. The meal choices are announced. Either breaded chicken breast with rice pilaf or sun-dried opossum with aged sweetbreads. When it gets to me they’re out of the chicken, so I pass on the meal, but the guy next to me eats mine as well as his and his wife’s. (Incidentally, since then, I have never once received the meal choice on any of the nearly fifty flights I’ve taken. I am simply handed whatever dregs are scraped off the bottom of the serving cart. I don’t say this to elicit sympathy; I would merely like to point out the extraordinary odds against it.)

In L.A., I stay in a busy high-rise hotel along with roughly forty-eight million Mary Kay ladies there for a convention. Every trip either to or from my room takes over an hour as the women embark and disembark. I take one pointy Mary Kay lady elbow to the ribs for every floor.

At one point, after stepping out of the shower, I hear a stern voice from an unseen source saying alarming phrases, but the voice comes in and out, so all I make out is, “. . . Smoke and some . . . on floor twelve . . . evacuation . . . leave your belongings . . . flames are licking the . . . hair on fire . . .” I dress hurriedly and head to the lobby, arriving one hour later with forty-eight million Mary Kay ladies. It is pandemonium in the lobby, and when I ask an employee what the trouble is, he says that he thinks someone pulled the fire alarm by mistake. I ask him if he’s sure, and he says, “Uh, yeah, I think so.”

We lose the award. There is a big party after the show, in a big tent with a big band, bars everywhere, and the largest pile of softshell crabs I have ever seen (I’ve seen about four piles), but there is almost no one in attendance.

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