Have you ever had something happen to you where you weren’t sure what just happened or was happening, but you knew that you had been violated in some way?
Last Friday night I performed improv with my awesome team Chauffeur at iO West in Hollywood. After a great show, I was in good spirits. My girlfriend and I decided to take a walk down Hollywood Boulevard.
I’ve done stand up before about Hollywood. I talk about how the world sees it as this glitzy, glamorous place, but the town, at least, is very much the opposite. A lyric in a Madonna song goes, “There’s something in the air in Hollywood…”, and I say, “Yeah, that something is the smell of urine.”
Even that night, I commented about how literally dark the boulevard was. There were street lights, but they were like a single fluorescent light in a library basement. It’s a pretty dirty and dark place, yet, many people crowded the sidewalk. A lot of hoodlums, but also a lot of people going to clubs, women in mini-skirts and stiletto heels.
We had walked a good distance and turned around to go back. A man passed me on my left and SLAP!! Out of nowhere something smacked me on my upper arm. It was loud and painful. It felt as if someone rolled up a newspaper and whacked me with the force of a major league baseball player.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion. I was confused because I hadn’t seen the man passing me make any sudden, large movements, but I was almost sure it had to have come from him. “Excuse me,” I said in an upset tone as he kept walking and another larger, bald man passed me and said, “I didn’t do it.” There was a large group of people that were looking our way and a man exclaimed, “What the h—- was that?!”
My mind was quickly scrolling through the possibilities. There was a definite smacking sound, but would that have been enough for that whole group to have noticed? Was there something bigger? Maybe it wasn’t the man after all. Was debris or something raining from the sky? Was someone shooting something at us? Did that guy have some sort of weapon or contraption that slapped very hard, but in a very small space, kind of like that tool that breaks your car window if you drive into a pond? Who was with this man? Was the whole group out to do us harm? Was it a stupid prank? Was this some sort of misdirection so an accomplice could steal from us?
It was so dark and there were so many people that it was impossible to tell who was friend and who was foe. I looked at my arm. It wasn’t bleeding. I checked my wallet and my girlfriend’s purse. We hadn’t been robbed. I know there are people out there who just want to start a fight and it seemed like such an odd and dangerous situation that I took my girlfriend and kept walking, continuing to glance over my shoulder to make sure no one was following us.
It took us at least 15-20 minutes to walk back to my car and my arm was stinging the entire way. It ended up leaving a small bruise and a bigger distaste and distrust of Hollywood. Later, my girlfriend said she thinks she saw something ricochet from the ground, but that still doesn’t give me any idea as to what really happened.
Has anything like this ever happened to you? Do you have any idea what could have happened? Is there anything we can do to clean up Hollywood? Please leave a comment with stories and ideas!!