Chill Like Flint

September 25, 2000 Joe Ditzel

I don’t think about the Hollywood Hills that much.
They sit on the northern ridge of the flat expanse
of Gore voters known as West LA. On the other side
of the Hills lies The Valley, 5 miles and 30 years
away from Los Angeles. On really smoggy days, the
hills completely disappear as if in a David Copperfield
special.

So, I was curious what I would find when I when some
friends from Second City invited me to go to a party
“up in the hills”. I pictured the Playboy Mansion with
500 Playmates wearing Santa hats dancing to Kid Rock
singing “get a nest in the Hills and chill like Flint.”

We met at the Second City Theater next to the Improv,
piled into one car, and headed up Laurel Canyon Boulevard.
Laurel Canyon cuts an neck-twisting path up to the top
of Mulholland Drive, then an equally dangerous run down
to Ventura Blvd. in the Valley. As soon as we crossed
Sunset and headed up Laurel Canyon a blue Mercedes
was on our bumper. Any closer and he would have been able
to change our CD. On Laurel Canyon, you could be going
80 miles an hour at 4:30 in the morning and someone will
ride your bumper.

About halfway up the hill, we turned left onto Kirkwood.
We drove straight up into the sky. I felt like those
guys in The Perfect Storm, chugging up the side of a
huge wave. Soon we’ll tip over backward, slide down
Kirkwood and crash into the Canyon General Store.

We finally found the house. It was a small, yellow cottage
that would fit comfortably next to a lake in Connecticut.

No mansion, no Playmates. I pictured Kid Rock yelling at his
real estate agent, “I want to chill like ‘Our Man Flint’,
not the Brady’s!'”

We eased into a space on the side of the road between
a Range Rover and a 1981 Toyota. You could tell the
Toyota belonged to one of the other flatlanders visiting
the Hills to see how the rich live. Sitting in the
passenger seat, I pulled the passenger brake to make sure
the tires locked. To further secure the car against
gravity, we drove stakes into the ground
and ran heavy rope back and forth, anchoring it to the
ground like in Gulliver’s Travels.

Inside, I slowly met people and learned most of the guests were
stand-up comedians. Although I have done stand-up for
since 1925, I didn’t recognize anyone. Apparently,
if you’ve told some knock-knock jokes at the company
picnic, you’re a comedian.

The hostess, seeing the big sign above my head that
flashes “SINGLE!”, began to introduce me to young
women in the room . In the kitchen, I met a cute girl
with short blond hair. She was leaning against the
refrigerator. That wasn’t a good idea. The beer is in the
refrigerator. Several people have been seriously injured
if they were between me and a cold beer.

“Are you a comedian?” I asked.

The question hung in the air, frozen. It was if I had asked
“Are you a big-game hunter?”

“No,” the hostess interjected, “but she’s really funny.”

The short-haired girl laughed at this qualification. As
if she had said, “She’s not a big game hunter, but she’s
really good at skeet shooting.”

I milled through the party, looking for interesting people.
By “interesting people”, I mean “women that will talk to me”.
In the back yard, I found a group of people listening to a
very loud guy with bleached hair and tattoos. He’s the type
of comedian that is always “on”, feeling the need to be
funny AT ALL TIMES. His presentation was hyper and over-produced,
short on humor but long on volume: “SO I SAYS TO THE CABBIE,
HEY, WHAT’S THAT SMELL? ARE YOU COOKING SOMETHING ON THE
ENGINE? HA HA HA! I LOVE NEW YORK!” I wrote a reminder on my
Palm Pilot to check if my insurance covered ear damage.

It was downhill from there. I spent most of the rest of the
party eating all the cheese off the party trays. If this
is how people in the Hills live it up, I’ll
stay on the flat parts of LA.