Ok, I'll say it quickly to make it hurt less, like ripping off a plaster - Sarah Palin??!! Good grief. I mean, good grief. Unvetted, inexperienced and unknown. Proof, as if proof were needed that McCain is trying to win an election - with no apparent consideration for life beyond 4 November - while Obama is trying to become president, making decisions and formulating policies with a view to them lasting four years, rather than short-sighted, short-term plans to win votes.
I mean, Sarah Palin??! By now, we all know the various scandals surrounding her, so I won't go on. But my favourite being the theory that her youngest child is actually her daughter's and she's covering up for her, 'Sunset Beach'-style.
With the Palin news haunting us, Max and I left Denver in separate directions. He headed off to Minnesota for the RNC convention and I went to LA for a week of fun in the sun. I stayed Friday to Monday with one of my best friends from university - Tom - and his magnificent girlfriend Nina then was passed, like a child between a set of divorced parents, to Tom and Bambi and stayed with them until Saturday.
I've only been to LA once before, for Tom and Bambi's wedding, and didn't much like it then because I couldn't really get a handle on it. I think it's very much a city you need to see through the eyes of someone who knows it well, so I was really looking forward to my visit, especially as I was seeing some of my favourite people in the world.
Within about 5 minutes of being in Tom and Nina's kickass convertible, winging my way from the airport to their house in West Hollywood, it felt like we hang out like that all the time. It was so wonderful to see them and for it not to matter that I haven't seen them for a few years.
I had a brilliant few days with them, wandering around Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd, exploring the Hollywood hills and seeing fancy houses, gawping at the view from the Griffith Observatory, having tasty brunches in nice restaurants, visiting the amazing gardens and photography exhibition at the Huntingdon Library and spending an afternoon at the site of architectural porn that is the Getty.
I was among the many people who deride the majority of Americans who don't have passports, assuming this meant that they are very blinkered and have had very narrow experiences of the world, sticking to what they know rather than exploring different places. However, this month of whizzing around the States has made me temper that opinion a bit, because of the sheer variety I've experienced within the US. Going from DC to Florida to Denver to LA really felt like visiting four different countries. They all feel very different and in LA, the people even look different, I reckon - DC doesn't really 'do' fashion, so it was a real shock to the system to see these wafer thin people wandering around in weird directional clothes.
It was great to hang out with Tom and Nina and they made me feel really at home in their awesome house (awesome until some Armenian neighbours had a party late one night and had a band playing the loudest whiney music through the most powerful PA just across the street...). I even got to drive their convertible a lot, which made me feel like someone out of 'Entourage'.
Perhaps the most fun thing we did was spend the evening at the biggest, most high concept mini-golf place I've ever been to. There were THREE courses, all with amazing obstacles, like windmills and bridges and water features. It was so so cool. I never got to the bottom of why, but there were also wild bunny rabbits hopping around the course. I really got into my mini-golf and either got holes in one, or took a million goes to sink my ball. It was so so fun. And THEN we got to play air hockey and driving games in the adjacent arcade! Joy.
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