Member Column-Ode to Leisure World

by Jon Michaels

LW contributor

I dream of:

• living just two miles from the beach (with Southern California real estate prices? Good luck with that!).

• a locale where the weather is perfect but only 361 days a year.

• a place where everything is on auto-pay, and you never have to write a check.

• an idyllic park where you can play golf every day and for free!

• driving down a smooth highway along the ocean all the way to a village of storybook architecture, art galleries, and boutiques, known by the locals as Laguna.

• a city where the Dodgers will always dominate until the play-offs.

• a beautiful gym with all the latest machines that I plan to start using come January (uh, January has passed. You mean, next January? Yes. Next January, or the following).

• apartments that have everything you need, including walls that are so thin you can hear your neighbor saying horrible things about you (no more skulking under the eaves to listen!).

• a community where the residents are all kind, polite and smell good, almost half the time!

• a world where screaming, unsupervised children largely don’t exist, except during the holidays.

• a paradise! A veritable promised land where you have a whole sheet of Carl’s Jr. coupons personally delivered to your door almost every other week.

• occasionally noticing the scent of marijuana wafting through the air.

• drinking complimentary coffee in the morning, while listening to people playing ping pong (could this Shangri-la actually exist?).

• a region with the largest concentration of movie stars, TV stars, rock stars just an hour’s drive away if the traffic is light, like on Sunday morning, between 4 and 5 a.m.

• doing an entire load of laundry for just a buck!

• a homeowner’s association that is always there for you.

• a ratio of nine women for every man.

• having one of the divisions of the armed forces stationed right next door, in case of a disaster.

• enjoying live performances by some of the greatest rock stars of all time, who somehow temporarily inhabit the bodies of regular folk who are just marginally talented, while winged metal creatures fly overhead.

• a cashless world where all you need is a rectangular piece of plastic to purchase virtually anything you want.

• eating a pizza sold by Trader Joe’s, with a cauliflower crust, so you gain less weight.

But alas, as we all know, this magical leisurely wonderland could only be a mere fantasy, a dream.