I’ll admit it, I could afford to lose some 30 pounds. That’s the bad news. The good news is that in August I’m forcing myself to pick up a gym membership, and usually I’m too cheap to disuse something of which I have a vested interest. Suffering, working out, getting your swell on at the gym — whatever you call it — that’s what I’m going to do pretty soon.
I came to LA thinking that everyone has sun and fun all day long, and they all look good doing it, too. My beyond-obsessive fitness guru former roommate and I once joked toward the end of my stay that he would look more at home in this city than I would. Come on, everyone supposedly looks perfect here. I’m just an overweight schlub from Ohio, right?
The latter may be the case, but the former isn’t by a long shot. There are over 6 million people who live in Los Angeles, and most of them are not in the Hollywood Hills. Most of them are not actors and actresses. From down here, most just look like normal people, albeit with a little more pigmentation due to the sun never hiding in these parts.
But then you go to the bars, and it’s a reckless display of aesthetic anarchy with everyone vying to win some sort of imaginary pissing contest. Just last weekend, I messaged one of my best friends in Pittsburgh that thar be cougars afoot. Not saying that I mind the anatomical modifications some women felt necessary ordinarily. I’m a red-blooded male. But it’s awkward seeing such things on a gaggle of women — all of whom looked far greater than 40 — as they grabbed center stage en masse and danced with more fervor than anyone else in the bar when the Tom Petty cover band jammed out. The pack of cougars looked like cartoons. If I had that much extra money to blow on various things, I’d be living in Manhattan Beach and driving a 2000something car right now.
Such bearing any effect on my night would be ancillary at best, though. I had a ton of fun regardless due mostly do good music, good friends, and good drinks. It was nothing short of outstanding. But I do question the total insecurity one must have to over-tan like some people or come with a group of friends, all surgically-enhanced. It’s a pervasive attitude among the “haves” out here — at least the ones that were at the bar I trafficked — is that good is never good enough. I’m not so sure it’s outside the realm of normal human nature, though. Normal people get braces, go to the gym, get their hair dyed, etc. Other than my Midwest sensibilities finding the exuberance to be excessive, are my societal norms to be the ones that dictate LA society? Not by a long shot.
Among the college set here since I live near USC’s campus, I’ve come to the conclusion that they all look like college students. Other than the fact that many wore sunglasses, they could have looked at home on Pitt’s campus (the sun doesn’t believe in Pittsburgh). I’ve seen nothing unusual from them.
But with an 11.9 percent unemployment rate in Los Angeles county and a host of “have nots,” there are plenty more people of lesser means than the Gucci and Rolex set around here. There are plenty of “normal” people out here. Though where there is money, there’s vanity in large quantities. It’s boring; out here, Porsches are like Camrys. Vanity is the standard. Taste isn’t.
And such seems to be the case with the people around here, too. Are there a lot more good-looking people out here than in Pittsburgh or Ohio? Absolutely. Come on, it’s Southern California. A friend once told me that Los Angeles is a lot like trail mix — it’s mostly made of fruits and nuts — his words, not mine. But it’s an obsession around here; a sort of keeping up with the Joneses, if the Joneses washed their faces with $4 bottles of water and considered a Mercedes-Benz to be their beater car. It’s a far different culture, a far scarier culture to be part of as an unprepared, ungrounded soul.
That’s why I WILL NOT ever recommend to anyone who has aspirations of driving into the great unknown to drop everything and move to LA on a whim for a chance at stardom. Not my family, not no one. If you’re not grounded or at least have a reasonable expectation of what you’re going to get with this city, it will eat you alive without remorse. LA is a psychotropic, and if you’re not aware that it’s just a city filled with people who eat and breathe just like you and me, it’ll overwhelm you. I firmly believe this city is that dangerous.
But that’s not to say it isn’t what you’d expect it to be. Everyone and everything looks pretty at the surface. It has life, charm, opportunity, excess, grandeur, love, and passion packed into it — but those all often become buried in the background, deep down. This place is eye candy all around. I’m not here for that aspect — yet, at least. I’m here on a dedicated mission to kick ass with my professional endeavors. I work with that mission every day. I am not suffering from cabin fever. I am not concerned that I am among the working poor in a city of wealth. I’m not concerned that I will never be six-feet-tall or that I don’t own a BMW yet. Let people who give a crap worry about such things.
Los Angeles can give rise to a mix of emotions. It’s a boiling pot of water. All you see from the outside is a very nice pot, perhaps with a copper bottom and made of stainless steel. It’s a piece of rabid fascination, obsession from the outside. But if you’re inside, all you have is heat, pressure, and a frenzy of movement in all directions with little idea if any of it is flowing in a particularly productive pattern versus another.
What you see on TV, in bars, in Beverly Hills — that’s all the shiny pot, the shiniest pot made by the best metalcrafters in the world. But on the inside, it’s an absolute mess.
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