day 8: just another friday afternoon in LA

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so shortly before 4, the "breaking news" graphic flashes across the screen interrupting oprah, followed by a studio shot of the local anchor duo looking very animated, and then throwing to an apparent live shot of a big gray jet flying low--

what?  what the fuck is happening?   i grab the remote, turn up the volume, and...

christ, i had completely forgotten that the royal couple are flying in today.  i sit down to watch.

not, mind you, because i give a rat's ass about wills and whatsername.  or because watching americans scurrying about, scraping and making general gushing fools of themselves around royalty can be entertaining.

no, i'm watching because their first scheduled event upon leaving the airport, as breathlessly announced by the female anchor, will, by my rough calculation, put them at precisely the intersection through which i and tens of thousands of my fellow angelenos will need to pass, at about exactly the same time.

because they always pull this shit on friday afternoon at 4--you know, when nobody in los angeles is on the road.

so the plane lands, taxis a bit and pulls up alongside this straggly-looking line of local luminaries [our idiot mayor, i expected, but the governor?!], the anchors extemporize inanely as the ground crew set up the stairs and futz around with the door--and then, finally, the couple emerge.

they blow through the reception line in about a minute and a half, all smiles and charm.  she looks sensational, i gotta admit, and it's fascinating to watch their choreography--how he moves ahead, seemingly oblivious of her presence, and she always and very artfully manages to stay a step or two behind him.  they pile into opposite sides of a range rover, and they're off.

and the bloviating anchors lapse back into semi-coherence, because now they're on familiar ground--now it's just another car chase through the streets of LA, only this time with the cops helping.

the cops are on familiar ground, too, and their choreography is even better than the royals'.  the motorcade slices through the congested streets like a hot knife through butter, motorcycle patrolmen clearing one intersection and then racing ahead to take positions at another, in a seamless dance that not only moves the whole circus from LAX to the beverly hilton in less than 20 minutes, but does so with minimal disruption of traffic.

and, more importantly, gets them to their destination well ahead of me.

by the time i roll through the intersection of wilshire and santa monica boulevards, there is nary a trace of the hubbub i had seen on television there a mere 15 minutes before.  as i pull into my parking space right on time [ok, five minutes late, but for me that's right on time], i think about how different this experience was than the last time a dignitary came to town on a friday afternoon.

and it convinces me even more that if dignitaries can't travel like this, perhaps they shouldn't travel at all.