Road Trips

Gas prices be damned: Hollywood assistants like road trips. Whether reliving our college road trip glory days of not too many years ago, or taking that first adult road trip (since many assistants in this town went to school in large and important cities where cars were not the necessity they are in this suburban sprawl) - it’s never a bad time for a road trip. Even the most paid vacation deprived PA can take a weekend on the road, so break out your designer shades and charge your blu-tooth: it’s time to review the key elements needed for any successful road trip:

• iPod mixes: XM radio is for suckers – everyone between the age of 18 and 34 can program the road trip mood with a carefully selected iPod mix. The mix should consist of the token generic road trip songs (Tom Cochrane’s Life is a Highway, Postal Service’s Such Great Heights, Phantom Planet’s California for the way back, anything by Counting Crows and, of course, Journey’s Don't Stop Believin') and then a great mix of cheesy tunes everyone will sing along to, like Uptown Girl, and unexpected jams from years back that will elicit the “OMG I really miss Dave Matthews Band too!” response. The importance of a strong (and long) iPod mix will be felt roughly around hour 2 of traffic when you are still in Silver Lake.

• Condoms: Do I need to elaborate on this? Hollywood Assistants like sex but do not like non-celebrity babies.

• A healthy rivalry with technology: I: Robot might have sucked, but lesson learned: robots are taking over the world and we all have to do our part to combat this coup. On road trips, this means outsmarting the Navigation system. Oh really, Nav, you think it’s going to take 5 hours to get to Vegas? Well I’m man and I still dominate computer, and I say it’s going to take 4 hours. What do you have to say about that? Forget the fact that we’re in Friday rush hour traffic, sig alert indicates several multi-car pile ups and the 101 is pretty much a construction site, this drive is not going to take more than 4 hours or we might as well start calling our Macs “Master.”

• Facebook statuses: Why even take a road trip unless it’s going to make at least 10 CAA assistants jealous? A simple “Vegas, baby!” can do wonders.

• The historian: Everyone has that friend who celebrates the creation day of the digital camera annually. You know the one I’m talking about: she takes pictures of every road sign with someone’s name in it, she thinks brunch at The Griddle is more about getting a great picture of 5 people around one pancake than eating, and she has mastered the art of the arm length self-group shot (explaining the 4,527 photos of her posted on Facebook). No one can quite remember who brought the paparazzi into the group, and it’s impossible to tell whom she’s actually close with because for every person you know, there are at least 100 pictures of the historian hugging them. This person might cause temporary blindness from the endless camera flashes, but come Monday morning when you are in a depression spiral at your desk job over the end of the road trip, you really start to appreciate the historian. Sure, you have to scramble to de-tag the less than flattering shots of you making out with the local(s), but at least you can relive the joy of road trips past with the 1,000 photos deep albums of the best two days ever.

Where: 500 mile radius from The Grove Epicenter
Cost: I mean, you drive a Prius, right?