HUGE excitement!

This is my vantage point of this, from just a few miles away.

I flew into LA yesterday (the kickoff of 20 of the next 33 days on the road). My final destination was Palm Springs, but it's a pain in the ass to fly to PSP and, more importantly, flying to LA would allow me to make a stop at my favorite store on earth. So after landing at LAX, I started the traffic-filled drive to the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga.

As I drove down Sunset toward the store, I noticed the smoke coming from the hills but didn't think anything of it. When you live in Jersey, you're used to random smoke in the sky. But when I arrived at the store, the smoke was thick, black and everywhere.

By the time I left the store (with a bagful of CDs by international artists no one has ever heard of), it was really getting out of control. People were standing on the streets, mesmerized, taking photos. Cars were stopped in the middle of the road (just what LA needs). No one really knew what was going on, except that there was one whopper of a fire in the hills, and seemed to be threating the Hollywood sign (which is behind the Amoeba store sign in the photos above). I took a few pictures before hopping in the car.

Thanks to the chaos this caused on the already disastrous LA freeways, it took me four hours to drive the 125 miles from the record store to my hotel in Palm Springs.

Totally worth it.