LA Weekly
September 6-12, 1985
Medium Rear
I made my peace with Los Angeles three years ago when I broke down and rented a house here on a somewhat permanent basis (i.e., I didn't give up my New York apartment). Generally speaking, it's considered poor sportsmanship to express discontent with The City. Indeed, for the cliff dwellers of Manhattan's high rises, a disloyal admission - such as admitting being exhausted before crawling out of bed - is tantamount to matricide. And abandoning New York for L.A.? Well, has anyone ever forgiven the Brooklyn Dodgers?
For two years, I have shuffled my feet as my fellow New Yorkers lavished their condolences upon me for having reaped the godforsaken fate of ending up in the non-city of Los Angeles. I knew in due time, the truth would have to come out: I like it here. Sure, the architecture and urban planning of L.A. are only a marginal improvement over Las Vegas, but, then, New York isn't Vienna, either.
To me, the benefits are obvious and decisive. For openers, what L.A. lacks is what I shouldn't have anyway. True, there aren't many places for people to meet, but I've had a protracted adolescence and far too many salad days. If I never meet another person before I die, I'll be ahead of the game.
Living in Beverly Hills is not unlike living in a cemetery — it's very green, tidy and dead. And that's just about all I'm up for. If I see more than two people on the street when I'm walking the dog, I know there's a fire in the neighborhood. The oversized palm trees are another plus and a welcome respite, sort of like living in a Dr. Seuss book. And though they say the air is bad, who cares when you smoke three packs a day. If the air conditioner breaks down, I can get it fixed in a day, not two seasons later and at the cost of my unborn child's college education. With no apologies, this is my kind of town.
As far as I can tell, L.A. has only one significant shortcoming — its media. Angelenos cope with unreadable newspapers and un-watchable television news. I put off moving here for two years because I wasn't sure I could survive the 6 o'clock news. Even if you can get past the notion that Angeleno newscasters are not fugitive patio furniture salesmen from May Company, the top story on all three networks in L.A. is always the weather.
Eventually, I came to understand that this preoccupation with the weather is not an avoidance of the harder stuff — like politics and religion — but that, quite simply, the weather is the only thing happening in Southern California. In fact, the weather is Southern California.
Never mind that there's only one season. The way the weather is reported here one would think that we were living in the backwoods of Outer Mongolia: drop-dead heat waves, scorching hot winds, ravenous fires, killer smog alerts, pitiless rains, treacherous mudslides, not to mention those fearsome earthquakes. God help us if an inch of snow should fall. I'll never know how I survived a single New York icy winter, - brave child that I must have been.
Typically, the front page of the Los Angeles Times daily offers us a photo of another sunny day in beautiful downtown Burbank, while the more bohemian Herald Examiner, treats us to a still life of a cloud hovering over the San Diego Freeway.
Still, in all fairness, the weather and geographical phenomena have always been big stories in resort communities. But what about the rest of the world, where Pa shoots wife and kids and then himself, or Arab kills Arab. What about the comings and goings of Fidel, or anything other than the local pestilence problem (killer bees and Med flies)?
Well, if you're a news junkie, you're in Trouble City. The Times, though as prosperous as a velvet coffin, likes its role as the White House's press office, which is fine if all you want to know is what Nancy and Ron named their dog. The Herald Examiner is capable of serving up some truly wonderful headlines, but one questions whether they have the wherewithal to get someone over to Van Nuys to cover a fire, much less ferret out why Ed Meese decided to let Jackie Presser off the hook and go after non-praying school children instead. It's certainly the livelier of the two papers, but the ears of the world it's not.
What's a citizen of the world to do? We are told that there are two options: watch CNN or read USA Today. However, USA Today, though it mimics the format of the terrific International Herald Tribune, the salvation of Americans traveling abroad, is not quite as newsworthy as Reader's Digest. CNN has some great stuff, but be prepared for 21 minutes of commercials per half hour of programming.
But we have been rescued by the township of Torrance. This unsuspecting suburb, home to a satellite printing plant, makes possible home delivery of The New York Times. No one's saying that the New York Times is the Poetics, but it dos set the standard in the news business. At the very least, it has standards. Granted, it's not cheap: The Times' no doubt figured that worldly ignorance being the only thing separating an Angeleno from a Parisian, - a Times subscription would prove as valuable as a suntan.
Thus saved, Los Angeles fulfills its duty as a cosmopolitan city — the best of all worlds. Consider the alternatives: reading The New York Times on the white sands of Santa Monica or fanning your face with The Los Angeles Times on the BMT local to Brighton Beach.