Home is where the LA is.

I’ve lived in LA for almost 14 years now. I’ve left to go try other places during those 14 years, but I always come back. I never mean to come back, but I do. Here I am.

Hi!

Since I’ve been here for so long, I have grown accustomed to my environs. I can easily walk by a pantsless homeless man on Venice Beach or a hooker on Hollywood Blvd and not blink an eye (unless it’s a regularly scheduled eye blink.). Converting to full Angeleno was a big step. I arrived having never seen flip-flops. Now I live steps from the beach. I arrived not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. Now, I totally know (kinda). I arrived when I had just lost my virginity. Now, I’ve fucked {{This sentence has been interrupted by the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test.}}. Since my transition has been so gradual, I haven’t really noticed it. But something happened the other day that pulled the wool off of my unblinking eyes.

My friend came over with a bag from Whole Foods. She pulled out her carton of sushi and screamed. I thought there was a mouse in the bag.

“Oh my god.” She exclaimed. “I forgot to get brown rice!”

She forgot to get brown rice.
In her sushi.

The. Horror.

The starch!

O. M. G.

It took 14 years, but now I realize: I AM IN LA. Holy mackerel, am I in LA. (I obviously knew I was geographically located in LA since I see the street signs, but I didn’t realize how unique it really is until lately.) Such an event would not have been a tragedy or even a possibility in the city where I grew up (Addison, IL, a blend of Jersery Shore and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.).

Since the rice catastrophe, I have been hyper aware of my surroundings. For example:

I stumbled across these screenplays in a bar bathroom garbage can. What? How? How did those get there? “Oh, Larry. I’m sick of lugging around all your screenplays. You’re never gonna sell ’em. I need to find a bar bathroom to throw them out.”  “Miranda! You go throw out all my screenplays. I don’t even want them anymore. Did you see that they’re not printed on brown recyclable paper? The. Horror.”

Oh, LA, you are so mysterious.

And then there’s the food. When I go back to Addison, I say I’m a vegetarian, and the waitress says, “Okay, you want chicken or fish?” Sometimes in LA you have to ask a restaurant if they serve any meat at all. Here people eat seaweed chips. And I walk to get wheat grass shots in the morning.

It must work because there are no fat people here. It’s a cliche, but so true. I stood on my corner the other day and looked for some for an hour (read: three minutes). Okay, there are two. But one has a thyroid problem and one is Tyra Banks wearing a fat suit.

You think maybe someone thought they’d get discovered if they threw their screenplays into a bar garbage? Or maybe it was a trick, and I would have won a prize if I had pulled one out? Dammit, I always miss out on prizes.

My friend got married in Malibu last week. He said it was great except for the stunt man who was practicing diving off the cliffs right behind them. Over and over again, he plunged to the ground, suspended by ropes. He’s right behind the happy couple in their wedding pictures. I should make a joke here about taking a plunge, but instead I’ll make one about lamps: Lamps are so skinny. They belong in LA. (Nah. Plunge would have been better.)

And isn’t this the thinnest grilled cheese? LA, not EVERYTHING must be thin.

And the namedropping. I’ve realized it’s unavoidable in LA. Even though it’s sometimes a necessity, it doesn’t lose its douche factor. I mean, there are helicopters because Lindsay Lohan lives next to me. And I locked eyes with Jake Gyllenhaal. I cannot help drop some names once in a while. (ahem, I also saw Arnold while eating that skinny grilled cheese.) (Please note: it was still a good grilled cheese. Gone in aprox 4.3 bites).

And the laptops. In any LA cafe on any given day, you can find a smattering of writers pecking away at their laptops.They are the people who will spend hours perfecting some blog that won’t even earn them a penny. There’s so much hope and opportunity in those people. You can’t spend your days wilting atop your laptop if you don’t believe in possibility. I bet if we took the amount of ambition and hope in LA and tied it all together, it would go around the world twelve times. Or Maybe thirteen. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.

That doesn’t happen in too many other places.

So, yeah, I’m in LA.

And it’s a weird place. But I love it anyway. Did you see how skinny that grilled cheese was? Why do they even slice bread that thin? Such a travesty. Bread! I sometimes have to drive two hours outside of LA to get bread. Not really. That would be weird. But I do walk to get wheat grass, which is a bunch of grass they grow inside the restaurant. And then they mow it down right in front of me, squeeze it until green water comes out. And then I drink that water. And then my burps smell like summer all day long. That’s LA, baby.

Please, come visit. Or don’t.