I love Los Angeles: stuck in an elevator, then a parking garage: 11/5/25

I want to apologize before I start. I spoiled the story with the title, and I've misled you into thinking this was going to be about Katherine Heigl vaping. It's not. I just think it's an enjoyable picture of a celebrity taking a moment for herself. But if you'd like to see her vape more, please watch the utterly entertaining film Unforgettable, where she does that in between snakey bouts of terrorizing Rosario Dawson.

On to the topic. Alonso and I got stuck in an elevator in Beverly Hills, the fanciest part of Beverly Hills, in fact. Rodeo Drive, even. Literal 90210. We were there for a press screening at an otherwise run of the mill office building, but so close to the Pretty Woman hotel you could hear the echoes of Julia Roberts delivering misinformation about flossing before sex in 1990. After the film was over, we got in the elevator and pushed P1. It kinda sorta almost took us there and then the doors opened approximately four inches and wouldn't budge. Alonso tried to strongman them open but it just didn't work. We pushed a bunch of buttons including the one you're supposed to push when the elevator is stuck. Nothing.

I'm of the opinion that one should just keep pushing buttons until one is no longer trapped in a death chute, so we did that. Something has to happen. There was no little phone behind a little door that I could see. I mean, there almost certainly was but I just quickly descended into silent panic and forgot. The Heigl Impulse took over. Who's running this place? Why am I trapped in your poorly functioning architecture? I need to speak to a manager.

Your stuck elevator experience might last less than a minute – it did – but time becomes pliable in those seconds as you contemplate dropping down to the bottom when a cable breaks and you flash on that hilarious moment in Earthquake where people all die in an elevator and the special effects budget, spent entirely on Sensurround, was so depleted they had to animate cartoon blood for the final splat.

We got out. There was a lurch and then we wound up on a different level of the parking garage. Doors opened quickly and stayed that way. Insulted to be deposited on a level not of my choosing, I still got out of there.

And then we got stuck behind a parking gate that wouldn't open. This was a little trickier. The small parking garage office, usually containing a person, sat dark and empty. The car in front of us kept putting the right cards into the machine and the machine refused to lift the gate. A dozen cars behind us, everyone waiting for the magic moment when the card machine would cooperate, no one getting what they needed, everyone breathing exhaust.

I would like to tell you that the drama ramped up and and there was chaos or peril. But we just got out of our car and moved some stanchons that keep people from doing what we were all about to do, which was simply drive around the gate and exit. Back up to the thrill of Beverly Hills by night.

I used to read Sassy magazine back in the day. Yes, it was for teenage girls and who gives a shit. Media demographics have never mattered to me, if it's good I'll read it, I love a magazine, and Sassy was a good magazine. They used to have a memoiristic column called "It Happened to Me" and it was always about a meaningful experience that a teenage girl had and from which she learned something.

So this is my first SLUGGISH "It Happened to Me," only with no meaning whatsoever, just the novelty of my first – and with luck, last – time being stuck in a Beverly Hills malfunctioning equipment hassle. If we had plummeted into a cartoon pool of blood then sure, meaningful. I mean I did move a plastic stanchon heroically. But nothing bad happened. I made it home and got a glass of almond milk and took a moment for myself.