There are literal birds chirping, tweeting and running around our hotel for the BET Awards—the vast Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles, where scenes from the film True Lies were shot.
These birds, however, are not just of the feathered kind but of these kinds, too.
Yes, birds.
Birds of the “Pick me, choose me, love me” kind that are currently being watched by the Twitter account @pickmepatrol, aka “Bird Watch.”
I’ll never understand these kinds of birds. Even though I have been married before and went through various periods of “OMG, WHY DON’T I HAVE A MAN,” I haven’t been that woman since I was about 22 years old, and that was 18 years ago. Romantic love, while wonderful, and marriage, while aspirational, are both wildly imperfect. For every person, like my mom, who managed to snag a guy who has loved her both at her best and her worst for several decades, there are about a thousand other folks knee-deep in the struggle of rudeness, cruelty, infidelity and assholery disguised as love.
Yet, “birds” persist. Chirping. Tweeting. Caw-cawing about. And the BET Experience and Awards weekend is like a sort of roosting area for them. After all, there are a lot (a lot!) of men here. I don’t necessarily want most of these men, but still, MEN ALL THE SAME. Tall men, short men, colorfully dressed Migos impersonators, regular-schmegular-degular dudes, chic faux thugs, “celebrities” and actual celebrities without quotes! These birds are on a manhunt among the chickadees flapping about the hotel lobby, pecking along the floor and dashing between the trees planted by the water fountains.
I guess birds of a feather do flock together.