Blah Blah Los Angeles

Favorite Movie Titles on the Marquee at the Tomkat Theater, West Hollywood:

• How the West Was Hung
• A Rim with a View
• Dawson's Crack
• I Know Who You Blew Last Summer
• Drill Bill

I think it goes without saying, but for those of you who don't know the L.A. area all that well, the Tomkat is a gay porn theater, conveniently located on Santa Monica Blvd., mere blocks from my local Whole Foods. So on my way to pick up all kinds of, well, whole foods, I always make a point of checking out the movie titles because, well, it is damn funny, is all. I share with you out of the goodness of my heart.

Love Notes. And Not.

I love Los Angeles. It reinvents itself every two days. - Billy Connolly

Los Angeles is a microcosm of the United States. If L.A. falls, the country falls. - Ice T

I'd move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack. - Russell Crowe

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic. - Andy Warhol

Until the Sun Comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

I was reading this book recently, and parts of it are set in Los Angeles, and at one point, the protagonist is thinking about how much she loves Los Angeles and why. And I realize I'm not going to change anybody's mind about it if they already have a strong opinion, but damn, I love living here. I am a Bostonian by birth and spent the first quarter-century of my life there. Boston has its good points, but you could not pay me enough money to move back there.

Why do I love it here so much?

For one thing, for the endless, and soooo random, parade of freaks I come across in my day-to-day meanderings. I know that non-Angelenos inevitably cite all the Beautiful People running about Los Angeles and how annoying that is; every Starbucks/Target/gas station is filled with model/actress wannabes, etc. Also, everyone, and I mean everyone, is working on a script. Fine, I'll grant you that, but that doesn't really interest me, due to the freak show previously mentioned. The whole Beautiful People thing is just mildly amusing to me, something about which I roll my eyes and say fondly, "Oh, L.A.," as if the city is just a mischievous pet of some sort.

As I say, I love the assortment of freaks:

• The Lampshade Lady of Los Feliz, who generally wears a floor-length green dress in all kinds of weather, with a piece of cloth wrapping a lampshade to her head;
• The Walking Man of Silverlake, with skin like scrapple, who speed-walks several miles each day, in shorts and tennis shoes, reading a newspaper and rarely looking up;
• The Turbaned Homeless Lady of Hollywood, who greeted us affectionately with, "Hello, lovely family!" as we were taking a Sunday morning stroll through the Hollywood Media District (aka The Abandoned-on-Weekends-Post-Production Corridor);
• The guy I've seen more than once at bus stops holding a rubber chicken. 'Nuff said;
• Francine of the long flowing white hair, who has her own public access show, but who also travels the streets of Hollywood in a wheelchair...and sometimes rides her bicycle. Why does she need a wheelchair if she can ride a bicycle? You tell me.
• Also, more pissed-off clowns, in a variety of settings, than one person should see in a lifetime. You don't want to mess with a pissed-off clown.

Then, there's also the weather. I was born in the summer and have never been a cold-weather person. I hate the cold. I hate the snow. I do love big snuggly sweaters and scarves and stuff like that, but I would much rather be slumming along in my flip-flops in January. I love being able to go to the beach when you'd least expect it, like on Valentine's Day, when there's a freak* heatwave and it's 85 degrees.

* There's that word again. I am a freak for the word "freak"! Can't get enough of it. It's like heroin to me.

I also love (here it comes, that horrible buzzword) the diversity of Los Angeles. I love the sheer variety of people you run into here. It is not a homegeneous place by any means. Coming from a place where life was difficult if you could not be pigeonholed ethnically, I love the fact that most people here could really give less than a shit if I am not of the same ethnic or racial background they are. Vive le difference! is what they'd say if they all spoke French. (Of course, I don't speak French, so I'm quite sure that phrase is supposed to have some accent or other. Perdon.)

And I love the friendliness and hopefulness of Los Angeles, the sense that anything could happen here. Maybe other folks don't get that vibe, but those folks can write their own damn blog.

I leave you with a scene from L.A. Story:

Sara: Roland thinks L.A. is a place for the brain-dead. He says, if you turned off the sprinklers, it would turn into a desert. But I think - I don't know, it's not what I expected. It's a place where they've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams. I've seen a lot of L.A. and I think it's also a place of secrets: secret houses, secret lives, secret pleasures. And no one is looking to the outside for verification that what they're doing is all right. So what do you say, Roland?

Roland: I still say it's a place for the brain-dead.