(Photo caption: City Manager Ken Pulskamp is trying to bring a vision of his childhood home of for a planned urban community. The estates will be built on the toxic dump site of formerly known as Bermite and will be called “Kenburgrovia.” The City of SClarita hopes to save millions by using the leftover flood-damaged “mobile home estates” from the Polynesian trailer park and the 1,100 ladders that Councilman For 20 Minutes Tim Bed Bob Moe Larry & Curly Boydston accidentally over-ordered during his 1,200 seconds in office.)
Anyway.
Like most nerds with a computer, my friend pulls dozens of jokes and humorous ditties out of the ether. He sent along something that had been making its way around the Internet and pretty much dared me to re-write something and paint a couple of coats of local spin.
The little ditty is called, “Where Do You Live?” I’d like to give screen credit to the writer. He certainly deserves it. Alas, after probably the 13,000th generation of copying this, the original author’s identity is a mystery to me.
Anyway. My pal sent along a series of short lists with the neener-neener dare to localize it. So I did. I humbly offer a small test you needn’t study for entitled —
“Where Do You Live — Santa Clarita Style?”
You Live In Valencia and/or Stevenson Ranch When…
1. You and your wife/hubbie make over $250,000 a year and still can’t afford to buy a house.
2. The Hart or Valencia High quarterback calls a time-out — to answer his cell phone.
3. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway and the slowest is being stuck at Valencia/Bouquet/Magic Mountain/Soledad intersection.
4. Not only do you know how to properly eat an artichoke, you’ll stand for 20 minutes, engrossed in a demonstration at Pavilions on how to prepare it 42 different ways.
5. You climb into your Lexus to drive to your neighborhood block party.
6. You walk in the front door of The Way Station and have attempted to sit in an empty booth while 6,000 people waiting in line at the back entrance are swearing at you while throwing their baseball caps with the fertilizer logos on the floor in plain amazement.
You Live In Newhall When…
1. If you’ve ever wondered if ALL the people in Valencia have to be involved in drugs or organized crime to afford those houses.
2. If you have to call the Graffiti Hotline more than three times a week.
3. If you’ve ever had to step across a dead body on Main Street or at least walk around the chalk outline on the sidewalk.
4. If you’ve ever had a three-hour conversation reminiscing about how the heck Newhall Hardware can charge 75 bucks for a small lousy Thermos but practically gives away new diesel engine for your tractor.
5. You’ve strangled a newcomer for offhandedly commenting: “Hey. This must be the old part of Valencia!”
You Live In The San Fernando Valley When…
1. You say “The Valley” like everyone should know that you mean “The San Fernando Valley.”
2. You have never taken the Budweiser Brewery tour or visited the San Fernando Mission.
3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how George W. Bush ruined the country and Barack Obama saved it, but can’t name your city councilman.
4. You think Balboa Park is “nature.”
5. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.
6. You’ve never honked your car horn out of fear of being shot.
7. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.
You Live In Canyon Country When…
1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup and Tabasco.
2. Your kid goes Trick or Treating dressed as Bob Kellar.
3. You eat breakfast more than six times a week at The Halfway House and think The Way Station as not being so much a cowboy coffee shop but “…more like an upscale big city designer bistro.”
4. You refer to the Canyon Country Regional Mall as Fox Feed.
5. You think Whites Canyon is a wilderness area.
6. An old maid is considered a freshman at Canyon.
7. When you make the big drive across the valley and you can’t stop grinning while you stroll through Wal-Mart.
You live In Castaic When:
1. You can rent a video and buy bait in the same store.
2. You go to Gallion’s store not only for 5-star dining and beer, but to have your dental work done. Or at least dropped off.
3. Regis Malone is considered talkative.
4. You get stopped at least six times a day by people with Nebraska plates asking how to get to Magic Mountain — AND — you always lift your baseball cap, look perplexed and answer: “Welp. You can’t get there from here…”
5. You think the diet plate at Café Mike is just two enchiladas, three tacos, beans, rice, 12 flour tortillas and a diet root beer.
You Live At CalArts When:
1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.
2. The dean asks if you wouldn’t mind stopping by Trader Joe’s on your way to class and pick up a couple of 55-gallon barrels of Granola because the cafeteria is running a might low.
3. At least twice during the day, you use the words “motif,” “film noir” or “bongo drum.”
4. You’re paying $750,000 a semester to be an art major and you still can’t draw a frigging likeness of Bullwinkle or a circle.
5. You teach there and the top of your head is bald, but you still have a ponytail.
6. Six or more of your neighbors show up to class totally nude. And that’s in Beginning Welding.
You Live In Friendly Valley When…
1. A late supper is at Home Town Buffet, dangerously close to 4 p.m. when they bring out the prime rib but haven’t switched over to dinner-time prices.
2. Cars in front of you are seemingly driven by headless people.
3. You’ve already filled in your absentee ballot for the 2016 City of Santa Clarita elections.
4. You can’t eat at Taco Bell on Sierra Highway because it’s too damn spicy.
5. You’re on a first-name basis with all the ambulance drivers and paramedics in the valley.
You Live In Placerita Canyon When…
1. Your six horses fill up a small lake every year by relieving themselves and making rose food but you don’t want Master’s College to have a sewer because it’ll pollute the water table.
2. Your idea of a religious terrorist is a Baptist.
3. You’ve considered — or have gone so far as to measure “just out of curiosity — stringing piano wire neck high between two oak trees to stop the kids from speeding on their golf carts.
4. You’ve run someone from city planning off your property with a shotgun.
5. You’ve run someone from Master’s College off your property with a shotgun.
You Live In Palmdale When…
1. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.
2. You can name at least six neighbors who have part time jobs working in a meth lab.
3. You can name at least six neighbors who have part time jobs as homosexual hookers at the truck rest stop.
4. You end sentences with a preposition: “Where’s my tube top at?”
5. You’ve lost a family member trying to retrieve road kill off Highway 14 at Avenue J for dinner.
6. You’ve stolen gas money to drive to The Backwoods Inn after hours so you can go through the trash and fight the bears for steak and lobster scraps.
7. “He needed killin’” is considered a valid defense at The Palmdale Municipal Courthouse, which, by the way, are three bearded prospectors sitting on rocks.
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net
Comments
1 · as published