It's 2:15pm; I'm sipping my peanut butter protein shake and regretting my life choices. I just BOMBED my Burger King commercial audish... The casting director told me to stop 'pushing' so much with my reaction to the imaginary Transformer informing me that the 'Flame-Grilled Whopper will transform my taste buds.' Thus, I need to blow off some steam and where better to head than to LA's hottest FREE hotspot, Runyon Canyon? It's LA's equivalent to Everest's base camp: a smorgasbord of dogs, celebs, trannies, sweaty shirtless bods, gangsters, strollers, and every cliché LA has to offer -- they all flock to this one hill to knock out their 45 minutes of glitzy cardio. I'm no stranger to the hill, managing to shred there three times a week even when I lived in a shanty in North Hills.
I head up to the park gate at the top of Fuller, with my fingers crossed for a parking spot, but it's street cleaning. I find one, but the delicate man in his beat-up red Miata cuts me off and takes the spot right near the park gate. Oh, there's another! As I swing around with all the grace of an Austin Powers' three point turn, I discover the spot is half the size of my car, so I give up and park in the lot at the top of the Ralph's parking lot about a mile away. It's cool; I need the extra cardio anyways.
I throw in my ear buds and make my way up to the gate. The increasingly strong scent of Axe-masked body odor and animal feces tells me I'm super close... Let the people watching begin. I grab a water bottle from the snack table at the entrance of the park, promising myself I'll throw a fiver in there next time and proceed past the free yoga class going on in the grassy area to my left. I notice there's a park ranger giving out a ticket to a man who looks like a pro-wrestler for having his Shitzy-poo 'off leash.' Bummer, bro.
I head up the easier side of the hill. I'm going to do a couple laps to try and forget about the 'BK lounge' audition disaster from earlier. A sweaty Filipino woman in a purple velour jumpsuit pushes a stroller packed with triplets in matching outfits that I swear I've seen in Us Weekly, belonging to some celebrity couple with a stupid nickname. Jeremy Piven jogs slowly by me in what looks like a wetsuit with the sleeves cut off. Weird. I push forward, passing high school students in the 'Cops in Training' program talking about abortions. Soon, I see another lady pushing a stroller, but this one's scantily clad and definitely has at least a dozen melanomas. She has a bulldog and calico cat in her stroller.
I push on. A man throws a tennis ball that beans me in the upper thigh, so his Weimaraner comes running and jumps right at me, connecting head to knee. His owner yells at me, so I apologize to George the dog and attempt to work through the sharp pain in my kneecap as I crest the hill.
Sprinting past the oversized lookout seat and down the treacherous stairs, I pass Jake Gyllenhaal, who's running with his German Shepard. As he's giving me a 'you should be wearing a shirt' look, I run directly over a rattlesnake. Leaping in pure fear, I proceed to wipe out, luckily avoiding smashing into any stairs by crashing into a large pile of 'fun stuff.' On the plus side, I get an 'Are you okay?!' from the delicate angel in the lululemon pants.
Jake won that one, but... Okay, Jake wins them all. Whatever, Prince of Persia was super tight.
When I get back to my car I'm greeted by a $63 ticket shoved under the windshield wiper. How the heck can they give you a ticket in the Ralph's parking lot?! Oh well, maybe I'll get a residual check from that bathroom commercial I did last spring, my cousin said he saw it on the CW at 2 am last week. I start the car and pull out my phone. I have a missed call. I've got a Burger King callback at 10:30am tomorrow, but can't make it because I've got jury duty.