Neil Young and Dumpsters

Sooo, I played basketball after school with some of the kids at Downtown Magnets, as if I needed confirmation I was out of shape. Get home, Karla's at work. Get a phone call from Jeremy, of No Little Kindness fame. Says he has tickets to Neil Young at the Kodak Theater. Haven't seen Jeremy for a while, nor had hopes to go to a concert anytime soon, what with first year marriage budget and all. How much? Free. Can I pass that up? No. Plus I haven't been out after dark in a while. It's like being in Middle School, only with fewer phone calls. It's 7:30. Concert starts at 8:15. Screw it. Let's go. He swings by in a beat up Volvo, the glove compartment door keeps falling into my lap...the jerry-rigged latch out of three pieces of tape isn't working. We head the wrong way on the 210. It seems we have to pick up some tickets in Covina first. We make it quick, like clockwork we meet our contact at the in and out off the freeway, then head down the 10 into LA. I call Rob on the way, but he is at an art gallery chatting up some woman who wants to get into publishing and is looking for some new writing. He's inspired. No time for Neil Young. We get to the Nokia, park underneath in what can only be described as way beyond hoopdie status. The parking employees raise their eyebrows, we park and exit undaunted. We meet Beast, Jeremy's friend with amputated (?) legs, from just above the knees down. He walks on prosthetics and we haggle with a fellow looking for our fourth ticket and parlay the sale into one beer apiece at the ridiculously priced concession stand. Neil is halfway through his set. The crowd looks to be a mix of people from the valley and the OC. Definitely white bread. Odd mix of people maybe three miles from my school site. Two young men in front of us draw the ushers' attention with their glowing rolled paper and rising plumes of smoke in the indoor theater. The end of the acoustic set is delectable. The electric set from the new release, the lame-duck Chrome Dreams II (Young is hit or miss these days) almost puts me to sleep, nary a hook to be found, just 12 minutes of guitar fuzz. But he's got some energy. Some encore songs and we head out. Back to Beast's, who works at USC, where three day old, caked and crusty bowls of half eaten guacamole lie on counters with cockroaches scurrying underneath as his roommates sit on the porch and the hazy night sky of Los Angeles rolls past overhead, and I am reminded of college apartments in white trash towns where untold drug dealers and small time hoods stashing disposable cell phones roam uninhibited. We spend 15 minutes, as Jeremy tells of his job and Finn, his young son, who pines for Bob Dylan. We head back to Pasadena talking of marriage and sacrifice and he swerves into the lot behind Trader Joe's for "one last stop." We are now officially dumpster diving. He pulls out flowers, red bell peppers, a sack of potatoes, oregano, tomatoes, chicken, aubergines, all still shrink wrapped and pretty much lying on top of the dumpster. That's Jeremy. Ever the energetic pragmatist. He jumps back in the car, giddy "That's my shopping for the week." Waste not, want not.