#53 - What I Didn't See on T.V.

What I Didn't See on T.V.
(A long weekend in Los Angeles)

2/2/05 (#53)

I love to travel. Not as a verb (the physical act of traveling---layovers at airports, overbooked flights, seats designed to comfortably fit the average size-0 female traveler), but as a noun ("Our travels brought us to New Orleans.") I enjoy researching the destination ahead of time, reading up on landmarks, interesting restaurants, and locations of the best book and record stores. To paraphrase The Tao of Pooh, the anticipation of the travel is often as much fun as the destination.

But for some destinations, research seems superfluous. For instance, New York City: I have traveled to NYC thousands of times in my 38 years, each time arriving via that glowing blue screen in my living room. NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Seinfeld, 60 Minutes exposes, Sex and the City--and that doesn't even count the movies! I went to NYC when I was 10 years old, but my memories are limited---pretzels overlooking Rockefeller Center; graffiti on the subway cars as they rumbled into the station; a man selling raincoats and umbrellas from a push-cart. But my memories of the films of Spike Lee and Woody Allen are quite vivid. The movies have made us all familiar with New York.

Ditto on Los Angeles. I had a myriad of L.A. images in my head, none from personal experience, and only a handful from reliable direct reports. When my pal Zeth moved there, I ragged him incessantly about having an apartment between a heavy metal bass player and a bleached blonde porn star. My impressions are an amalgamation of what I have seen on T.V. and the big screen. These impressions were often contradicted by the songs of and interviews with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who love their home town more than even the title character of Randy Newman's song, and I would have believed them if it hadn't been for Barton Fink, Sunset Boulevard, Swimming with Sharks, The Player, Boogie Nights, and Boyz in the Hood.

But I should have known better. Why would the place continue to grow if it wasn't a nice place to be? (I can understand why the Oklahoma prom queens arrive with dreams of the carpet at the Kodak Theatre, but neither Betsy nor Zeth (my city of angels hosts) had ever been Oklahoma prom queens.)(In their defense, they have never lived in Oklahoma. With residency, I think Betsy would have been a shoe-in. Zeth? More of a dark horse.) I spent this past weekend in L.A. and I am very surprised to report that I am completely enamored with the city. I recognize that I got a "best-of" tour, and as Zeth pointed out, sitting in traffic on Tuesday afternoon in the 100 degree Valley heat might change my sense of the place. But it wasn't Tuesday, and it wasn't hot, so that's not my concern.

So, for my first OSF Travelogue, I offer these impressions of the City of Dreams:

The O.C. doesn't lie
Back in the 70s, my folks were interested in owning their own business, so they shopped for prospects. One of the candidates was a small motel that, in the picture, looked like it was situated within a small forested area. When we arrived, we saw that the trees featured in the photo were there, right in front of the motel, but they were in fact the only two trees in the county. Thus, the motel sat in a huge dirt lot, the trees likely imported because without them, there would be no oxygen production at all. That deception is how I have always imagined LA---the sweeping coastline looked Utopian on the small screen, but just over the ridge was the world's largest Gap store. But it's not that way at all---the only thing over the ridge is a hundred more ridges. Sure, the city has more apartment buildings than the entire state of Oregon, and there are strip malls cluttering almost any real estate not occupied by an apartment building, but despite a loathing for retail overpopulation (I can't go to McMinnville because I can't tolerate that 99W drive through Tigard), I didn't find them offensive at all. In fact, I barely noticed. What I did notice was the coast, the mountains, the Hollywood Hills, the lush canyons and expansive views. I figured that Hollywood projected to the world an image similar to the ad my folks saw for the hotel---every movie that featured a panoramic view was filmed on the same set, with trees grown tall to block out the other 99% of the city that featured race riots, junkie ex-starlets, peroxide wigs and saline implants. But the fact is, you could film a movie most anywhere in greater Los Angeles and it would look wonderful.

The people aren't plastic, and the women aren't beautiful
My expectation of L.A. women came from videos seen in the 1980's---Autograph's "Blondes in black cars", Motley Crue's "Girls, girls, girls", and a score of other horrid hair metal band's "fictional-day-in-the-life" videos. Mind you, I knew that Mick Mars was not actually getting to hot tub with any of those buxom cartoon hotties, but for some reason I thought that the scenario was the only fiction---the women were real, they were acting in the video, so I still expected every third person to be a silicone creation. But I saw very little of that. (A credit to my hosts for not showing me any of the major reconstructive surgery centers.) Granted, most of the folks I rubbed elbows with were fast food employees, coffee shop baristas and down-to-earth-friends of down-to-earth-friends, but I encountered a lot more plastic surgery and self-involved prigs when I worked at a gas station in the west hills of Portland than I saw in LA. (Perhaps if we had cut off that Rolls Royce Phantom on our way to Santa Monica Boulevard, I would have had a bit of exposure to a small portion of that facet of the city.)

To my eyes, the anatomical scenery in Portland bests what I saw in Los Angeles. (Or anywhere, for that matter.) Our pop culture tour guide Brett Carlson audibly scoffed when I stated the above, assuring me that the top 1% of America's beautiful women live in L.A., but as we topic-hopped over chili burgers at Carney's, we briefly landed on the television show, The Facts of Life: I was always hot for Jo, his adolescent lust was focused on Blair. It's no wonder I prefer the women of Portland ("Homegrown", to quote Brett) to those of L.A. ("High Maintenance babes", from the same source.)

L.A. is enormous
I had heard this, but I had no idea of the scale. I have never in my life driven so far in a single city without passing the same landmarks four times. The vastness of the place, and the variety of neighborhoods, reminded me of an interview I had heard years ago with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, my favorite member of one of my favorite bands. (If you know Chili Pepper lore, you are welcome to take "member" as a pun.) Flea spoke of Los Angeles, and said (I paraphrase, liberally), "The rich people in the mansions, I love them; the warm-hearted families in the barrio, I love them; the plastic people who shop in the posh places, I love them; the dirty punks trying to eke out a living in a band, I love them, too." With that much diversity spread over that much acreage, it's absurd to think that there is a single, defining characteristic that is Los Angeles. I am reminded of Whitman's line regarding America, which applies perfectly to the city I saw this weekend:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

In welcoming me back, Steve Davis made an interesting statement: "I'm proud of enjoying LA 'cuz it seems everyone looks for a reason to hate it." I was one of those folks, always responding with a grimace when someone spoke of spending time in Lakerland, wondering what could ever possess a person to seek out that destination. But if it comes up again, I'm going to be have a different response---In-n-Out burgers are cheaper than Fat Burgers (but both are delicious), John Brion's Friday night residency at Largo is a music show that no musician should miss (ditto on the record store Amoeba, where I found a rare Soul Coughing bootleg) and make sure you get to the beach---I frequently thought I was seeing the most beautiful real estate on earth, until we went a few miles more and I had to update my assessment. It was a marvelous place to visit.

I had contemplated ending with a wise crack about smog or traffic or the Lakers, but the city earned an exemption from such an easy, half-hearted snipe. I'll leave the punch lines to the residents; they've earned that by enduring the smog, traffic, and the Lakers. Instead, I'll just be honest: In my eyes, Los Angeles is wonderful.

P.S. My sole celebrity sighting was Seth Cohen, a character from The O.C. Props to Brett Carlson for spotting him in the passenger seat of an Audi A4 as it pulled up beside us on Sunset Blvd. Speaking of Brett, if you ever go to Los Angeles, you should pay Brett $100 for a three-hour tour---an incredibly entertaining and culturally exhaustive once-over of a city with many stories. (I'm pimping for him for freelance work, but you might be able to negotiate that price.) ("Okay, $60, and we leave out where Janis Joplin ate her last meal.") Thanks for the fun, Brett!

©2005 wpreagan