Tuesday, March 21st 2023.

I wake up, my body seeming waking me up naturally this time, I look over to the clock next to me and it’s about 7:18 in the morning, I can see the morning traffic and a little bit of the Los Angeles skyline rushing by on the 405 from my hotel window, reminding me that I was fast asleep while everyone else is rushing to work or wherever they need to be this morning, all the 18 wheelers seemingly hauling ass on the freeway too as well, the car pool lane doesn’t seem too full though. I slouch up a bit, my wife still fast asleep I can tell by her calm in and out breathing. I reach over her to grab the TV remote on her side of the bed, on her night stand.

I point it at the TV, and press the power button on top, the TV’s LG starting screen coming up and then going to the cable network, it last being on TBS, playing an episode of the George Lopez Show. Another show I never really watched when it was on TV when it was airing new episodes, I flick through channels, either coming across commercials or infomercials from channels who haven’t started airing it’s regular programing yet. With the few interactions I’ve had with cable TV since we stopped having it at our house four years ago and granted over the years as streaming has kinda taken over, I’ve noticed the content on channels like Comedy Central or TruTV don’t have as much variety of different shows playing during the day like how it used to be. I press the number 7 for ABC, something I still remember all these years being gone for the basic TV channels. Seemingly also on a commercial break, that stupid Burger King commercial everyone seemingly loves these days talking about Whoppers despite it only being 7 o’clock in the morning. I decide it’s probably best to get up and go out and get breakfast downstairs while I’m up, and bring it back to the room. 

I brush my teeth and get dressed, I put on a nice denim jacket and some black jeans, the same shoes as yesterday. I grab my phone and my wallet, and I think about waking up Nicole before I go downstairs, but I think again, and say nah since she looks like she’s having a nice sleep anyways. I grab the hotel card key and head out the door, closing the door slowly and softly to make sure I don’t wake Nicole up.

I head down the hallway to the elevator, it smells like fresh paint and a little damp. I wait a little before the elevator, I can hear it making its way up from downstairs. I think a little about what I’m getting, I’m in the mood for a pretty light breakfast anyways, just a coffee and a bagel or two, maybe a strawberry yogurt if they have them. I think to myself what would Nicole want, and then that makes me think if I should go back and wake her up and ask her, or should I bring back some fruit and hope for the best. I figure, nah fuck it. I’ve made it this far, I might as well just bring back some stuff for her and if she doesn’t like it I’ll just go back down with her.

The elevator door opens and I back up a little bit to give them some space for they can walk out, and out walks a middle aged black man in a suit with some pretty strong smelling cologne on with a Suitcase with a LAX and Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport tag on there as well and a Latina chick seemingly in her twenties, probably 25-26 if I had to guess. She’s dressed in a light green crop top showing off her somewhat chubby tummy, her navel being a bit of an outie. She’s wearing black yoga pants and some sandals that show off her hot red painted toes. She’s got her jet black purse around her shoulder, she’s on her phone, speaking in Spanish, I can make out the word Texas in her conversation, assuming that’s where she’s from.

I exchange head nods with the man with the suit as we pass by, and I get into the elevator and press the button for the lobby floor. As I ascend down, I look at my phone, going onto Instagram. I go onto the explore side, seemingly mostly made up of memes that consist of sexist/racist jokes made by high school kids with whatever hot rap song with autotune and trap beats of the week being played in the background or memes made 30 something millennials like myself that seemingly just crap on the younger generation for existing or whatever nostalgia bait they can think of as if the nineties is still only ten years ago in their mind, seemingly not much of an in between for my content feed for my explore page. Nothing really too funny that catches my eye, either. Before I can go onto my regular feed the elevator stops on the lobby floor and opens up, and I put my phone up and head out into the lobby.

I get two bagels for myself and some coffee, two sugars and two creams.  I get some Yoplaits and some plastic spoons and a couple of muffins and biscuits and head back up the stairs. There’s a handful of people hanging out and eating downstairs but not much else seems to be going on.

I make it to the hotel room, realizing I’ve got my hands full and I knock on the door with my knuckle.

Nicole opens it, seemingly in her nightgown and everything.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to breakfast?” she says, as I walk through the door.

“I didn’t wanna wake you up, it seemed like you were in a good sleep anyways. At one point I thought about it when I was about to enter the elevator but I figured it was too late” I say as I close the door behind me and set the food down on the bed.

“I mean, I would have appreciated it though. It’s fine I guess” she says, as she reaches towards a blueberry yogurt and a plastic spoon.

We eat our breakfasts and watch morning TV which consists of local LA news pretty much with a mix of national, by the time 9:30 rolls around we’re ready to pretty much check out.

“So, do you wanna check out the beach or something before we make the drive up to the resort? Check-in for the resort time isn’t until three. I know LA traffic can get bad anyways but I think that’s enough time to maybe check out Venice Beach, check out Santa Monica a bit” She says, as she slips on some black socks she's got a light blue Nike jacket on and some skinny jeans.

“Ehh, let me look at Google Maps and we’ll see how bad the traffic could get when we leave out, I don’t wanna spend too much time in LA before we head out to the Resort because traffic can still surprise you and you get caught in a jam” I say, as I start to get up in my chair, as I start throwing away my paper plates I had on the bed in the trash.

I look at Google Maps and if we spend an hour and half or a little less and then head out to Big Bear it’s not too bad and we’d still make it before the check out time. Besides, it would be kinda cool to show Nicole a little about where I used to hang out with friends in college and see how much has changed and what stayed the same over time. 

“Yeah, we can hang out in Santa Monica a bit before we leave out” I say, as I put my phone in my pocket. I notice Nicole does a bit of a celebration dance when I say this, I give a bit of a smile at this. 

We check out of the hotel, and head into the parking garage to get our car. As we walk inside the garage the sounds of the city outside echo inside the parking garage, all the rushing of cars outside and the nearby freeway really making it’s noise inside the garage. Even though Atlanta is a pretty busy city itself with a lot of commotion, it’s a reminder that I’m back in fast paced Los Angeles.

Nicole hands me the keys and I open the door of the Corolla, with by pressing the unlock button on the key fob and I set my luggage on the back seat. I also press the unlock button on the driver’s side and Nicole gets in, putting her bags behind her seat also on the backseat .We both get in, and I press the start button and the car turns on. 

“What do you think about eating Raising Cane’s sometime later on the trip, I saw there’s a few in the area? I wouldn’t mind trying that out while we’re in a place that has one. One of the Copywriters at work talks about it all the time, see how it compares to Zaxby’s” Nicole says, as she puts on her seatbelt, and adjusts her hair.

“I don’t think that was a thing when I was living out here, maybe we’ll try it out on the way back, if there’s not any near Big Bear, which I don’t think there is” I say, as I start to mess with the radio, changing it from the pop-station, which is playing Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero, to KROQ. Good ol’ 106.7,something that brings me back to my college years, a station I listened to all the time and was pretty much my default station if they weren’t playing singles from Green Day’s American Idiot on repeat, like it was in the later end of 2004 and a good chunk of 2005 and 2006.

“Yeah I knew you’d put it on something like this” Nicole jokes, I look at the screen, the station is playing “Edging” by Blink-182. The new-ish comeback song by the band.  I remember hearing something about them getting back together again with one of their original singers Tom Delonge after a few years of him being gone and being replaced by the lead singer of Alkaline Trio. A band I kinda did like that wasn’t on the Indie-rock side and I bought their “From Here to Infirmary” and “Crimson” Album off of a guy on campus that was selling CD’s. I discovered the band, seeing their “Time To Waste” music video being played on MTV2 in 2006 while hanging out over one of Molly’s roommates' friend's parent's house in Montclair, New Jersey while visiting Molly over her spring break that year.  Although I mostly know about the Blink information through the feed of one of my best friend’s from high school Jon on Instagram. He bought tickets for an upcoming show in Charlotte, seemingly costing a fortune for good seats due to Ticketmaster and all their bullshit. He’s now a Youth Pastor at some Medium sized church in Charlotte, becoming a born again Christian after that bad wreck he had back in December of 2011, seemingly making him have a come to Jesus moment while in the hospital. Dude’s married with a few toddlers now.  I guess that wreck did him some good, since he was kinda at a null point in life during that period and that wreck seemingly made him feel like he’s kinda been taking his life for granted.

“I’m in Los Angeles, I’m driving a Nissan, and Blink-182 has a hot new hit song on the radio? Feels like it’s 2004 all over again” I joke to Nicole, and she smiles at this as I shift to reverse and back up, looking at the backing camera that shows up in the infotainment. 

“I don’t even like Blink-182 that much, I know you know about Jon and his obsession with these types of bands back when we were in High School when they were big. I heard about them and saw their stuff on MTV and shit like that, but I didn’t really care much for it” I say, as I cut my wheel to the right as I slightly press my foot on the gas to turn out. 

She doesn’t really respond much to this, I notice she switches the radio around a few times, landing on 98.7, playing “Barely Breathing” by Duncan Sheik. Seemingly an alt-rock station. 

“This doesn’t sound bad” she says, as I pull out of the spot fully and start to make my way out of the parking garage.

“This was the type of stuff that was playing on the Top-40 stations when I was like, 10-11-12 years old and living in Baltimore” I say, noting to myself that the song does sound pretty familiar and it’s pretty much your typical mid to late nineties adult contemporary rock song that you would hear around that time. 

I drive out of the garage and into the street to make my way onto the 10 freeway, I can pretty much get to Santa Monica by just following the freeway signs and using them to tell me what to do. It’s quiet between me and my wife as I drive, she’s seemingly not too impressed by her surroundings still. I tell her that it snowed earlier this month here and you can still see the snow on the mountains in the background if you look hard enough. She doesn’t really respond much to this besides an “okay”.

We make it into Santa Monica fairly quick, it's seemingly filled with life and commotion in it’s shops and it’s foot traffic and car traffic and tourists even during a weekday morning that’s not a holiday. She perks up a little at the site, and it’s kinda nice to see the Santa Monica Pier and the Pacific Ocean after seeing it all in well over a decade, I let our windows down to really smell that ocean smell and the salt and just to hear more of the general life that’s going on around us, turning the radio down low, playing the song “Alive” by P.O.D by this point, ironically, reflecting everything around us.  Another one of those songs by bands that my younger brother was crazy about during his teen years. I feel like I’m always being reminded of the past during this trip.

“Do you wanna stop and take a few pictures?” I say.

"Hmmm, yeah. Let’s do that” She says, as I pull into a spot not too far from the Santa Monica Pier sign, next to a parking meter.

We get out and take about three pictures, one with me and her standing right under the sign, having some middle aged midwestern white guy from Ohio take our picture for us, Nicole flagging him down. I noticed that she uploaded one of her pictures on Instagram, when we got back in the car. She’s more into that update stuff than I am, and I ask her to send it to my DM’s for I can also post it, and she does too, we do a double post, using the collab feature. I haven’t posted anything on my Instagram account since the New York trip in 2019. I’ve got about four posts in total, mostly just from New York, a picture of my family posing in Times Square near the steps, a picture of the Statue of Liberty from our plane when first landing, and a picture of Central Park. The very first picture I posted in 2017, when I first got Instagram after being begged to by my wife. A picture of me on my wedding day in 2013 with my groomsmen, Jon, Richie, Frankie, Lenny, and Jared in a local Atlanta bar smiling and laughing it up on the day before my wedding day in our jet black suits looking like FBI agents. I managed to get back in touch with Frankie when I went back to Baltimore after college, Lenny got me in contact with him when I moved back briefly.  Alex being my best man, him knowing all about the shrinkage situation made me feel much more closer to him than anyone else in that lineup, to some degree. 

“Do you really wanna check out the pier or you wanna hit the road to Big Bear? I mean I might take a day trip to really enjoy LA in full for you can get the experience. It’s 10:41 right now, we probably do wanna start making tracks because we could catch some hell on our way up there” I say, as we’re standing outside.

“Eh, yeah. I guess it would be better to really enjoy it and make a day trip out of coming here and instead of feeling like we have to rush it” She says, as she walks, dodging a twenty something year old woman in yoga pants and a tank top and her hair in a bun with a Lululemon bag and pushing stroller and a teenage guy on one of those electric scooters you’re seeing more these days, his brown hair in that broccoli haircut you see Gen Z sporting all the time.  I wonder if these people are tourists or locals.

We both get into the car and I turn it on, I pay whatever you need on the parking meter, and Nicole enters the information onto the car’s Google Maps display, and then we start to make our way onto the 10 freeway to make our trek out there. Google saying we should arrive 1:30ish, hopefully. 

I hook my Bluetooth up to the car’s infotainment system and I notice Nicole rolls her eyes, not wanting to hear whatever type of music she thinks I’m about to play. I say “If I gotta drive roughly two hours and half straight, even though it’s not that long, I don’t wanna listen to the radio the whole time”.

I go onto podcasts, and I look into Jack Cooper, and he has his own podcast series and everything he made during the pandemic that has somewhat of a following that gets somewhat talked about, getting a few celebrities here and there like Jonah Hill or Devon Sawa, or a comedian like Bill Burr or Demetri Martin. No-one like, A-lister Hollywood level but a decent amount of recognizable names.  He seems to just talk about topics more than inviting people on his podcast to converse with him. But I look at his Joe Rogan Experience podcast episodes instead, his latest one being in the fall of 2022.  He’s gone on there a few times, the first time being in 2015 and the next times in 2018 and 2021. 

I press the button for the October of 2022 episode, and it starts up. 

As I drive down the 10 freeway, all the Teslas and Corollas and Camrys around us. It seems like Priuses aren’t as big as they used to be as I remembered when I lived out here a little more towards the end of my college years. As we get deeper into LA, nearly passing by downtown. Seemingly where the worst of the homeless encampments are and it’s seemingly grown up a lot since the last time I’ve been out there.

“But yeah it’s crazy how the years have passed by. So, Jack. How do you feel about the movie “One Inch” now that about ehhh, 10 years I think have passed this spring” Joe Rogan says, he can hear him shifting around in his chair a little.

“I think it’s a decent movie, still. Made good money at the box office, got all the little details right, like “That 70’s Show” playing on TV when I’m looking for tickets to fly back home on the computer, and when I first go back into the house all the smoke from the food being cooked and “Two and Half Men” playing on TV in the front room, “Ends Tonight” by All American Rejects playing on the radio when I’m being driven home by my sister from the airport in Madison. That 70’s Show was kinda funny I guess since Ashton Kutcher played Dave, my roommate. A lot of details like that I made sure they got right. God bless Emma Stone and Dakota Fanning, which you know Emma played my girlfriend and Dakota played my sister. And as pretty much everyone knows and was one of the main allures for the movie, they swallowed me for real for some shots and had me wear a miniature camera and used CGI to put Shia, Shia LaBeouf in.  The CGI was okay I guess looking back, for 2012 standards and I remember that Avengers movie had us beat for sure. That was a major thing critics nitpicked at. And they had to do these shoots on a empty stomach for a few hours or whatever for my case to make it easier and safer for me to film, maybe there would be a couple of chewed up carrots or cookies or brownies or whatever from the catering company that was on set. Craft Services or whatever the fuck it’s called. Nothing too heavy that would cause too much commotion for digestion to stir me up and possibly damage the camera I had on my head. I still honestly appreciate those girls for going through it and being totally up for the filming in there” Jack says, you can hear him scratch his stubble a little bit during the conversation.

“Yeah the fact you actually literally filmed inside their stomach’s for footage for scenes is pretty hard core. So how did they get you out?  I know nature’s way isn’t ideal for like, either of you” Rogan starts off, you can hear Jamie stifling his laughter a little in the background.

“Oh no yeah no no we did the vomit route. Damaged the cameras less that way” Jack says.

I notice Nicole seems a little grossed out when they talk about this, noticing by her facial expressions. I chuckle a little, in my mind internally knowing that it’s much more grosser when you had to go through something like that like I did.

“So, about Shia. Do you still talk and hang out with him like you used to” Rogan starts.

“Y’know, we did hang out a little when he was trying to get to know me and get all of my mannerisms and personality down. Dude is a damn good actor, I will say. This was like early 2011 before filming had really started and he met my family and the real Chris and Annie and etcetera. It’s kinda funny too since I had to take a detour to get to work in real life one time, since they were filming Transformers not too far from where I lived to get to work one time, before I shrunk and everything. So I remember we joked about that a little. We talked a little bit after the movie and all the press stuff and the movie premieres going from the US to Europe and Asia and Australia and all that circus handling nonsense that comes with movies about people, and this is one of those movies like“15:17 to Paris” with those American military guys and stopping that terrorist attack on a train in France and 8 Mile and 50 Cent’s “Get Rich or Die Trying” where the person that the movie’s about actually play themselves so that brings a lot of interest even though it was just me kinda in the stomach shots and Shia was mainly playing me, plus this whole situation with me being shrunk and everything and how the public eye was still wowed by that. Everybody wanted me on their talk shows or guest star on some stupid kids show like iCarly like I did one time or fuckin’, Sesame Street or go up to some cartoon studio out in Burbank and do voice work for some wacky one inch tall guest character on Spongebob or Adventure Time or Phineas and Ferb like I did when I’ve gotten offers for guest staring roles during that period. And he sympathized and understood how exhausting it could get doing this shit, so that’s where our friendship kinda stemmed from. Now after all the movie stuff, around 2014-2015 when things started dying down or so we kinda stopped talking, and I haven’t really talked to him really since the “I am Not Famous Anymore” paper bag stunt in Berlin at that Film Festival thing. So right before we went off the deep end with all this “He will not divide us”  stuff and how it’s been all downhill pretty much since then and is still going downhill till this day. I cut contact with him before all this shit went down. I will say Honey Boy was an interesting movie, showing his struggles and upbringing and stuff. I saw that a few years ago” Jack says.

“Yeah, your movie kinda has a representation of now of the last Shia LaBeouf movie that was pretty huge before he went off the deep end. But do you like not being as, I don’t wanna say famous since you’re still pretty well known. But it’s not like how it was for you in 2007 to roughly, 2015-2016ish I wanna say. I guess guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos kinda took up the spotlight you had with their wealth and Elon’s technology ideas and the like being the big thing everyone was kinda looking at” Rogan says.

“It has its perks, I’m still like, a inch and a half sized man and all oddities that come with that when on the street and hanging out with my normal sized wife. I’m used to it now, y’know, being 16 years next year since all that stuff went down” Jack says, coughing a little bit during this.

The rest of the podcast as I drive down the 10 is pretty much just conversations about opinions on things like politics and California (Despite Joe now living in Texas) and it’s issues with costs and homelessness and current events of the time and the day to day life of Jack Cooper, which is pretty mundane if he’s not out doing Tony Robbins style seminars at company picnics or the occasional college or high school commencement speeches if  he gets reached out by some school. Typical Joe Rogan conversational topics. The LA skyline and the mountains and palm trees and the mountain in the background from my view on the freeway being a pleasant to look at on this drive, as we go through LA proper and head more towards the San Gabriel Valley. 

It’s pretty quiet during our drive, nothing but the sound of the podcast and Nicole being asleep, laying on the window a little bit. As it’s kinda cool driving through LA, and driving through areas I’ve never really been through the San Gabriel Valley besides Pasadena and Glendale. Alhambra and Monterey Park once with Molly to go check out a Asian food place when she was visiting that she heard about from a friend in New York from the area and wanted to go and try, and the Inland-Empire and it’s cities that I’ve never been through it before and didn’t have a reason to go and check out while I was living in Southern California, the landscapes changing a little as I go more into the Inland-Empire and drive through cities like El Monte and Citrus and San Dimas, the landscape changing more as I drive through it more mountains and hills becoming more present in the background and the ground looking more desert-y compared to all the grass and palm trees in LA and the SGV. Mostly suburban areas and their shops and restaurants and fast food places and grocery stores and schools and hospitals that I see off the overpasses and freeways, Costco really is pretty much everywhere in Los Angeles. I pass through San Bernardino and that takes us into the mountains where people seemingly ski and camp out at and the like, seemingly signaling that we don’t have too far to go, and traffic has actually been pretty good and no slow-ups or nothing as we went through LA and during this trip. I still feel pretty good, but after all two hours and some change isn’t exactly a long drive either. 

We go through all the twists and turns and all the roads to make our way up to the area. I feel a little nauseous doing it all but it seems like Nicole is still sound asleep during all of this.

We finally make it to Big Bear, the town while passing through a couple of little towns in the mountains, The podcast still going strong and our directions on Google Maps leading us to our resort in the town, I wake my wife up as soon as I park into a spot near the entrance. Shaking her shoulder a little, she wakes up a little bit after a do so.

“You missed a lot of good views being asleep, y’know. The Mountains and the trees from the road the way, it was Instagram worthy” I say, giving her a toothy smile.

“I guess so, huh” she says, as she starts unbuckling her seatbelt.

We arrived at about 1:45 in the afternoon, not bad time. We get up in our resort room checking a little early and everything and getting keys, not too far from the lake or anything like that. 

Once we get settled in I honestly take a nap, not waking up until sometime in the evening, around 6 o’clock. My wife seeming exploring the town a little while I’m sleeping, saying it’s a nice little mountain town with shops and restaurants and stuff to do that’s not super outdoorsy. She telling me this while I’m in bed not too long after I wake up, I don’t really feel like responding and I raise my right arm all the way up and give her a thumbs up, she finds this amusing.

“Why are you so tired? You only drove two hours” she says, fiddling with the TV remote and changing channels.

“I don’t know, I guess driving long-ish like that just makes me wanna sleep when I’m done, not stretching my legs or anything like that. I guess I’m getting older I don’t know” I say, with legit uncertainty at the end.

The rest of the evening is pretty boring and we get in contact with my mom and talk to my daughter a little bit, I just lay around in bed and watch movies on the movie channels we’ve got and we order Mountain Mike’s Pizza and get it delivered to our room, Mountain Mikes Pizza Nicole wanted to try, since it’s a chain we don’t have back in Georgia. I don’t think I’ve ever had it either, now I think about it whenever I did get pizza in Los Angeles. Sticking to national chains like Pizza Hut or Dominos or whatever.  The pizza we had was not bad and pretty good, with some salad and Mozzarella sticks along with it as well.

I promise Nicole I’ll go out and explore the town and the resort with her tomorrow, right before I go to bed at around 11 that night.

Might as well enjoy this calm resort mountain town while I’m away from the hustle and bustle of the city, right?