Johnny Depp revved the engine and did a wheelie. The crowd broke into wild applause.
Before today, some of the more naive riders on the bus had bought into the notion that celebrity sightings were a regular feature of Los Angeles life, that a substantial proportion of the people in L.A. were the ones they had already heard of, and so while the sighting of Johnny Depp on a motorcycle had certainly delighted them, it had not shocked them. But this, now, was undeniably special, to everyone. Johnny Depp was showing off for them, doing tricks, and it really was something else.
In their excitement, both the bus and Johnny Depp had gradually sped up without noticing, and now Johnny Depp saw the heat-and-haze-weakened bites of light racing more and more quickly toward his motorcycle, and in an instant he realized that what was also approaching, in tandem, was an offer from the universe: legend or star, either one was fine, but he didn’t have much time to decide, because the main way you recognize moments like these is by how fast they seem to be racing away.
Everyone dies, thought Johnny Depp as he raised both hands off the motorcycle, and flew into the drab valley below under a blanket of phone flashes and the eyes of newly born secondhand-legends; but not everyone is remembered like this.
Discussion question:
Do you think Johnny Depp should have driven his motorcycle off the mountain highway to his death? Why or why not?
Being Young Was Her Thing
Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing.
One of these days I’m going to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself—but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone ever caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be over right then.
Angel Echeverria, Comediante Superpopular
You only needed one great bit, and that was all he had. But that was all you needed.
He would do crowd work for twenty minutes, loosening the crowd up, throwing in some local references to life in the Bay Area and to Mexican American life at the turn of the millennium—basically just putting everyone at ease and letting them know he was one of them, which he was, and that he wasn’t going to hassle anybody, which he wasn’t.
Then he’d start the bit.
“You ever go into this store, Whole Foods, man? Everything is so expensive.”
People were already laughing without even noticing that they were. Yes, of course they had been inside a Whole Foods, and yes, of course they had noticed the higher prices.
“But you know why it’s so expensive? It’s all up to the food. It’s all in the food’s mind. It’s because of how the food thinks of itself.” He pointed to his brain. “The food believes in itself, man. It has confidence. It has self-respect. It has self-worth. You just have to look at the labels: SOY NUTS.”
He held his expression and waited for the quickest pockets of the crowd to catch on and spread the laughter to the people around them. It usually took between five and five and a half seconds to reach its peak.
“SOY milk.” Now the whole crowd was with him.
“The food knows what it is, man! It proclaims it!”
He was killing, and there was no looking back now.
“You go into Albertsons or Vons or, you know, that knockoff Vons, Jons?” Yes, they knew. “You see the shelves?” He went into his shopper voice (which was also his cop voice): “What’s this? Who are you?” Now he shrugged his body deep into his shoulders and adopted the voice of a wimpy, moody adolescent boy: “Miiiiilk.”