Friday, July 20, 2018

LA Frame of Mind

It's funny listening to songs about Los Angeles. They are usually about broken dreams or plastic people or losing yourself or fakers and con men. Everyone has heard a million of them.



At some point every mildly successful artist writes a song or makes a movie about how Los Angeles is plastic and insipid.

They funny thing is, I don't particular disagree with them, but I feel sorry for those people. They're bitter because they didn't obtain their dream (or they did but lost the girl back home).

And I say, politely, screw you.

If you can't make it in Los Angeles, it isn't her fault.

If you hate beaches, sun and people that are striving for a better life, pack it up and go back to the Quad Cities, of the Triplex, or the America's Hometown or where ever it is that you are a big fucking cheese.

Los Angeles is full of traffic, because people like living there. We have the ocean, mountains, a desert, two major (and dozens of semi-major) Universities. You hate it when people refer to "the industry" - then don't respond. You hate it when people are shallow - then find people that aren't. There are too many Mexicans, foreigners, minorities, young people, old people, rich people, fake people, gays, strivers and what ever else bugs you - then pack it up and move to Des Moines - it is a lovely city of very wonderful white people.

But you don't have to trash my town on your way out. Slink out in the middle of the night and then tell the folks back home how you left because you couldn't stand the people and you never wanted to make it anyway.

I could have grabbed a million pictures for this post - the beach, the Hollywood sign, the downtown skyline, the most gorgeous Observatory in the world, the space age house, the Getty Museum, UCLA, USC, Dodger Stadium, the busiest port in America, the Paramount Gate, Japanese Gardens, Koreatown, Armenia town, Santa Monica Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, Bel Air - the list goes on.  But I choose a crappy picture of a stupid busy street engulfed in smog so thick you can barely see the Hollywood Hills that are less than mile away. Because even a shitty day in Los Angeles is fucking fantastic.