UPDATE: One man's sprawl is another man's dream home.

I'm in LA. There are some amazing, really amazing things to do in this town. However, the constant looks of disgust when I mention New York make me miss my home. Check out all the cool stuff you can do with a bike in New York. We still have our fun in New York, even if there are no beaches or rattle snakes or Mulholland drive sunrises or Palisades Highlands sunsets or mountain grottos.

I feel like I have to say something about the Six Feet Under finale. However, I am at a loss for words. How 1 hour and 15 minutes can fit such extremes as the sappy pseudo-psychology of David's dream with the completely touching and moving rapprochement between Brenda and Ruth is beyond me. Claire's car ride into the future was bizzare, to say the least. I mean, the way they "killed" off all the characters (this is not a spoiler, and frankly, if you don't watch TV when it's scheduled to be on and you care about not knowing plot twists, then don't read this blog) seemed like a cop-out. We all know they had to kill everyone, so why not a Shakespearean bloodbath. That's why I tuned in. Its like they forgot that the best part of the show is the opening death scenes and decided that people watched the show to be educated about how to lead a more liberated liberal life. I still love the show, don't get me wrong. I'm just sad to have it leave me with a bad taste in my mouth after about 5 great episodes.

Eating at the In-n-Out burger, I had a two-fold epiphany. First, Blue 9 in New York is better. Second, parents are not supposed to be their children's buddies. The second epiphany was the result of overhearing a mom and her son and his friends discuss teachers. The friend says, "I hated my x grade teacher." Mom replies, "who's that." He says, "Ms. y." Mom laughs, rolls her eyes and says, "yeah, she is such a bitch." The mom went on to laugh about how they started a food fight at camp. I mean, what sort of deranged person would act this way in front of their child. I'm thinking of promoting a ballot intiative to declare one day a year a free-for-all in terms of criticizing random acts of bad parenting. It takes a village people. It takes a village.

I know some people may find the Blue 9 bit more shocking that the parenting tirade. But, I'm serious bra. If you hold the onions completely at Blue 9 and stick with the single cheeseburger you are going to get a more delicious product than the animal style cheeseburger at In-n-out. There was a mild funky aftertaste in my In-n-Out burger that I have never experienced at Blue 9. Blue 9 is, in a word, fresher.

Futhermore, some people might infer that my bad parenting tirade is a subtle knock on the California way of life. This is half-true. Of course there are bad parents everywhere. However, I think there are more bad parents here. Parenting is not a popularity contest people.

P.S. The theme of this post is aftertaste, not to be confused with afterbirth.