California left the planet yesterday, the strings of relevance and sanity sawn through at places like Linoleum Discount City, the A&B Body Shop, the One One One Christ Church, and, of course, Hollywoodland Realty.
These were the locations of the polling booths for the election that decided to sack a governor, 11 months into his second term, and elect a new one on the basis of his promise of "fantastic jobs for everyone".
That was the pledge on The Tonight Show of Arnold Schwarzenegger to his host, Jay Leno, in August.
At the Beverley Lanes bowling alley, at The Headmaster Barber Shop, and at the LA Wedding Chapel, in East Lost Angeles, where two couples booked a marriage date for this weekend, and voted as well, they took Arnie at his word.
The scramble for polling places was a result of a compression of time and the absence of money, an apt illustration of California's financial and administrative chaos.
The state has a debt of $US8 billion ($11.5 billion). It had two months to organise the election from scratch. American elections are almost always contested on the first Tuesday in November of every second year. This allows schools, libraries and halls that are the usual polling venues to be vacant.
Yesterday they were occupied. Which was how Winston Haylock came to walk into his local polling booth in Pasadena, undecided and unimpressed.
He was at a U-Haul depot, where Americans go to move loads large and small. Out the front, a contingent of Latino men, cheap labour for hire, waited, their prospects of work diminishing with the waning light.
"To hold an election as important as this, it's a little inappropriate in a place like this," Mr Haylock said.
Chuck Jones marched out, his duty unhappily done. "It's absurd," he said. "The whole process of the recall contradicts the idea of democracy."
Mr Jones buys and sells coffee for a living. Before the field of contenders was trimmed to 135, he would ask his customers across the country if they wanted to run for governor.
"It's a circus," he said. "The recall is a total circus, like most things about California."
California was spared the agony of waiting for the results by three television networks and the Associated Press, who all called the election for Schwarzenegger within minutes of the polls closing. They were trumped by Matt Drudge, the internet gadfly, who posted the broadcasters' exit polling results online while votes were still being cast.
At 10.29pm, Cruz Bustamante, the Democratic challenger to Schwarzenegger the Republican, appeared at his election party to concede defeat.
On television the screen was split, with Bustamante's image and somnambulistic delivery on one side, and the crowded stage in the Los Angeles hotel ballroom, awaiting Schwarzenegger's appearance, on the other. The configuration of the screen had invisible Arnold hovering at Bustamante's shoulder.
Then Jay Leno appeared, gave his own show a ringing endorsement and Schwarzenegger the briefest of introductions. With those words, and the new governor-elect entering at stage right, Bustamante disappeared from the screen.
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