They tell me LA's beautiful when it rains...

But I don't believe them.

My title comes from a poignant and beautiful Neko Case song called "In California,"* which is in my head because I'm going to California in a couple days. Specifically, I'm going to Los Angeles, which is California. But it's also a world in itself.

I've been very excited about my trip to LA, mostly because I'm going to visit my dear friend Feral Mom, and I'm really looking forward to seeing her, Mr. Feral, and their adorable six-year-old twins. But, I have to admit, a smaller but still significant part of why I've been anticipating my LA visit is because after all the snow, ice, and ass-freezing cold we've endured here in the Midwest of late, I want some perfect weather.

Let's check the forecast, shall we? The weather in LA this weekend: around 60 degrees with a 70% chance of rain. The weather in Champaign-Urbana this weekend: around 50 degrees with a 20% chance of rain.

Not the marked contrast I was imagining.

I lived in LA for three years back in the early nineties, and your likely assumptions about the weather in that fabled city are correct. It's 70 degrees and sunny approximately 354 days out of the year. Why do two of the ten or so days that it's going to rain in LA this year have to fall on the two full days that I'm going to be there?

Now, in reality, LA is beautiful when it rains, because rain in LA provides a lovely contrast to the unrelenting sunshine that can, truth be told, get a little oppressive day after day after day. When I lived in LA, I always felt strangely elated when the skies turned gray and poured buckets.

But I don't live in LA now. I live in Central Illinois, where we've had this brutal winter, and I want my two days of balmy sunshine, damnit!

I will settle, however, for seeing my good friend, eating at some amazing restaurants, revisiting my favorite paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and having a latte at the first cafe where I was a regular. And I will still take a walk on Venice Beach, even if it ends up being a walk in the rain.


* Actually written by Lisa Marr, formerly of Cub, who (coincidentally) my and Feral Mom's band played with at the Metro in Chicago. But it's a Neko Case song in the sense that she's the only one who has recorded it (as far as I've been able to ascertain).