My big trip to L.A.

I remember standing in the streets of Glendale, California, waving down the fire truck with a cigarette dangling from my lips and thinking, "Huh. This weekend sure has taken an odd turn."

When the truck pulled up, lights flashing, the first fireman to greet me said, "Yeah, I don't know if I'd be smoking that right now."

I said, "Hey, man. If you just went through what I did, you'd be smoking too."

My big trip to L.A. started out pretty sweet.

A day earlier, I got in just in time to meet up with my girlfriend and head to Anaheim for the Anthony Green/Person L show at Chain Reaction. The show was ridiculous. It was the night before the epic Battle Of The Network Stars with Cove Reber, but at the time, my show seemed like a pretty difficult act to follow. Lyrics were sung along to, kazoos were played in unison and mayhem ensued.

After a quick post-show meet-and-greet with Anthony Julius Green, the girlfriend and I planned to take a full day to prepare for Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday.

If we had known how close to death we'd come 16 hours later, we probably woulda spent a little more quality time with Anthony. Or rented some scooters or something.

My girlfriend decided to cook dinner for us on Saturday. But I thought something felt ominous when we bought those frozen chicken nuggets (different from the ominous feeling I usually get when buying frozen chicken nuggets).

We walked back to the studio apartment her friend's mother had allowed us to borrow for the day (for as much as it costs to pay for a month of rent in L.A., you could instead buy one of these).

I sat down at the glass table in the tiny kitchen and my girlfriend settled in, neatly arranging the chicken nuggets in a container, boiling some water for vegetables that she and I both knew I'd never eat and then turned on the oven to pre-heat. (You know that all these mundane details have to be foreshadowing something...)

I began talking about something and she feigned casual interest as per usual, and then she said, "I'll be right back. Keep talking," then went into the hallway.

Then there was the explosion.

Look, I'm not a nuclear physicist. I had to go to Dictionary.com just to spell physicist.

But I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this explosion was the single most powerful to stem from a dingy 1952 Kenmore oven on record.

It blew a hole in the ceiling about 5-feet around, showering heavy shards of plaster inches away from me.

My life flashed before my eyes.

And it was in that instant that I knew... that this would be a great place to leave a cliffhanger for the next blog.

(Here's a little spoiler, though: Either I survived or I'm the afterlife's most prominent pop culture blogger.)