Nirvana

It's been weird the last couple of months, driving around the plywood-lined canyons of Hollywood-- the endless construction zone, the castles of scaffolding and the drywall façades that mark the parking garages, the Scientology test centers, the mini-malls of tomorrow. Between rows of handbills for 8 Mile and Christina Aguilera's Stripped there are stark grids of them, white on black, with a single word: NIRVANA. And for a moment, it's as if nothing has changed in the ten years I've lived in Los Angeles. The payphones are still plastered with flyers beckoning models and movie extras, and you can still get a pretty decent slice of pie for six bucks. I'm still secretly infatuated with the oversized billboards that hawk made-for-cable movies down on the Sunset Strip, and I still think In 'n' Out Burgers are overrated. But somehow it's comforting to see the handbills-- ghostly, surreal tombstones, reverent in their simplicity.