Outgribe.com Travelogues
Christmas Lights in Newport Beach (Dec 27, 2005)
We live in a nice neighborhood for walking around at night. The weather's always good, it's perfectly safe, and the houses are posh, varied, and carefully landscaped. They're mostly fairly tasteful too, but there's plenty to criticize, which makes for pleasant conversation.
There's rarely anyone else out on the streets. I guess the residents have better things to do than go on walks. We encounter more dogs than people -- not encounter in person, although we sometimes can see them too, but we hear them barking at us behind the fences. I like to meow back at them but this makes J pout because he's uptight like that. He says I shouldn't wind up the dogs because it annoys the neighbors. My feeling is that the neighbors deserve it, because they shouldn't put up with barky dogs -- they should demand the owners deal with them. Or better yet the neighbors should pretend to like the dogs and quietly poison them.
Actually the cliff-walk trail gets quite a bit of foot traffic. It has nice views of the bay and is the lawyers-vs-skunks battlefield. I already covered that in some recent movie review. We thought the lawyers had won but apparently it's not over yet -- it was pretty stinky out there the other week! But that's not where we went this night; we went through Upper Newport Bay, to look at the Christmas lights.
Maybe a quarter of the houses were decorated, with strings of lights mostly, and they didn't skimp on those. Some of the bigger houses had impressive piles of lights, upstairs, downstairs, around all the features. Trees and bushes were often lit up too. The technology to decorate high up didn't extend to the trees; here as elsewhere, when trees were decorated, it was usually the bottom six feet of trunk. Too bad. The 50-foot willow (or something) in front of the Laguna Beach fire station was the only one I saw done up right this year! Strings of white lights draped loosely throughout those slender billowing branches looked elegant. Size does matter! For ladders, anyway.
There were the other sorts of traditional Christmas decorations too, such as Santas, reindeer, presents, and candy canes. We saw a few gratifying displays of whimsy as well. My favorite was the Christmas cow. It was a Holstein cow perched on their roof, outlined in little lights, with the crown of their tree right over it, so it looked so cozy up there!
We saw no nativity scenes. That's too low-brow for this place. We didn't even notice any "Merry Christmas" signs, although there was one "Happy Holidays." The only two Christians I know in California (I suppose there might be more among the people I know but they're keeping their heads down) are vehemently opposed to proselytizing of any kind. (I also know several old Christian Armenians but they don't apply to this analysis.) That's the only way you can be Christian here and not be regarded a freak. They were quite vehement about it, that it's plain wrong to try to convey any religious pressure. One of them mocked people who included religious messages when decorating their boats and homes for Christmas. I thought that was going too far, and that folks ought to be able to decorate their boats and homes in honor of Christ on his birthday of all days, but that's not how he saw it! I suppose that being religious, he may have felt a sense of personal responsibility for these folks' "proselytizing." Also, everyone is hyper-sensitized these days because of the ongoing fights between religious fundamentalists and liberals about scientific issues. Despite Newport Beach being hyper-conservative, they sure don't want to be thought of as sympathizing with the poor religious kind of conservatives residing in fly-over country.
Neighboring Costa Mesa is less status-conscious and therefore nativity scenes are to be found there occasionally, as well as other manifestations of indiscreet taste. Costa Mesans are apparently impressed by those newfangled giant inflatable snow-globes. We saw nothing of the sort in Newport Beach. J said of inflatables, "There is no element of putting crap up by hand, no personal decorating feel to it, just a big plastic commercial prefab thing." Indeed, the personal touch is much more gracious. Probably you don't remember but one year the Olympics were held in S. Korea and they built this big tasteless elevator that carried the torchbearer the last bit up to the torch to light it, and that was so crass. The torchbearer has to run up the stairs himself as is the tradition!
Of course everything tasteless becomes tasteful after a sufficiency of time passes. Hence Newport Beach had not only a sizable population of illuminated mesh reindeer but a significant number of moving-head ones. Back when only the immobile kind were available J an I hated them but now, we're grateful when at least they stand still. Apparently others in our city also still don't accept moving-head reindeer, because we witnessed an act of protest against them: a couple of illuminated reindeer, moving-head buck and stationary doe, were rearranged into the procreative position. We were quite lucky to have caught that -- talk about ephemeral, all holiday decorations are that, but this pairing would have been disassembled early next morning at the least. We stood quite a while watching them. The buck's methodical, exaggerated nodding was a fair expression of his excitement, and the pair were quite close to the sidewalk, so his inner mechanical workings were plainly exposed, symbolizing muscles and sinews sliding rhythmically, organs expanding and contracting, all the biological systems pumping away ... A machine, that is all we are, and at no time is this more evident than during the mental disconnect inherent in the procreative act. Not that we are likely to think of that when we engage in it ourselves, or even, normally, when we witness it. But this format declared it.
Usually I'm the one critiquing the architecture and landscaping on our walks, but occasionally J comments too. We usually agree, or else maybe J doesn't see any point in arguing with me. He has said he'd live in any house and not care about what it looked like, he has more important things to think about. That kind of attitude won't produce worthwhile travelogues, but I humor him right back.
This time J said he liked this one front yard which had no lawn, but a smorgasbord of carefully clipped shrubs and rocks, somewhat in the Japanese style. I felt it was too tightly crammed and a bit of Zen simplicity might have served it well, but it wasn't bad. And certainly this form of landscaping makes every sense in Southern California, with our water shortages (we spend all our spare water growing rice). But, lawns are traditional. In fact next door to this was a very traditional little yard, reproducing in miniature the traditional white fence, lawn, and white garden benches. It was way more boring than the overstuffed Japanese one, but very traditional and respectable. With a yard like that, you have so much moral superiority. To illustrate, I stuck my hand out like in the most popular anal sex position and went, "We are not having anal sex! What do you take me for?"
At which moment these prissy people's next-door neighbor walked down his driveway carrying a trash can. He made no comment, though he clearly was far more qualified than I to comment on his neighbors' personality. J said maybe it was because I tend to speak softly and maybe he didn't hear. But, he was right there. And I wasn't speaking that softly; you have to sound emphatic about a thing like that or you won't be taken seriously, and then before you know it...!
What a nice walk. Thanks to everyone who decorated! And Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Whatever!
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