Despite everything, every sports event, concert, and whatnot was happening at the same time. L.A. marathoners slouched by the droves across the finish line at the Coliseum. At the Rose Bowl: UCLA versus USC; the Bruin mascot had been carried off the field with heat stroke, and the Trojan horse was tied up after throwing its sweaty rider. The Clippers were attempting a comeback in overtime at the Sports Arena. It was the end of the seventhinning stretch, and Nomo fans at Chavez Ravine hunkered down with their cold beers and Dodger dogs. Scottie Pippen fouled Shaq who sank a free throw for the Lakers at the Forum in the last seconds. The Trekkie convention warped into five at the L.A. Convention Center. Bud Girls paraded between boxing matches at the Olympic Auditorium. Plácido Domingo belted Rossini at the Dorothy Chandler under the improbable abstract/minimal/baroque direction of Peter Sellers. At the Shrine, executive producer Richard Sakai accepted an Oscar for the movie version of The Simpsons. The helicopter landed for the 944th time on the set of Miss Saigon at the Ahmanson, and Beauty smacked the Beast at the Shubert. Chinese housewives went for the big stakes in pai gow in the Asian room at the Bicycle Club. Live-laughter sitcom audiences and boisterous crowds for the daytime and nighttime talks filled every available studio in Hollywood and Burbank. Thousands of fans melted away with Julio Iglesias at the Universal Amphitheater. Robert McNeil and The Jubilee Choir were jumping gospel at the Greek, and movie music nostalgia brimmed from the Hollywood Bowl with John Mauceri conducting. King Tut had returned to LACMA; Andy Warhol to MOCA. The AIDS walk 5/10K run was moving through West Hollywood. Andrei Codrescu read from “Zombification” at the Central Library. Surfers kicked butt with punks in leather and chains at The Lollapalooza in Orange County. Chicanos marched from the Plaza de la Raza down Whittier to César Chávez in solidarity. Volleyball teams vied for titles all along the beaches from Malibu to the Hollywood Riviera. Street fairs and food fairs and farmers’ markets bustled with gawkers in every park and parking lot. Endless lines extending down major freeways waited to get into Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, Universal Studios, and Raging Waters for their half-price specials. Drag races were underway, deafening the Pomona Raceway, and across the way, a 4-H demonstration of cow milking gathered a crowd at the Los Angeles County Fair. Japanese Americans reenacted the historic 1942 relocation of thousands of legal aliens at the Santa Anita Racetrack. Sin Ying Chang and his wife waited in a line five blocks long for the long-awaited premiere of a new Spielberg film. Political rallies and benefit dinners at one thousand dollars a plate for several Republican presidential candidates clapped themselves toward dessert at the Sheraton, the Hilton, and the Bonaventure. The middle class clamored in malls for summer sales; the poor clamored at swap meets. Chris & Qris inquired at will-call about orchestra seats for Pizzicato 5 at the Japan America Theater. Across town, the Cirque du Soleil was back for the umpteenth time at the Big Tent at the Santa Monica pier. Meanwhile, Stomp stomped trash cans at the Wadsworth. And the horses were running neck and neck at Hollywood Park. . . . Everybody was doing their thing in the greatest leisure world ever devised.
Manzanar saw this thing like a gigantic balloon swelling larger and larger. The most horrific aspect of it was that it would all end at the same time—a Caltrans nightmare. One more L.A. disaster. Of course, this was not planned, although everything else had been, months in advance—subscription tickets, guest invitations, the yearly semifinals, the predictable events of every summer in L.A. Was it possible that anyone could be bored? Individual random and chaotic acts of planning. Coincidental same-day events. Yet how was it possible that everyone could be physically there with the live action and not watching it on TV? How was it possible to leave commercial time—Madison Avenue’s wagging tongue—to the infirm and invalid? What did they care about Ford pickups and Nikes? Yes, it was a big screw-up. But only Manzanar could see the undulating patterns and the changing geography corrupting the sun’s shadows, confusing time, so that all events should happen and end at the same time.
Perhaps it should have been a comforting idea to Manzanar. A kind of solidarity: all seven million residents of Greater L.A. out on the town, away from their homes, just like him, outside. In the next moment, they would all cram their bodies through exits, down escalators, through arcades, lobbies, and turnstiles, all partake of the outside. And in the next moment after that, they would all head toward their cars, their buses, their motorcycles and limousines, wend their way through giant parking lots several miles square or stories high or deep, all jam their bodies into vehicles of every size, all slam their doors, all buckle their belts, all gun their motors, all simultaneously—a percussive orchestration that even Manzanar found incredible. And CLICK, one two, SLIDE, three four, FLOMP, one two, BLAM, three four, SNAP, one two VROOOM, three four. Just amazing. And then the syncopated REAR VIEW CHECK IT OUT and a one and a two, and AC UP TO THE MAX and a three and a four, and CREEP ON OUT and a five and a six, and MERGE, MERGE, MERGE. They all converged everywhere all at once. Man’s most consistent quest for continuing technology in all its treaded ramifications jammed every inch of street, driveway, highway, and freeway. And Manzanar, loathe to lose any moment, writhed with exhilaration and christened it all: the greatest jam session the world had ever known.
To envision the automobile as an orchestral device with musical potential was an idea lost upon the motorist within. In moments such as these, the mechanical and the human elements of Manzanar’s orchestra became blurred. The car became a thing with intelligence. He envisioned the person within as the pulpy brain of each vehicle, and when the defenseless body emerged, for whatever reason, he often felt surprise and disgust. A memory was triggered, and he was once again a masked surgeon, cutting through soft tissue. He remembered intimately the geography of the human body, and that delicate, complex thing within each car frightened him.
So when the inevitable impossibility of moving in the greatest traffic jam the world had ever seen made people GROAN one two, UNLATCH DOORS three four, EMERGE five six, Manzanar gripped his baton like a knife. He saw them all with their moving mouths speaking out of sync, as in a Toho Film production of Godzilla, with a strange dubbed language not their own. And yet, it was a babel he understood.