David Cotner |
Santa Monica Boulevard is a traffic nightmare at the best of times, so what better way to blow off frustrations than a healthy dose of schadenfreude? One eye on the road, the other fixed on the soon-to-change electronic billboard number, you’re wishing the next digit could represent the idiot in front of you who doesn’t know the gas pedal’s on the right. As you pass, you look at him, trying to discern exactly what kind of asshead is causing you to cheer, “Go 754,589! Die, baby — do it!” Now that its brother at the Hard Rock Café — the one that tallied the acreage of lost rainforest — is long gone, and its sister the Doomsday Clock has evaporated into a trivia question, the “Smoking Deaths This Year and Counting” board is a rare reminder of the emotional uses to which we can put incomprehensibly large numbers. American Lung Association Smoking-Related Deaths Tote Board, 10936 Santa Monica Blvd.
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