One of the things that television and movies fail to get right about Los Angeles is how difficult parking can be in neighborhoods like mine. I frequently spend thirty minutes to an hour looking for a parking space when I make it home from work at night. In movies, parking is never a problem. In real life, even after you have successfully parked, there's still the spectre of street cleaning hanging overhead. Have a late night last night? If you have street cleaning scheduled for 8:00 AM, you'd better be up and moving your car, or you're going to get a ticket. I've received many. Enough that if my car gets ticketed again, it's probably going to get towed.

I watch The Shield, which is set in my area of town. That stash house Vindrell tried to rob last week--the one off Normandie--that area was minutes from my apartment. In The Shield parking is the ONLY complication these guys haven't faced! It's never like "Oh, we robbed an Armenian money train... hey, do you see a spot? Can I fit in there?"

This morning I was watching The Shield, thinking about this, when I realized that the reason I woke up at 7:36 was not to watch The Shield on my Tivo, but to hustle out and move my car from its parking space on a meter in front of the grocery store by 8:00. I realized that at 8:25. I shot out of bed, out of my apartment and took off running, scaring an older woman who probably thought I wanted to snatch her purse.

When this happens, I immediately assume the car has been towed. That's a bad idea because when I get to the area where I mistakenly think I parked my car--every time--and don't see it, I immediately begin making imaginary deductions from by bank account, which makes a real deduction from my ability to keep my food down. Thankfully, the panic lasted only a minute. The car was fine. No ticket. No boot. I got in it and moved it closer to home. Of course, my relaxing morning had come to an end. I love LA.