By IN LA BY HEIDI MANTEUFFEL
Being rushed from my apartment by toxic fumes and a couple beating each other up in a Venice Sav-on was a clear indicator that it was just going to be a weird weekend.
On Friday night I was feeling kind of bad and my boyfriend was kind enough to take care of me. He told me to sit down and relax as he made me one of my favorite snacks, microwave popcorn. However, instead of the pleasant ding of popping kernels, we heard what sounded like exploding pieces of electrical shrapnel coming from the microwave. When he took the bag out, the entire room was rushed with the smell of plastic fumes from my roommate’s Snoopy plate — pieces of it lodged in all directions of her microwave.
Neither of us knew the byproducts of burnt plastic, but as I lay myself down to sleep, I knew the increasingly worse headache I was getting was not a good thing. I called a friend in Venice who was still awake and crashed on his fume-free couch for the night. As I laid my head down to sleep again, I knew that with coming daylight things would get better.
Wrong. This same friend of mine got up before me the next morning and noticed a woman in line in front of him yelling profusely at the cashier in Sav-on. She said the man “smirked” at her, and by hellfire she wasn’t going to take it. Upset or embarrassed, this woman’s boyfriend punched her in the gut. The two of them continued this display of domestic abuse in the line at Sav-on, and in front of my friend without contacts in, hoping they wouldn’t include him. Finally, near the end of the fight, the woman stopped and remembered to ask to see the worker’s manager. He gladly sent them in her direction.
But these kind of eerie and bizarre events didn’t end at 9 a.m. As I got back to my apartment, which still reeked of burnt plastic, I was home just long enough to do my laundry and research the effects of these fumes. Within this three-hour span, I found out something severely serious had happened with one of my neighbors and heard another one yelling about taking the other girl to court. Once my laundry was done and I discovered a Web site that said carcinogens involved with melting plastic were too numerous to count, I was out in a flash, leaving the fan to propel the air outside of my apartment.
The strangeness didn’t end there. After dinner, we went to the Third Street Promenade. As we left the parking garage on Fourth Street, we saw a man chew out the attendee for having to wait “10 minutes” for the gate to go up. I was thinking, first of all, this boy has a terrible job, so back off. And second, wouldn’t you be embarrassed to admit it took 10 minutes to realize you weren’t going anywhere?
My friend mentioned he liked dark humor. I asked what kind of twisted stuff he liked, and on cue, a woman falls on her ankle.
Being the first ones there, my friend and I entered the theater to find a couple. But the couple was lying on the ground, wrestling and hitting each other while screaming loudly. They ran through the aisles — the aisle we were standing in — hitting and pulling each other back on the ground. We walked back out, hoping it all would end.
It didn’t. Two minutes later we yet again found them kicking and screaming on the ground. Luckily, their friends came in moments later and told them to knock it off.
Besides a guy playing Tetris through the previews, things started to settle down a bit. The first 30 minutes of “The Forgotten” were really good, and everyone in the audience seemed really intrigued. But, of course, the movie ended with exploding houses and aliens swooshing people off into the sky.
We walked back to the car, just waiting for the day to end. I got back to my apartment, which finally, after 24 hours, didn’t smell of plastic. I laid my head down and before drifting to sleep, looked back on the last day and a half — 11:59 p.m., and we had witnessed two fights, two belligerent customers, three instances of civil dispute, a trip, a Tetris game, a bad movie, and some melted plastic in a microwave. I just kept thinking, tomorrow will be a better day, or at least, a more normal one. (If you noticed something strange or bizarre happen this weekend as well, ).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 12, 2004. Read the original PDF.