Stinking Sand-bagged Pits of Polluted Goo

So, I bought a generator for the property on E-Bay. Got a DAMN good deal, too. (5kw for $272.) Had to pick it up in Los Angeles, though. So, Karl and I drove down yesterday to get it.

We got it shoved into the back seat of his car (if we'd taken the truck, it would have been cheaper to have had it shipped to me) and took off trying to decide something to do in LA while we were there.

We first went to Venice Beach. Got very lucky and found a free parking space only about two blocks away from the beach. We had a nice time stickin' my feet into the stinkin' Pacific Ocean and walking along the Ocean Walk and such. (I did start singing the theme to "Three's Company" and songs from "Xanadu". I got slapped....)

After we were done there, we decided to drive over to the La Brea Tar Pits since neither of us had been there. We should have stayed in Venice...

We get out of the car at the Tar Pits and are immediately assaulted by the oily stench coming from the tar pits. And that was only the beginning of our dissapointment.

I don't know exactly what I expected to see but it certainly wasn't what was there. Rather than some interesting bubbling pits of black tar and the possible occasional fossil, what we first saw was the tacky floating fiberglass mastadon and the tacky terrified fiberglass mastadon family. I kinda expected that crap. What I didn't expect was the large pond of polluted water with the oil slick floating on the top. The methane bubbling out of the bottom of the stinking pond was mildly interesting. And the pond isn't even naturally occuring; it's a water-filled quarry.

So, we walk around the pond of floating goo. And, on the far side of it, see some "artwork". It was five white reinforced concrete square tubes lying on their sides next to each other. I'm sure there was some vast cosmic significance to them, but I'll be dammed if I know what it was.

Continuing on the path around the polluted pond we come across the stinking sand-bagged pit of polluted goo you see here. That's Karl pointing at them. Look! Trash! Polluted stinking goo!! The build up to the whole Tar Pit experience (which, unfortunately, includes the movie 'Volcano") simply didn't live up to the crap we saw.

The most interesting thing was a tiny patch of ground a little bit away from this large pit of goo. Bubbling up out of that tiny patch was little bubbles of goo. And it wasn't polluted yet, either.

We both hoped that the ironic plastic bottles and various Doritos bags had blown into the pit of goo rather than having been thrown there, too.

I'm glad I didn't go to school in LA as a kid; I would have had to suffer through an annual field trip to this stinkin' place. UGH!