O Little Town of Hancock Park

Ray Cochran writes:

Sometimes I miss New York. I miss that in New York City you can get a turkey club with fries, a live eel, and a dwarf delivered to your door within an hour, and no one will ask you any questions beyond "wheat or rye?" That's very exciting. New York is also exciting during the holidays. I spent this Christmas in LA with the boyfriend and all his friends. I love my boyfriend but oh my God, LA is so boring at Christmas! For dinner, we ate turducken, which is a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey and which was beyond vile and looked like one of those food chain dioramas at the Museum of Natural History.

After dinner, we piled into the car and headed for the House of David, which is a house in Hancock Park decorated with lots of Christmas lights. Everyone was very excited to see it. They kept telling me it was worth the drive, but talk about a let-down. It's called the House of David because several Michelangelo's David statuettes are placed liberally on the lawn. Classy. And each David sports a Santa hat, which everyone thought was just hilarious! I stood over to the side watching my friends with a mixture of boredom and contempt like one of those teenage girls stuck with their parents on a Sunday drive. It made me wonder if my years in New York had sort of ruined me for Christmas. After all, once you've seen an 80-year-old homeless woman dressed like a Santa-elfish thing pull down her pants, shove her ass against the subway wall, and take a shit, all other yuletide activities pale by comparison.

But all was not lost. As everyone was going nuts for the lights, I spotted two mannequins, a male and a female, sitting in a sleigh on someone's lawn. As I got closer, I discovered the mannequins were those black shiny ones that were all the rage for awhile. I also noticed that the female mannequin had messy hair piled up on her head and she looked totally fucked-up. "Look! It's Wonderland Whitney & Bobby!" I screamed, pointing out the two figures to my crowd. They all turned, looked at the mannequins, and then looked at me, slightly irritated – like I had ruined some visual trance-thing happening for them. Then the boyfriend walked over and whispered in my ear. "Can't you just enjoy the lights?"

The answer to that question became abundantly clear: No. I couldn't just enjoy the lights. LA sucks at Christmas and I've never been able to "just enjoy the lights." I can't drive 10 miles to look at some tacky house covered in Christmas lights and stand there and ooh and ahh for 14 hours. I need more. I need Christmassy things to happen. Like the homeless Santa-elfish woman at the W 4th Street stop. And as everyone stood transfixed by the lights, I wondered what would happen if Wonderland Whitney & Bobby accidentally caught on fire.

– Ray Cochran

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