Let's Try This Again, Shall We

Having abandoned this site some years ago for other, snazzier blogging sites, I've returned to try another stab at telling my own Los Angeles story.

In that vein, a review in this morning's LA Times discussed The Two Jakes, claiming that while it's no Chinatown, it in fact stands up better than expected to the test of cinematic time. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I will say that I remember being intrigued by the socio-political issues being raised and the paper tells me that Robert Towne planned a third film to be set in the 1950's and deal with the aftermath of a city built on cars and corruption.

That will be one of those "wish they'd done it" movies for me. I'm fascinated by the development of the city, frequently trying to sell it's charms to those from elsewhere, and often getting only that raised eyebrow snobbishness of East Coast denizens, that look that says, "Los Angeles doesn't look like MY idea of a city."

The city itself continues to be both lovely and heartbreaking. Sometimes I feel like I've found a home, other times I feel like I can't even play dress up well enough to fit in here. Sitting at Coffee Bean yesterday (an LA pastime that gives me little pleasure, therefore I rarely indulge), I saw a woman cause an utter commotion, one of those self-involved, unthinking moments when she pushed into someone else's space like she was a semi demanding the right of way from a poor innocent Echo. When the men had given up their space (nicely at first, then outrageously later when she couldn't get the idea that they were DOING HER A FAVOR), she was rude. Very rude. And when called on her behavior by a couple sitting near by, promptly told them to fuck off. I watched with horror, trying to hide in my coffee and newspaper, and then, when she left her cocker spaniel and went to get coffee, commiserated with the couple. "Who behaves that way?" we said, and shrugged.

But later, when she was sitting with her friend, talking, I heard her say, "We go to this party, and there are all these women in these little dresses, all this skin, and they're so beautiful, and how do you compete." And I still hated her, but I understood, this flickering of compassion for this tiny pretty awful little woman sitting a table away from me, looking out and seeing the same sort of... thing. I don't compete. Couldn't. Wouldn't if I could. But it's hard not to judge yourself by a standard of demands that says, "You are your body." A set of standards that somehow regressed from the halcyon Hollywood days of women being major industry players.