Neighborhood Watch

Day 23: Next Door

6. You Have Been Given The Opportunity To Create The Half-Hour TV Show Of Your Own Design. What Is It Called And What’s The Premise?

Source

This is such an exciting question because I KNOW ALREADY!! And it’s kind of helped jumpstart the novel I’m actively not working on.

A couple of years ago, I starting walking around the neighborhood with one of my friends from the PTA because we were trying to get in shape because wine was making us gain weight. Our walks were hilarious. We pretty much laughed the entire time but we also cried. And we plotted and schemed and worried someone was going to write about us being “suspicious” on NextDoor and called an uber when we walked too far and didn’t want to walk back because it was too hot and we were sweaty and hungry. Not all in one day, obviously.

There were a rash of home invasion robberies happening in the neighborhood at the time, it was on TMZ! and so while brainstorming ways to get attendance up at our monthly community meetings, the board president (at the time) decided to invite a member of the LAPD Encino division to come talk to us and answer questions we had about things we could do to protect ourselves. Dogs and cameras an motion lights were the main things I remember. Until my favorite part of the night. One of the moms started complaining that they were opening up a halfway house on her block and she demanded it be closed down. Somehow that got everyone riled up into forming a neighborhood watch and the meetings would be held in front of the halfway house until they got so nervous, they’d move it or something else histrionic. It sounded exactly as ridiculous and overdramatic at the time.

A neighborhood watch. Imagine a bunch of middle aged, upper-middle class, white women chasing perceived hooligans off their lawns in rhinestone’d flip flops. It’s too much. So for our next walk, in tears of laughter, my friend and I decided to start the first shift of Neighborhood Watch.

The thing that these walks became, it wasn’t about losing wine weight anymore, it was about our friendship, and staking our place in the neighborhood. We walked through everything from a marriage breaking up to the PTA eating itself alive, to my eventual move away.

I used to have wine nights with another friend of mine, Carol. And one night I told Carol about the walks and it hit me that they would make an AMAZING tv show. Every episode would be us on a walk. Every character would live in the neighborhood and we would run into them during our walks and that would be the show. I would call it Next Door or something else less likely to get me sued. She told me to write a book about it.

So my original novel that was just about funny things about being on the PTA has evolved into this thing that has evolved into an opus and it’s so big and so overwhelming at this point, that I need to take a break from it and also just finish it at the same time. I’m just not sure I can do it justice, so wish me luck on finishing that beast. But I will. And hopefully it will make one person laugh.

You’ve Got the Look, LA Gear

If I could get into a time machine, I would go back to 1987 and buy these in every color. 11 year old me had these and 41 year old me is so completely jealous, I want them back by any means necessary. Especially the ones that have those fancy shark-gill looking things on the sides. Except I want them new. I don’t want the “gently used” pair that Jennifer in Palmdale is selling on ebay for $400. How do you do a shake-down of the she-devil that controls fixed, linear time?

I need these shoes! Look how cute they make a foot look. If I had them, I would stand like that a lot, I bet. Toe down, heel up, side angle view. And I’d get some chunky socks that I could multi-layer up my calf, giving the illusion that my legs are in shape.

I’ve been walking around the neighborhood lately with various friends trying to find celeb homes and keep eyes out for the usual Encino gossip. We’ve been actually walking a lot and I got yelled at by my podiatrist friend because I wear my Converse All-Stars to parade the streets. Apparently these are not approved walking shoes and I’m going to ruin my arches. I hate athletic shoes. I hate them, I won’t be seen dead in them. I would rather lose my arches, I’m that serious about it. They look totally normal on other people, but when I put them on I feel grotesque and monstrous. But the 80’s knew how to style an athletic shoe. I don’t know that The LA Gear high-top shoe is actually made for actual athletics but neither am I, and they’re super cute. I can throw a Dr. Scholls in there and what’s the difference?

Where can I get a pair of these fine lookin’ shoes?? Do I know anyone that knows anyone that has a time machine or works in a shady outlet store that’s been hoarding old (NEW) LA Gear sneakers that wants to hook me up from the back of a van in a dark alley somewhere late at night?? Cheaply? Do I know any shoe designers that want to make these for me? Do I start my own brand??? HELP MEEEE.

These Boots are Made for Walkin’, or How I Plan to get my Own Category on NextDoor

pexels-photo-442584.jpeg

I don’t know what’s happened to me. I’ve become a walker. It’s ridiculous how much I have taken to it. I walk now. That’s a thing I do regularly. I had walked 5.32 miles yesterday before it was even 11 am. Out loud, that doesn’t sound like I’m living up to my original, diva-esque, Mariah Carey year plans, but in looking back over that resolutions list, I’m not actually that far off. My vision of the year probably involved a lot more champagne and foot rubs, however, as I am sorely lacking in champagne and foot rubs. I also noticed from that old post, we were just about to Supermoon.  And here we are, capping off the whole month with another Supermoon. This one yesterday was all eclipsy. I did not turn into a werewolf, sadly. I did not Thriller dance in the streets. My eyes, they did not yellow.

So fun news! I have a new, additional walking buddy, because, let’s be honest, if I’m not able to gossip and laugh while I walk, then what’s the point. I’ll look like a random hoodlum and will wind up on NextDoor under a “Suspicious Character” titled email. I mean, I might be on NextDoor anyway but I don’t need to prompt them.

Or maybe I do. Maybe I plan an elaborate prank that will last weeks that will get all the neighbors riled up and cause them to go all Hardy Boys. I’m going to tell Nurse Friend about this new plan. She’ll be thrilled.

So new walking buddy that hasn’t replaced Nurse Friend will hereby be known as Book Friend. Book Friend and I like to walk on the other side of Encino. The super rich people side. The house James Dean lived in when he died side, the Liberace Piano Pool house side, The Jackson Family Compound side. Two of those are actually in Sherman Oaks, but not the Jackson house. That’s Encino and speaking of the Jackson house, Tito has not come out and greeted me with a warm cup of tea yet, but it might happen if I wish hard enough.

IMG_3558.jpg

Liberace Piano Pool house

Yesterday Book Friend and I accidentally (on purpose) walked onto a live car commercial shoot. They yelled “HOT SET!” at us which I think meant, “shut up about your bad life choices and get out of the shot, pajama girl”. That was not exactly how I’d dreamed of being discovered, but we can’t all be Marilyn.

The rich people side is super nice though and we even saw one of those Little Free Library things that look like a bird mansion with books that people set up around the city. The one we came across had nice books in it like Hamlet and Jane Eyre. I’ve wanted to set one of these Little Free Libraries up around my side of the tracks but $10 says that someone would throw a Playboy and a used condom in it and then hit it with a baseball bat.

Look, my side of the Boulevard isn’t so bad. It’s real nice, actually. They have chairs out for you when you need a rest. Give me a glass of champagne and a foot rub, and it’s like, Tito and his tea, who?

That emerald toned, Lazy Boy is as, if not more lavish than any piano pool, don’t let the lure of Hollywood sway your perception.

The next time Book Friend and I walk, I’m going to pick up one of those Maps of the Stars so I can gawk and awe. Do they have a Valley edition? If they don’t, TMZ Tours better look out. They’ll have some Valley competition soon.

I’m going to get kicked out of Encino, aren’t I?

Neighborhood Watch: Urban Legend or Truth?

On our second day ON DUTY, Nurse Friend is already on thin ice.  I’m starting to think she’s not as into the Neighborhood Watch as I am. My tip-off was her saying, “Oh my god, you think this is real, don’t you,” when I bent down to take a picture of a discarded glove.

That kind of talk gets you demoted to the desk, Nurse Friend. Besides, this could be like, the OJ glove. Evidence? Planted evidence? Who knows, that’s not my job. My job is to document and take notes. Maybe it was Nurse Friend who dropped the glove. Maybe she’s involved in some kind of 2018 Bling Ring crowd. Maybe she’s trying to create a diversion. A nihilistic snide to the very idea of the Neighborhood Watch hoping that I overlook the key piece of evidence that could make or break her trial. How are the jury going to acquit if they never know if the glove fits?

Needless to say, Nurse Friend is no longer amused with this,  which like all things I do, it might have made my friends laugh the one time but now it’s uncomfortable and now they don’t know how to say, “enough”. She still goes walking with me though, so all of that is on her. She loves me.

Okay, but listen, listen, listen. I think we may have found evidence disproving the debunking of urban legend, “Dead Scuba Diver Found in Tree” !

This is what we found at an off-ramp in The Valley, nowhere NEAR a body of water. You tell me this isn’t all that’s left of that poor scuba diver that got sucked up into the bucket of one of those fire helicopters. RIP Jr Collins. RIP.

Neighborhood Watch: Shift 1

Nurse friend and I went out on our weekly walk on Friday as the “Neighborhood Watch Patrol” as a joke and I swear to god, not only was it the best walk we’ve ever been on,  there was some shady things afoot that I was not expecting to see.

  • Guy in yellow LADWP shirt with beeping device that we were saying was probably fake and that his yellow shirt was fake and it was a conspiracy to commit crimes. This could be true, actually.
  • We saw 3 guys in black suits, but the jackets were shiny and possibly made out of leather. The Mob. Clearly. And we kept seeing them. They were walking up one street and then 5 minutes later, you’d see two more looking at a house 3 blocks down. We never were completely sure if it was the same guys or a whole sting operation. But they have been noted in the Neighborhood Watch logbook.
  • Some guy (do not believe he was part of the black jacket gang, he was in a khaki polo) started following us so we, smartly, began group texting some friends our selfies hoping to get him in the background of them in case we died. The friends did not find it as dire a situation as Nurse Friend and I did. We could’ve been killed. Our first day on patrol was almost our last.
  • One of the friends that we were texting selfies to, drove by us without slowing down, not waving, probably wishing she had chosen a different route. I called her immediately, she told me she was in the car with someone and that I was on speakerphone and do NOT be weird. I responded “Neighborhood Watch”, she hung up on me.
  • It got really hot outside. Like in the 80s. Too hot to walk around anymore plus it’s January and I would like at least a little semblance of winter. Also, we both had to pee. No one would come down a half a block and pick us up. Noted in the logbook.
  • We thought about stealing a golf cart from a security guard we had passed earlier. Decided that’s probably against “official” Neighborhood Watch Rules but not completely off the table of ideas.
  • We noticed a lady pushing around an empty baby stroller. No baby. Strange. Noted in the logbook.

5 Miles, 17,000 sit-ups worth of laughing, several potential criminal activities sighted and noted INCLUDING the friend who is trying to hide me from her other friends AND also the other friend who wouldn’t come pick us up when we got tired and sweaty.

Overall, the “Neighborhood Watch” was a success and we probably thwarted crimes from being committed during our shift. Also, we laughed the entire time, past a middle of the day dance party, or rave, or really loud music and we got to dance in the street like David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

I think we are patrolling again tomorrow. They’re going to give us the key to the city.

Neighborhood Watch

Well, craps. Last night I fell asleep again at 9pm. I’ve become so uncool. I have a reputation to uphold. Although, falling asleep so early means that I am also up so early and I can’t say I hate that part. I do enjoy all the quiet and calm before everyone wakes up in the morning.

So, let me tell you about my newest obsession. The other night there was a PTO meeting at school. (PTO is like the PTA but like, the underground version. Like a badly drawn version of Tony the Tiger but his name is Cody and he’s in board shorts which is actually an improvement because, why doesn’t Tony wear pants??) Anyway, at the PTO board meeting, an officer from the LAPD came to talk to us about neighborhood safety which in turn, made everyone at the board meeting passionately consider forming a neighborhood watch to catch the criminals in the act and let them and all their thief friends know that we are not having this here in the 91436, thank you very much, sirs!

This is my favorite thing that has happened in recent memory. Frantic, vigilante moms taking back the streets of Encino.

My nurse friend and I try to walk the neighborhood for a couple of miles at least once a week. Something ridiculous happens everytime we go out, but add “catching crooks” to the list and I cannot wait to document all of it. The NextDoor posts are about to level up.

This topic is all I can think about and I’ve been laughing about for 3 days. This is getting its own category on my blog. Stay tuned. I am not done with this nonsense.

I need to go get ready ’cause we’re walking today. My first, unofficial Neighborhood Watch patrol. I’ll report back if anything goes down. Today could be a two post kind of a day.