As everyone knows, there are a great many Hispanic speakers in Los Angeles. What I didn’t really understand till I moved here, however, is that they essentially comprise a fixed-stratum servant-class. It makes me uneasy to even say that. But there you have it: busboys, gardeners, construction workers, furniture movers, and valets here are by and large Mexican.
I have finally figured out why I hate Christmas shopping. It came to me Thursday, in the massive Beverly Center mall. It wasn’t the crowds; there were no crowds. Early on a weekday, there were still only a comfortable number of shoppers. Enough to keep you company, not enough for jostling and bumping.
It wasn’t the parking: I walked over.
It wasn’t the prices; they were pretty reasonable and I’m not as broke as usual.
But something was setting my teeth on edge no matter what store I went into. Finally I figured it out. It was the music. Verily, I do loathe today’s music. It didn’t matter if it was a recent popular song or a Christmas song, everything I heard ran over my nerves like a pumice stone on a sunburn.
That I hate todays’ popular music was not a revelation. My sister and friends have patiently heard my diatribes on the arch yet nasal postulations of this year’s big-haired pouty princesses, who never seem to vary from one of two themes: Ooo baby you so fine and hot ooo baby baby yeah, and Don’t mess with me, you don’t know how tough I am that’s right, that’s right!
But there is something about today’s cover of Christmas songs that is a whole fresh, new form of torture. Female vocalists all seem to be striving for that intimate, jazzy, wry-in-sequins air of a Four Seasons lounge act, and male vocalists are convinced that they must sing Rum pah pum pum in some unique, arrhythmic tempo never before attempted.
As a result, Christmas shopping is like being on a cruise ship that has hit rough weather. After two hours of it, I was finished. Finally I went to the West Hollywood Target, which does not aspire to atmospheric pretensions. And for once, screaming children were music to my ears.
Not us!
Happily for those of us living in Los Angeles, we are not, repeat, not, the most dangerous city in the United States. Nor even the second or third. My parents, who reside in a cozy cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, were horrified when I decided to come to Los Angeles, land of inner city youth and gang violence. Well, look, ma !
Two of the top three most dangerous cities are in Michigan!
Of course, I have only been here for three and a half years, but so far my only brushes with crime have been a single slashed tire, and the sight of the ubiquitous grafitti that is as much part of the landscape of LA as the palm trees. Well, certain parts of it. Not Weho. Weho teenagers have different agendas. A sixteen year old with a Lexus and a coke habit is too busy to spraypaint.
It’s funny, the things people don’t talk about here. We don’t talk about the weather, because there isn’t any, and we don’t talk about crime, because unless you’re a gang member involved in an active turf war, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of that either.
I suppose there is always the lurking fear that a gang of maurading gays will break into one’s house and redecorate. But over all, this place is Shangri-La as far as I can tell.
Granted, I don’t watch the news. But when I walk around my beautiful new neighborhood, all I see are clean, shiny cars, and well-dressed, liposuctioned ladies walking their little dogs. Even the dogs are dressed better than I am, and I am beginning to suspect that the most frightening, undesirable element in Weho is me!
Rent control has made Los Angeles a patchwork quilt of prices. I don’t know if it was enacted in a bid for stability, or a blow against landlords on behalf of “the little guy,” but like every government mandate, it’s a tangled vine from which blooms weird flowers.
The law is, apparently, that once you sign a lease, your rent can only be raised about 3-7% a year, depending on where you live. But of course, new leases can be set at market value, which seems to go up about 10-15% a year. Landlords owning large buildings jack up rent on empty apartments to compensate for the loss they are forced to swallow by rent control, driving the market value up further.
And there is nothing so galling as finding out that the unit you are paying $1450 for was only $1125 for the previous renter and $650 for the guy downstairs, that barefoot git with the banjo. All you can do is hope for the day when they’ve all died off and you are still there, bragging to newcomers that you only pay $1850 and they’re paying $4,000.
When I was young, we used to exlaim in chagrin that the local stores began erecting their Christmas displays the day after Thanksgiving. We declaimed bitterly the increasing commercialization of Christmas. I think we’ve outgrown the shock. Indeed, now I fully expect to see Christmas lights the day after Halloween and feel a bit cheated if I don’t.
I am convinced that Pavilions on Santa Monica Blvd and Bristol Farms on Beverly are in a competition to see who can cultivate the most aggressively friendly employees. They pounce on you the minute you walk in the store.
At Pavilions, if you use a credit card, they see your name and say “Good bye, Miss Morrissey!” in a ringing voice so that everyone within ten feet now knows your name too.
Even the security guards will kill you with kindness, although at Bristol Farms, the true nature of the beast is evident in the jagged metal spikes that await the tires of any car trying to exit through the entrance. Nevertheless, it’s both pleasant and unnerving to go to pick up a bottle of wine and have the cashier so delighted to see you again that you feel guilty for not offering him a drink.
It’s almost a relief to go occasionally to Ralph’s across the street from Bristol Farms. where the cashier rings you up with the silent resentment of someone who blames you for her broken fingernail. But sometimes you just want to go where no one knows your name.
There’s only one thing you can’t really say or do in Hollywood without facing dire repercussions. Most things you can do. You can curse vilely on live award shows, you can come out of the closet, you can call family members dreadful names, and hit paparazzi with your car (not that they don’t deserve it.)
You cannot, however, be a Republican. Better to be a Communist. Better to be a terrorist! Better to be a rapist, frankly.
Proof here.
Driving in LA can reshape your perceptions. When I lived in Hollywood, I would speak of coming over to Weho as if it were
But Sunset Blvd in the wee hours of the morning is a shock to the senses. I recently drove from Bronson to Doheny in 11 minutes flat. To understand the significance of this, you have to imagine how a student pilot feels the first time his wheels leave the ground. I realized, suddenly, how small was the area to which my world had shrunk.
Last night, I saw another symptom of driver mentality. My friend, now six blocks away, came up to see my new apartment. She parked her car in my neighborhood — for which she needed a parking permit; this is how controlled it is – and we walked over to Dan Tana’s restaurant. Dan Tana’s is famous for its Italian food, mafia connections, and celebrity visits. George Clooney was there looking dapper with his young girlfriend and two other couples.
My friend sighed in contentment. “If I lived here, I’d go broke because I’d be over at Dan Tana’s every night.”
If she lived here? SHE DOES live here! She’s six blocks away! But there’s the car thing. If you drive here, you have to have a permit or pay the valet a ridiculous sum to park it. You then have to worry about driving home after a few drinks, and the cops patrol this area as if the Queen were visiting. Six blocks becomes a vast distance.
Well, you could walk it, I suppose, but not in the kind of shoes you want to be wearing when George Clooney strolls by.
I might as well just come out and admit that I hate slang. All slang. I have no use for slang. Its very short shelf-life marks it as being of low quality. Anything that steadily depreciates from the minute you drive it off the lot is obviously a piece of mass-produced junk. Slang is that way. The minute it loses that new-car smell, it’s kitchy.
This does not stop people from using it, however. They keep using it. But now they smirk when they use it. I hate the smirk too.
I recently undertook a project that I am being rather secretive about so as not to jinx myself or alert any possible competitors. My friend Peter, who knows about it, asked me “Is it still on the DL?”
For the longest moment, I stared at him thinking “What fresh hell is this?” because I know that smirk. I like Peter, so I didn’t snarl “Oh, just speak English for God’s sake!” I processed it for a minute and finally remembered that when something is on the DL it means it’s on the down-low which was the cool way to say secret about six months ago.
You know, like “Most people party, just keep it on the down-low.” In LA, this means “Don’t snort coke in the living room. Do it in the bathroom where it can’t be seen from the front door.” All of this makes me shudder, from the lifestyle to the slang it creates.
In reaction, I retreat in despair, once again, to the finest book I’ve ever read, House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I now know what I should have said to Peter:
“If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,” I should have said coldly, “you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than just as I am recovering from the strain of a very large dinner.”
Every job has its lingo. I spent yesterday on the set of the TV show “The Journeyman,” which airs Monday nights after “Heroes.” It’s a new show, and seems to be reminiscent of “Quantum Leap.” I was working as an extra in the background, because I like doing something fun on vacation from teaching. And I thought this would be fun.
Fun, however, is not necessarily how I would describe extra work, now that I’ve done it. However, I did at least learn what a martini shot is.
The scenes I participated in all take place at an office Christmas party in 1979. I was assigned a slinky black dress and some heavy gold jewelry, and the hairdresser transformed my short shag into a stiff, feathered do with flipped-up wings. The make-up artist went after my cheeks and lips with enough fire-engine red to set off the smoke detector. I was given a pair of shoes that immediately cut into my feet and caused a haze of pain to settle over me, clouding the entire day.
For the next six hours, I and 40 other extras were assigned to silently mingle and cross in front of the cameras as the actors moved among us and said their lines. We did this over and over and over and over and over. In painful shoes. For six hours. With no break and no refreshments.
