Los Angeles

This morning I am writing to you from the West Coast, where I am attempting desperately to survive my third and final day amidst the Californians. I have never been to L.A., but of course being a jaded New Yorker, I arrived completely "over it." I've spent most of my time here trying to put into words exactly what distinguishes the Los Angelites from the Manhattanites. For starters, the men hanging about the bars are a bit younger and not investment bankers. Hence they have traded the suits so prevalent in Manhattan's Midtown happy hours for printed shirts and flip-flops. Of course they've also traded their salaries for credit cards because "music executives" don't do quite as well as people with say, actual jobs. Now I think the women hanging about the men are younger, but as the women in Manhattan have been frozen in time, it's really hard to say. I guess the girls here save money on clothing by not wearing much of it, which of course frees up the cash to finance all of their enhancements. I'm telling you, I saw a girl nearly suffocate on her own lips. One thing is for certain, these folks haven't heard any of the news about the sun causing cancer, in fact they consider "leather" an actual skin type. And though they sacrifice their skin to melanoma, they wouldn't dream of contaminating their insides with red meat or mayonnaise. I went to what is advertised as a steakhouse in the other 49 states only to find the menu full of sushi and vegetables, with sides of brown rice...not an onion ring in site!

I'll be boarding the plane in a few hours, to return to the garbage, the winos, the constant mania that is New York City and I couldn't be more excited. For all the talk about Californians being so relaxed, someone should tell them they're really just acting like New Yorkers who are trying too hard.

Workforce

On the train this morning, as I'm stuffed like a sardine between a large, sweaty man and an agitated, twitchy woman, I had the same revelation I have every morning on the way to work....I don't want to do this anymore!!! Really it's not fun for me, as I'm sure it's not fun for the other 300 people in my subway car trying to force their eyes open with a large coffee. I don't know who decided that humans should spend the majority of their waking hours for the majority of their able-bodied lives crammed into fluorescently-lit cubicles and "speaking" through keyboards, but whoever it was, they should be stabbed in the eye. What makes it even funnier to me, is when the 50-year-old Amazonian woman who pretends to be "security" in my building holds the elevator door insisting that I show her my building pass. I have been slowly losing my mind on the 11th floor for over a year now, do you really think I would be sneaking IN to this Manila-colored asylum? Sneaking OUT, now that's a much more likely scenario.

And I know, such is life. Sweetpotato always says, "They don't call it work for nothing." Isn't he just so clever? He certainly thinks so. And to think, I spent my entire adolescence attempting to race into adulthood only to find it incredibly unglamorous and significantly more expensive than I had anticipated. I suppose most kids are like that, rushing through their teens toward some high-paying, exciting job that doesn't exist so they can purchase expensive yachts and summer homes that they will never actually be able to afford. Someone should really tell them to slow down because not only does your future arrive way too quickly, but it is quite often under-financed and poorly lit.

Stuff

You know those boxes of stuff sitting in the back of your closet? The stuff that you're just certain you will need one day? Let me give you a little piece of advice here...you do not need it, you will not need it, and you should get rid of it as quickly as possible. I went through a box last night that I was certain was full of mementoes I would want for the rest of my life, only to discover that it was overflowing with complete crap, the origin of which I cannot even vaguely recall. I know I'm not alone, that everyone has these boxes of unknown and truly unwanted treasures, but I'm here to warn you to throw these things out today and not wait, as I have done, until you live on the 6th floor of a walk-up and have to haul trash bags of junk down five flights of stairs. So please, go ahead and get rid of the four packs of Easter Bunny tissues from your Godmother, unless you are an eight-year-old or a kindergarten teacher you will never need a cartoon covered Kleenex. And you can also toss the study guide to the GRE from back during life plan # 387, oh yes and the 300 giant headshots from life plan # 264. Yes, these things should all be thrown away now, along with six years of very touching birthday cards from people you no longer speak to and the pink glycerin "Princess" soap you can't bear to unwrap. And no, you will never again need the plastic tiara you wore on your 21st birthday. As to the tee shirts you've been keeping as souvenirs, please admit that you will only ever need your high school homecoming tee-shirt as a cleaning rag because you can't risk someone seeing the actual year you graduated. Oh, and photos, yes chances are you have a pile of pictures of people you were so close to you can't remember their names. Toss them. (Unless you look exceptionally good, in which case you may keep them as a tribute to thinner times.)

Yes, it is time to admit that what you thought was a box of memories is really only clutter, your treasures - trash. Stop pretending that any of this crap will one day be enshrined at the Met and free yourself from the ribbons that bind you to the past...the limp, faded ribbons from your junior prom corsage.

Wedding Cake

Having just returned from a weekend wedding event, I am still in the midst of the recovery process, leading me to reflect on the excesses of weddings today. I mean to tell you, there is so much money wasted on fancy hors d'oeurves and decadent cocktails, you could just about finance a college education off what amounts to be a giant dinner party where half the guests are relatives you're trying to avoid and the other half are friends helping you get your money out of the open bar. Where I come from you're lucky to get a few meatballs from the frozen section of the discount-mart with a couple cans of beer, which must be saved to tie to the muffler of the shaving-cream covered pick-up truck as the happy couple drives off to the Super 8 Motel.

These days, and especially up here with these Yankees, folks plan wedding receptions with the idea that more is more, and proceed to spiral themselves into debt for three hours worth of photographic memories that they will probably never take the time to put into an album.

Nothing, however, is as distressing to me as the evolution of the wedding cake. Used to be, wedding cake was always a white pound cake, just a little stale, with icing made of nothing more than sugar and lard that's so hard it can just about stand up by itself. It was in fact the main reason I attended weddings. Now you get these monstrosities filled with ganache and covered in some sort of whipped foam. I don't know how you can consider yourself married with a chocolate wedding cake, it's just not right. It really turns my stomach, and it's often not until my second slice that I can even determine if it's worth eating.

With all the money these folks are throwing around to have shrimp cocktail for 200 people, you'd think they'd want to save a few dollars wherever they can. Hell, by the time they get around to cutting the cake, most folks have either lost interest and gone home or are too drunk to notice. Since no one (except for me) is gonna eat it anyway, someone should tell the bride and groom that Piggy Wiggly makes a real nice white cake and if you by three or more layers, they thrown in the plastic figurines for free.

Fantasy Football

There are many things I fantasize about: fudge brownies with 0 calories, size 4 jeans that are just too big, a hairdo that withstands 100% humidity, and a bank balance with more than one digit in front of the decimal- but never, under any circumstances, would football be any part of my daydreams. Y-chromosomes, however, spend the majority of their waking hours from August through February obsessing over the statistics of their totally made-up football team. Now I can understand being a fan and I can even understand wanting to be a player, but I have recently discovered that these weekend warriors have no actual interest in getting their ass off the couch, on the contrary, they very much want to be on the couch, in front of the television for 14 straight hours, pretending they control the movements of an entirely fictional team of athletes with whom they will never have even the remotest contact.

When I began dating Sweetpotato, I recognized that for this relationship to work I was going have to at least feign interest in his inane, head-bashing sports, and even resigned myself to cheering for his team, not that I really understand what they're doing... but whatever. Watching one team play one game on Sunday is not a big deal, especially since I require brunch, complete with mimosas, the entire time. Watching every damn NFL game for two solid days to compile a fake team's imaginary score, is something else altogether. What's more is the insane amount of time these boys devote to the player selection, position manipulation, and record calculation for their internet "dream team." And I realize that this keeps them occupied, which is fabulous for us women if we'd actually like to accomplish something over the weekend, but for all practicality I just can't understand the fascination. Perhaps if their were some league where we could select all the best styles in pants, shirts, shoes and accessories and tabulate points accrued during weekly fashion shows, then perhaps women would waste obscene amounts of money to design their perfect outfit. Until then, I can only sigh at the amount of accumulative brain power the Y's are wasting in their pursuit of the perfect make-believe team. But then, on second thought, how much brain power could actually be generated by people whose soul focus in life is to have their imagination dominate their friends' imaginations. Someone should tell those boys that having the best score in fantasy football is kind of like having the best score in Scrabble - kinda cool in your geek world and rather embarrassing in the real one.

Fashion Plate

Now every season has its fashion trends, and this summer is no different. There's the peasant skirt, the thick belt, the sparkly shoes, the metallic purse, the wooden cuff, the chunky necklace...just to name a few. And fine, everyone has a few of these trendy items in their closet every season, but the point is to wear one or two at the time to update your look, not, like this poor girl I saw this morning, to cut your look from eight totally unrelated pages of Glamour. You do not win "trendy points" by wearing more, but by wearing correctly. Anyway, this fashion hodgepodge thought she was just too cute, when in reality she looked for all the world like a "what not to wear" from the back page of a magazine, though she didn't have the benefit of the charitable face blacking out, bless her heart. And I just wanted to tell her, "Honey you don't have to wear all your chic clothes at one time, I promise we'll all still think you're trendy if you save one or two for tomorrow!"

Just so you know what to expect

While I think it is basically accepted as fact that human beings do the most bizarre and incomprehensible things on a daily basis, I do think that the acts of lunacy on the part of others that I encounter on a daily basis may be a bit greater than the average person. Perhaps this is due to my residing in New York City where psychos are welcome on any street corner. Not to limit crazy folks to this tiny island; to be sure stupidity is an epidemic the world over. However, my walk to work is usually more than a little interesting and when you combine that with phone calls from Southern relatives, hysterical friends and obsessive clients, my day becomes a series of sarcastic (and often homicidal) thoughts captured for you here, in case your sidewalks are less annoying than mine.