8.19.2005

Back from traveling to Hollywood~


Returned today from a trip to Hollywood, Universal Studio's & Santa Monica...I believe our gypsy travels, must come to an end for the summer season, as we head back to school on Monday already. I found this writing from humorist Merrill Markoe...it describes exaclty how I felt on this last jaunt to the west coast....

"What's so funny about L.A.?"
There isn't just one scene here, but a unique array of different ways to feel inadequate, inferior, irrelevant and out of it. Some clubs and bars along Sunset Strip are so hip that they've done away entirely with putting the name on a sign outside, to let you know that if you're so out of it that you need to see the name of the place let alone the address, then you don't deserve the privilege of feeling inadequate there.

So, feeling perhaps too artsy and alienated for the Strip, you head across town to Silverlake, where, from the minute you enter one of the small mom and pop establishments which are actually run by mom & her transgender life partner who sells vintage clothing & used vinyl, you find yourself not "underground" enough, not up to speed on alternative bands, not pierced or tatooed or original enough in your choice of clothing. Now you are too mainstream.

Feeling excessively straight, you visit Beverly Hills, where you're too fat, too thin, too hairy, not hairy enough, over dressed, under dressed, too Silverlake or too Sunset Strip, either way, too poorly groomed to be permitted to walk the streets or sit in a restaurant.

In search of solace, you drive to the ocean. In Santa Monica among the homeless, you realize you're not only too well dressed, too pampered, too wealthy, too privileged, too shallow, callous and stingy, but also not grateful enought for what you have, and far too lucky. And thus do you end your day, retreating back to your home or hotel room, where you take comfort in reminding yourself of your identity as a well adjusted person originally from another city. Where you didn't fit in either.

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