Half Empty by David Rakoff

Author:David Rakoff [Rakoff, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-53369-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

II.

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Superman has taken the morning off. Although appearing among us in mufti, he is immediately identifiable by his square jaw and the comma of dark hair upon his forehead. With an affable hello he greets the other Hollywood Boulevard regulars who have gathered along with a small crowd of tourists standing outside the classical façade of the old Masonic Temple, now the theater where Jimmy Kimmel does his evening talk show. The USC Trojans marching band, or at least a skeleton crew thereof, goes through its paces, a casually synchronized, loose-limbed routine in which they instrumentally exhort us to do a little dance, make a little love, and above all, get down tonight. Superman bops his head, enjoying his moments of freedom. In a while he will have to put on his blue tights and red Speedo and go in to work, posing for pictures with the tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Maybe he’ll stop on the way at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at the corner of Hollywood and North Orange. Batman and the Cat in the Hat go there sometimes.

Suddenly, from the doors of the theater, just behind the Trojans, emerges a cheerful chubby fellow. Completely unconnected to the proceedings on the street, he is dressed in a cheap red-satin Satan costume. Dancing in time to the music, he beckons to us, crowing delightedly, “Worship me! Worship me!”

But we are here for neither the Man of Steel nor the Prince of Darkness. We have come this morning to witness the consecration of the newest star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The “star” in question on this dull April morning is local radio personality Dan Avey, who will join the two thousand–plus others—from the greats to the somewhat less-than-greats to the downright obscure—in that characteristic luncheon-meat-pink-against-lustrous-black-terrazzo-and-brass immortality. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the organization that administers the Walk, has set up a steel barrier to separate those with a personal stake in the ceremony from the gawkers and hoi polloi. It is a hopeful gesture.

“It’s almost like going to your own funeral,” says Avey, after the brief tributes from fellow radio announcers. The star is unveiled. Avey’s friends and family applaud. A local crazy snaps pictures; his straw fedora is banded with a braid of blue-and-white balloons, the kind birthday-party clowns twist into animal and flower shapes, and his ears sport very large fake diamonds. He is trying to get a knot of puzzled German tourists to move, but he squeaks out a high-pitched gibberish that only seems to increase his frustration, as the Germans just look at him. Perplexed Northern Europeans—hereafter PNEs—turn out to be just one of the mainstays of the area, along with leafleting evangelicals, sex workers, harmless ambulant schizophrenics, and beat cops.

There are some places where an intrinsic melancholy might be reason enough to stay away, I suppose, although I can’t think of any. Hollywood Boulevard recently underwent a major urban renewal, a charge led by the building of the Kodak Theatre complex, current home of the Oscars and American Idol telecasts.

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