L.A. LAW

So, earlier this week I did battle with a formidable foe: the Los Angeles court system.

Now, dont freak out. It was a small, incredibly stupid thing - last Dec I got a ticket for driving with a headlamp out. All I had to do was let the City of Los Angeles know that I had gotten it fixed...so simple....right?

This was such a tour de force in bureaucracy it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad (or it'd be sad if it wasn't so funny).

First step was taking my car to an inspection station of sorts set up by the sheriff's dept. i pull my car in this big empty garage, theres one little office with tinted windows. Nobody, repeat: nobody, was in the garage area. i went into the office and handed my ticket to the most disinterested sheriff in LA County. Our exchange:

sheriff - [glances at ticket] what was the problem?

mk- I had a head lamp out.

sheriff- You fix it?

mk- [motioning to car] yes....

sheriff- [ignoring] .....fifteen dollars.

So I handed him my $15 in cash and he gave me a piece of paper saying that i paid, and i headed to the court building without anyone ever actually confirming that my headlamp had been fixed.

i go inside and the security guard vaguely directs me to the left side of a massive, impersonal room that looks like something out of "The Conformist". Out of the two lines i pick the shorter one. Shorter, but that moves excrutiatingly slower. And then, you get in the one line for so long and you get nervous like its the wrong line but theres no one there to help or ask questions...and then you FINALLY get there and its the wrong line.

So I head from the GC line to the cashier line (even though I already paid my $15). The cashier line was frighteneing. The people at this place...its like someone took all the buses in LA and said "you guys are too weird for the bus" and put them in this line. One guy briefly left the line so that he could go fish a discarded mcdonalds bag from the garbage can....

now, this is the point where i wanted to get out as fast as possible. but sweet lady government had other plans. after waiting in this line for 35 min (total running time is 1:25 now) i get told to go upstairs, to the fourth floor, to departmet 63. defeated and broken i head to the fourth floor.

i got up there and saw a line to my left. walked up and asked what line it was and was told it was the line for department 64. course, me being intelligent, i had elected NOT to write down which department i was supposed to head to, and just ASSUMED that it was department 64.

bad idea. after waiting in the dept 64 line for 20 min, I headed to the line for dept 63.

reaching the 3 hr mark now, waiting in line #4, (oh and having left my lunch in the car, thinking this would take under an hour, hungry as hell) is when a tremor shook the building ever so slightly. it wasnt a big quake at all, just shook the ground a bit, but it made me think "if i get killed waiting in this freaking line, i'm going to punch the first spook i see on the other line"

luckily, i didnt die, and was able to mercily reach the FINAL window and tell the city that i had paid someone fifteen dollars to "check" my headlamp.

hate to dump this litany of unfortunate events on everyone, but who doesnt love insights into our wonderful American bureaucracy?

department 63...department 64......

WTF?!??!?