What it is is, you neurotypicals have a superpower: you can’t leap even short buildings with a single bound, but you can recognize a person, sometimes a person you’ve only seen once before, in less than the blink of an eye, so fast you don’t even know how you do it.

Talking with you is like talking to a savant: you ask a savant how much 2,357,429 * 183,482,093 is, and the reply comes back 432,546,007,018,897, just like that. Likewise, I ask my wife or daughter who that woman on a movie poster is, and they reply “Betty Grable,” or “Angelina Jolie”, as the case may be: right off, boom.

Some famous people I can recognize by special features: Groucho’s mustache, Churchill’s general resemblance to an overgrown baby, Telly Savalas’s baldness, Einstein’s wild hair, Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair :), Spock’s skin color :) :-). If I work really hard, I can memorize facial details and recite them later, like learning to sing the national anthem. But as for the rest, I’m clueless.

With the exception of nuclear family members, close friends, and current and immediate coworkers, the world of people is filled with unknowns, some of whom seem to recognize me. I used to just try to muddle through; now I try to explain, and hopefully people (a) believe me and (b) aren’t as often offended as they used to be.

In the lobby of that hotel is a picture of Huntingdon Beach in 1920. THere is a traffic jam of Ford Model T’s on the Pacific Coast Highway. Orange County has lived with trffic jams for five generations.

It is so depressing being there. It is the place I think of when people tell me stories aout the impending collapse of the western world. It seems the most fragile of all systems, propped up on illusion, greed and externalized costs. Good riddance to it.

Yes, I grew up in Orange County. The thing to know about Californians is that they all were from somewhere else, and many have since gone somewhere else. As an aerospace kid, the place was about orange groves, old libraries, open space, and rocket ships.

Not so much here I like anymore. Looking forward to leaving.