Reflections of L.A.: 2007

L.A.: not exactly your mom’s burbs

All of my preconceptions about Southern California were shattered shortly after arriving at the Long Beach airport. I was anticipating suburbia: square mile after square mile of strip malls and tract homes populated by endless iterations of soccer moms, office park dads and the broods of kids typically associated with these kinds of people. Instead everything screamed Civilization, trendiness, wealth, sophistication, art, nightlife and fun – lots and lots of expensive, unatainable fun. Southern California may as well be New York City with beaches and palm trees.

The Shocking Truth about Celebrities

“It was surprising to learn that famous people in L.A. are in fact more human than one raised on a steady diet of Hollywood fantasy might expect. I always imagined the celebrities sort of as offspring to the gods who never went anywhere without their retinues of helpers and small armies to prevent them from being mobbed, molested or kidnapped by the hoards of unsophisticated ‘normal’ people. It was weird to discover that they travel around with friends or alone, eat at restaurants, shop for shoes or just stop in a park bathroom to expose themselves much like the rest of us.

I saw John Voight at a Jewish deli. He entered alone (where were his body men, I thought) and scanned the room for his party. The other patrons might have leered over their roast beef sandwiches, and there were some hushed whispers – “Look, it’s John Voight,” “John Voight! Where?” – but he was not mobbed and no madmen jumped up and tried to assassinate him. John Voight looked and acted for the most part as if he could care less that he was John Voight. The muted excitement in the restaurant lasted less than a minute and then life resumed as normal.”

On being a self-described ugly person in the Land of Beautiful People

“I enjoyed taking in the sights, sounds and smells of Southern California as one might enjoy attending a beach party while encased in a bubble. I was close to all of the action yet I didn’t feel like a part of it. Ultimately, it was this detached proximity that made me feel invisible and conspicuous at the same time.

The whole experience was not unlike my recurring nightmare in which I find myself at a cocktail party after work on the same day that I just happen to forget to wear clothes. As if the nudity part of the dream isn’t bad enough, when I try to open my mouth to explain myself chirping birds fly out. The other party attendees in the nightmare who smartly remembered to wear their tuxedos and spangled dresses eye me as if I’m a lost cause, while my work superiors give me stern yet understanding looks which say, “Well, just remember to wear clothes tomorrow, okay Tim.”

“If The Beautiful People and the celebrities are practically indistinguishable in the fairy tale realm of Southern California, one would think haughtiness would flow down Wilshire Boulevard and the Sunset Strip like apocalyptic blood. This, however, is not the case. Just like the celebrities, the many semi-important beautiful people of Southern California do not act as if they are endowed with any corporeal advantage over the rest of humankind. They need a certain level of humility to survive just like the rest of us. Based on this fact, one would be inclined to think that this “humanness” would make them less scary. But it was not the quality of the Beautiful Peoples’ personalities that made them so intimidating to me – it was their quantity. I could not walk down a street without lines of mannequin-like perfect people criss-crossing all around me. While their body language gave no hint of hostility and no snobbishness could be detected in their glances, the simple phenomenon of being outnumbered made me feel unwelcome. Something instinctive told me I should go back home, work on my looks, read a ton of books and earn some money before I ever attempted to walk the streets of Southern California again. And yet at the same time my experience felt so cliche in that gauche out-of-towner culture shock sort of way.”

Be real, be yourself

“The corporate distillation and distribution of Southern California to the rest of America is creating a strange and funny illusion. After my vacation enlightenment, I have to say that the brains in Hollywood (especially the fashion brains) are doing a good job at making average Middle Americans resemble Venice Beach hippies or jet setting socialites. But the distance between the real world of Southern California and its parallel imitation world is proportionate to the distance between the Earth and the Moon. One of life’s biggest faux pas, in my opinion, is for a person to look like a Southern Californian when they have little or no understanding as to the actual essence of what makes a Southern Californian truly a Southern Californian (the same goes for a New Yorker or a Brit or a…fill in the blank).”

“I envied what few other imperfect people there were who appeared to have found stylistic ways to compensate for their physical shortcomings. There was one heavy man I saw at a restaurant who seemed to wear his excess weight as if it were a bulky cashmere sweater. A cashier was able to offset a long, crooked nose with a loud purple haircut. And a man at the beach was able to turn his physical deformity into an attention-getting act. Viewing these individuals made me wonder why I haven’t been able to find the right fashion accessories to call attention away from my pear-shaped torso and large head. I wondered, as I gazed at all of the eclectic people in coffee shops and and restaurants, why I am not able to exude my inner qualities in the same way that a lot of these people did. It was introspective moments like this that instantly made me loathe my stiff, timid gait, my high forehead and bushy, glowering eyebrows. As I was forced to endure myself in this environment, I longed for nothing more than to be back home in my room drowning my low self-esteem in diet soda and reruns of Law & Order. It was too stressful to face myself as I really am, even in the city that is often notoriously considered the mecca of everything that is fake.”

Conclusion

Los Angeles may have made me long for myself, but it has proved to be a productive longing thus far. It is a longing that has made me want to search, explore and try new things that will enable all the parts of me to coalesce again. The city may have initially chased me away, but it is also calling me back (or else I wouldn’t have written this, right?). And I believe in the future it will continue to call me back and challenge me to search for that latent potential which is hidden within (if not also to cause me to obsess about what is visible to the rest of the world from without).