The perfect excuse... ...for being late in L.A. is sure true now

[question everything]

Los Angeles Daily News

The perfect excuse...
...for being late in L.A. is sure true now
By Lisa Mascaro
Staff Writer

In the hit movie "Sideways," the lead character arrives terribly late for his buddy's bachelor party getaway and proceeds to blame the traffic -- horrible traffic, he says -- to empathetic nods from friends.

Except, of course, there was no gridlock. Miles overslept, stopped for coffee, then blazed down the open freeway.

Traffic, that bane of Angelenos' existence, sure comes in handy in a pinch.

"When I'm late, that's usually the first thing I pull out," said Javier Acuna, a 23-year-old college film major from Sylmar who interns at an architecture firm downtown. "The traffic excuse? It's kind of the norm in this society."

(snip)

Lisa Mascaro, [phone]

[e-mail]

ONLINE: CHP Web site: http://cad.chp.ca.gov/

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2731042,00.html#

[ET Awful]

1. Hint: Don't try to use the traffic excuse if your boss lives 2 blocks

away from you :).

[Us vs Them]

2. When I lived in LA I used to blame traffic all the time.

Now that I live in a city with a notoriously mismanaged public transit system, the excuse simply transfers. Everyone's been stuck on a train between stations before.