No Place Like Home

Today I am thinking about how I do not live in a normal place. We are surrounded by the bubble that is LA County, and I am forgetting what it's like to live anywhere else. My reality is no longer valid anywhere but here.

Since I'm nearing my 3rd year of life in LA, this stuff is becoming a part of me and I don't even see it in my day-to-day life. Only when I email my friends in different states answering the question "What is it like in LA?" does the madness emerge. For example:

I work out 6 days a week. I take supplements to improve my digestion, and buy organic food every chance I get.

When I see someone oncreen that looks familiar, it takes me a minute to figure out if they're my friend, or if they're a celebrity...or both.

I receive acupuncture to balance my hormones.

An average Sunday night involves a screening of a movie that doesn't come out for another month in the rest of the country, and then I get to endure the director yammering on about it afterwards as though he's Fassbinder or something. The audience believes this, until they get outside and start talking shit about him.

In spite of myself, I am learning to love Juicy Couture.

My morning news team spends a considerable amount of time analyzing American Idol performances and talking about skirts they found at Loehmann's.

Faye Dunaway has physically accosted me.

I have a hands-free headset and an extra phone battery on my person 98% of the time.

My romantic interests here have included comedians, directors, screenwriters, actors, cops, and actors who play cops.

A screening of the Passion of the Christ that I went to looked like a Strokes concert, there were so many hipsters there. I barely noticed.

I work out with Jennifer Aniston's personal assistant and don't envy her for a second when I see that her hair is falling out and she has permanent Crazy Eyes.

I was in a gas station parking lot, and got cut off by Ric Ocasek of The Cars. I made an angry gesture and yelled, "Come on, Ric Ocasek!"

When I go to my sewing class, I am often accompanied by drag queens who don't fit into normal-sized ball gowns and they get exasperated when they learn that their first project is pajama pants...until they realize they can make them out of UltraSuede.

I have neon green fingerless gloves and wear them without an air of irony about me.

I am used to seeing people dressed up as Batman and Superman punch each other in the face on a public street.

I know Los Angeles' entire community of Jewish Hip Hop rappers...all two of them.

At Halloween, I dressed seven people in full costume using wigs, clothes, and makeup from my own closets.

I like to give myself fake bruises with makeup while I'm letting an editing project render.


You know, my darlings...I don't think many other US cities would enable me like LA does. Anywhere else I might be considered odd. Here, though, there are plenty of homeless people that are way weirder than me.

Bless this mess. g