By and large, I avoided the weekend holiday heat wave by going to the beach this past weekend. I spent Saturday at Venice Beach, or more accurately, the Washington Avenue part.

It was nice to get away from the infernal inferno of the Valley. I cannot remember such an intense period of severely hot weather.

On Saturday night, I was sitting in the air-conditioning, watching TV, when the power stopped at about 6:30pm. Suddenly, the house was a silent, dark oven. There were no lights, TV, internet. I couldn’t read, or do laundry, or cook dinner, or open the refrigerator. I went outside and discovered that my neighbor to the east had his lights, but only seven houses lost power. We were one of them. We left the house and had dinner out, but returned about 10pm and dragged the mattress to the living room and opened the sliding glass doors.

Unfortunately, this was the night my Hollywood location manager neighbor had a party with a live band and hundreds of guests. He had electricity and a backyard swimming pool. Trying to fall asleep, I was awakened not only by music and screaming, but barking dogs on nearby Gilmore, and ambulance and fire engine sirens speeding along Victory.

On Sunday morning, DWP showed up around 10am and the power was back on in three minutes.

On Sunday night, I was sitting in the air-conditioning, watching TV, when the power again stopped at about 6:15pm. A repeat of the night before. This time, I called DWP immediately, and they assured me it wouldn’t take 12 hours to restore power. So I drove, in desperation, to the cooler area called Pacific Palisades, and had dinner there.

On the trip back across the Sepulveda Pass, at 1o pm, the car’s dashboard thermometer climbed from 79 to 111 by the time I reached Victory. Once again, I pulled the mattress out of the bedroom and put it next to the open sliding doors. Once more, the helicopters circled, dogs barked, and the breeze was as still as a corpse.

DWP came back a second time on Monday morning around 11am, and in a more elaborate installation, took out the old transformer that probably should have been replaced the night before. Now the A/C came back, and the TV, and the internet, but once again I learned how fragile and luxurious the utilities of modern civilization are.