Gee, I love Los Angeles. I ask myself what person typifies the city. Walt Disney? Charlie Chaplin? Jack Warner? Howard Hughes? Raymond Chandler? Ray Bradbury? Architect Cliff May? All those names, surely, and dozens of others, but for me the name that sticks out is simply...Jayne Mansfield.
I don't know what her personal life was like but her public image was one of frivolity and lightness, of driving along Malibu beach with the wind in her face in a brand new convertible. I can't imagine someone like her coming out of a gritty city like Chicago.
Can you get a good, classical education here? No, possibly not, but that's a problem the world over.
For me Los Angeles was a utopian dream the world had. We're a fantasy conjured up between beatings by some prisoner in a dictator's dungeon.
Even now, years after the golden age, there's still electricity in the air.
Even when you're not on the beach, you're on the beach...'know what I mean? There's a delightful lightness here.
The city does have a culture. We're all just too busy to notice it.
Don't worry about it. Just have a hot dog.
Some really dopey ideas originated here, and we'll no doubt pay the price, but history will marvel at what happened here...what all us Okies and misfits managed to pull off in the Southern California desert.
When I'm forced to leave they'll have to pry my fingers off the city limit sign.
