Hollywood

An old Spiderman, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes with a dirty sagging costume, gaping around his spindly legs. Cheap tee-shirts piled onto tables, three-for-eleven-ninety-nine, underneath cardboard cut-outs of Edward from Twilight. An old broken-down black Toyota speeds around the corner, making a right on red, with the entire car singing a disco tune, Diana Ross or Dionne Warwick, a newborn baby in the front seat, between the smoking dad and the mom with tubes in her nose. Cinderella and Belle walking around like exhausted cowboys, trying to look magical to get photo-ops but not scoring, counting their money, and pulling their grey-shouldabeenwhite gloves up their arms. A girl is obsessed with Shirley Temple’s handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese theater. The Dark Knight Joker develops three scenarios in a row for photo ops for two teenage girls in braces and matching little black dresses. A rotating box of one-dollar bills with celebrity cameos replacing the President: Britney Spear one dollar bill, Michael Douglas one dollar bill, Angelina Jolie one dollar bill, all for six ninety-nine. Hare Krishnas do what they’ve been doing for thirty years, singing with their eyes closed and twirling in their robes. Hippies with matted hair and no bras dance and touch each other while their guy friends butcher a John Lennon song on the tambourines. The sun sets on Hollywood, and it doesn’t seem to notice.