Toxic Malibu: An Ode

So we go to the beach near Malibu and I'm like, Oh my God, this place is a poem. There's the dead seal, washed up on the shore—freshly dead, I'm told by a German TV director who is with his wife and two young children, from toxins in the ocean. The toxins not only kill the seals, he informs me, but also make them incredibly aggressive, as if they have rabies. So they try to attack everyone, then keel over dead. And I say, Oh, my God, if the toxins can kill seals, what about the people in the water—I mean, what about the surfers? And the TV director shrugs and says, Eh—the surfers are already crazy, and I start to laugh but then notice my two-and-a-half-year-old son is wandering away, dabbling in the estuary, which (I'm told by the wife of the TV director) is half ocean, half raw sewage from the Topanga Canyon runoff. She's nursing a new baby off to one side in a sling and has a three-year-old girl, Luka, who plays with my almost-three-year-old, Mac. The TV director is slick and boyish and Machiavellian as hell. Dark glasses. He tells me he is working in reality TV because that's where the money is. He does America's Top Model, which is fun, have I heard of it? And I say, yes, what a surreal experience that must be. And he says it's fun, the shoots are fun, the girls get pretty wild, and have I ever seen it? And I say, I don't own a working TV so I'm not in the pop-know. And I feel a little superior saying so, explaining I grew up in an era when TV was free so I can't bear to pay for cable and all the bells and whistles. The TV director considers, then says, You could get one of those antennas, I think they're about twenty bucks, and now I see I'm not the only one feeling superior—here he is, doling out advice to a woman who can't even afford to watch TV in the privacy of her own home. I want to say, Yes, but then I would be hypnotized like everyone else in America, but I refrain. Why be confrontational? It's a lovely day, after all. Down on the beach, more people gather round the dead seal at the water's edge, inspecting it. And I notice that Mac, hanging onto his favorite stuffed animal—a white, terry-cloth dog named "Snowy"—has begun to drift further and further from me, past the bloated body of the dead seal and down the beach, and I call Mac! Mackie! Mac! but he can't hear me, so I ask the reality TV director if he wouldn't mind watching my two dogs while I run after my son, since dogs aren't allowed on that part of the beach, and he says, Sure, so I leave the dogs with him and trot over towards the dead seal, calling, Hey, Mac! Mac-moon! And when Mac sees me running towards him he does a double-take and then sprints in the opposite direction with Snowy under his arm because he thinks he's in trouble, and when I catch up to him I say, Mac, you're not in trouble, but can you stay where I can see you? Because otherwise I get scared, and he says, Yes, and we draw boundaries in the sand delineating where he can and cannot go, and then I run back to the dogs, Rocco and Gizmo, and the family of the reality TV director. The afternoon peels away, the German family leaves, and three men from China arrive in their place, stretching a tightrope between two trees; they practice walking on it. I say, Are you practicing for the circus? And they laugh and say, No, it's just something to do, something to help pass the time, and I say...