The End of the Road
Sunday 20th of July – Wednesday the 23rd of July.
The sordid exploits of Dana Point and the Ollies behind them, MT were all about set to call it a day and find the nearest sandy expanse on which to rest their calcined bones. Once again the boys managed to come incredibly close to suffering the same fate that had befallen them the last time they passed out exhausted on an American beach in summer, but this time they were in luck.
Rather than subject their skins to the Texas Barbeque treatment, MT were duly saved by the offer of accommodation by some more family friends of Nick’s: Bob and Natasha Leighton who lived in a fantastic home in the hills overlooking LA (Bob being the brother of Kevin, whose family in Houston had already rescued MT from certain death while simultaneously taking charge of the Voyager. To this this day MT believes the Voyager is still lurking somewhere in the greater Houston area having taken on a will of its own. Reports of missing children, toasted rodents and horrendous oil leaks in south-west Texas have increased almost exponentially over the last 3 weeks, though police investigations have been unable to link the three).
After being plied with fine wine and excellent chili of Natahsa’s creation, MT fell into a deep and mentally-straining conversation about architecture, politics and film with the adults around the table, unable to competently participate in any of these bar the latter.
Nick expounded his theories on why Iron Man was the greatest superhero ever, Pete, who doesn’t watch TV and whose sole DVD is ‘Why the Customer is Always Right featuring Peter Purvis’, mostly kept schtum, and together they both expressed their keenness to see the latest Batman Film.
Bob, you see, having edited such films as The Princess Bride, Spinal Tap and A Few Good Men (the latter earned him an Oscar nomination for his efforts) is on something called ‘The Academy’, and MT had caught wind of a procedure whereby early DVDs of unreleased films are sent to members for their consideration. Perhaps he would offer them a sneak preview? Perhaps he would get them to the premiere in London where they could be assaulted by Christian Bale along with his mother and sister? Maybe he’d just laugh modestly and tell them to go and watch it in the cinema like normal people? (On feeling bad about dashing MT’s optimism on selection of the third option, Bob did somewhat recklessly lend them his large and scarily powerful 4×4 to cruise around in).
The following day MT took to the wheel and went for a cruise around Hollywood and Bel-Air. Initially they lowered themselves to tourists by taking in the sights and pulling contemptuous faces at the dreadfully tacky Tinsel-Town before driving around the stars’ homes in Beverly Hills and honking obnoxiously at any sight of the slovenly tour buses whose occupants would jump, wave fists, shout, and then take pictures, depending on their ethnicity, as MT sped past.
After a couple of nights discussing films with Bob, and days of relaxing on the beach playing 60 seconds with the inimitable Doug, MT felt their adventure coming to its natural conclusion. Their final night was spent together with Kate having a civilised meal with only a modest amount of alcohol (despite their not half-heated attempts to get Kate drunk for passing her law exams) and more philosophical discussions of paradigmatic intellect. Perhaps the reassimilation of MT into British society was not going to be so difficult after all? Would they continue to go up at the end of questions and sentences as legendary anchorman Ron Burgundy? Perhaps they would no longer be able to survive off anything other than cheese burgers and be constantly plagued by nightmares of the Voyager devouring small kittens and flattening nurseries.
Whatever the case, MT had made it battered and bruised across 4 1/2 thousand miles of North American continent to find themselves at their journey’s end and they were pretty much ready to go home. All that was left was the stupendously treacherous 4 mile cab ride from Santa Monica to LAX…
