by Garrison Frost

January: An unusually sunny day will prompt a Manhattan Beach resident, recently relocated from the Westside, to announce to his relatives in the Midwest that summer has arrived early at his new home. When they arrive in May for their first visit to his new three-story condo-by-the-sea, they will find it cloudy, but will enjoy Disneyland all the same.

February: A City Council in one of the South Bay cities will resolve a local controversy by appointing a few of its members to meet in private with the opposing sides and work out a compromise outside of the public's attention. None of the newspapers will report that the spirit of the state's open meeting laws has been violated.

March: A young man will take his new girlfriend to his favorite cheap Mexican restaurant and babble all through dinner about how "this is the food I grew up on." She will find the food a bit overpriced and bland, but will say nothing because she doesn't want to spoil what seems to be a promising relationship. Meanwhile, the man sitting at the next table will decide that this, this one in my hand, is the best burrito of all time.

April: A woman will walk out of a meeting with her much-younger male boss — an up-and-coming player with one of the larger local real estate concerns — muttering under her breath that "irregardless is not a word."

May: A local artist thinking about selling his work will start asking around about venues. Someone he knows will suggest getting a booth at the Fiesta Hermosa. On the first day of the fair, after watching the guy in the booth next to him make a killing hawking dolphin-shaped candles manufactured in Taiwan while he has sold nothing, the artist departs vowing not to even bother with the next two days, despite the hundreds of dollars it cost him to rent the space. He subsequently resolves not to show or sell his art anywhere, but rather to only give it to family members as gifts.

June: A large number of South Bay residents, confronted with a truly egregious bit of corruption by their elected officials, will respond with cognitive dissonance. They will start by denying that anything corrupt has actually happened, then they will increase their support for the offenders to almost fanatical levels in order to compensate for any lingering doubts.

July: A youngish-but-not-too-young single woman will look out over a bar containing a male population of roughly 127 men — consisting of 40 percent single men who are not in relationships, 30 percent single men in relationships, 20 percent married men, and 10 percent gay men who are both in and out of relationships — then sigh and say to her two other single friends, "The problem is that there just aren't any guys out there." One of her friends will exclaim, "Totally," while the other will try to agree, but will allow a bit of pear martini to slip into her windpipe, resulting in an almost embarrassing coughing fit.

August: A house that has been on a specific street for more than 40 years will be torn down and replaced by a larger, more expensive home (painted beige with a tiled roof) that will be torn down or dramatically remodeled within five years.

September: "This heat is killing me," he will say to her. "Just a few months ago you were begging for heat, saying all the time that it was too cold," she will respond. For a time, they will say nothing and just stare at the road ahead as it rolls underneath the front of the car.

October: The first sentence of an article in a South Bay newspaper will refer to a particular city's "arts resurgence," despite the fact that there are few, if any, commercially successful galleries, little public support for the work of local artists, a negligible community of patrons and a core group of fine artists and writers who long ago concluded that they would never be appreciated in town.

November: "I think if anything's going to happen, it's going to happen online," she'll say, and he'll give her a patronizing nod meant to imply that he agrees when in fact he's completely glued to a contrary opinion.

December: A local activist will write an incendiary letter to a local newspaper regarding an admittedly improper action being considered by his local elected officials. However, his letter will be so ill-conceived and misinformed that it will have the effect of crystallizing support for the council's action. So, when the activist arrives at the meeting to speak in person on the matter, his comments will be met with impatient silence. Indignant and bewildered, the activist will return to his seat where he will sit out the remainder of the meeting quietly, shaking his head only occasionally.

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