The Los Angeles Conundrum

I need to get something straight. I have GREAT readers on my blog. Honestly.

When I first started it, I didn’t really know if people would even relate to my words or the processes in my head that produce those words. It's indescribably cool when people with completely different lives and lifestyles can actually relate to each other. It's the only thing that really bonds us all.

Having people relate to your words, it's the greatest gift to any scribe. You guys make me really happy, and you know who you are; I’m not going to call you out.

Having said that, there are also a few people that don't get my sarcasm AT ALL. Whenever I write about Los Angeles or Hollywood, which appears to be everyone's favorite subject, I get emails with the same exact question: “Why do you hate LA so much?”.

I feel like I need to explain a few things here before we continue on this ride together.

Do I hate LA? I don’t hate it. But I also don’t love it. I would never live someplace I hate. Do I find it ridiculous at times? Yes. And if you never lived here, I can’t really demonstrate to you why I feel the way I do.

I can try to write about it to amuse you or open some horizons for you, about a place you only watched on Television, but I also can’t explain myself over and over about your feeling about my feeling of being here.

Hollywood is also the subject I asked the most to write about. I guess it will forever stay a place that fascinates people; beautiful, apocalyptic, hilarious, and ridiculous – all at the same time.

I feel a bit worn out being asked about something to then get emails or comments about why I think the way I do. You’ll agree, it’s a bit senseless.

I moved to New York when I was 20 years old, and I spent more than a decade there; the most important, formative years in a person's life. I have a New York attitude about everything I experience. And it’s totally, diametrically opposite to everything that makes Los Angeles what it is.

NY and LA are black and white. Crystal and Alexis. I’m also very direct, tough at times. Some might call me edgy when they don’t call me rude. NY is edgy. There’s nothing edgy about LA. And all New Yorkers that live in LA always complain about things, it doesn't mean they all hate it, it's just our style to just bitch about it every time we have a chance.

But it's mostly just a well-meant joke.

So, here’s my LA rant, so we can close this subject. LA is contrived and often superficial. Everything is so extreme. Either nobody gives a shit about you, or everybody’s hanging on your neck. There’s a depression or an extreme high. None of which is balanced right. Everything is how some publicist or producer decides, no matter what the actual reality is.

It’s Wonderland, but one of the ‘Coraline’ kind – it looks like a fairy tale, but only until you step inside. Don’t let the palms you see on TV fool you. It's a dream factory, a place where talented people come to catch their break, but it’s also a place that leaves many talented people at the curb.

This is a place where someone decided that Slumdog Millionaire is a movie that’s “not that interesting”, only to take 8 Oscars later on, solely because of the persistence of one individual. It’s also a place where Paris Hilton’s movies get the biggest billboards on the Strip. It’s also a place where Tara Reid is refused to participate in family-oriented ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ because of her “not family-oriented image”, but also a place where Kim Kardashian is allowed to participate in same ‘Dancing with the Stars’, probably because her private porn is much more family oriented than being caught drunk a few times.

Hollywood is full of rules. Everything is done a certain way, and nothing can be done the other way. And that is why I love to see when, once in a while, some people just refuse to play by its rules.

Actors, musicians, and the rest of the celebs who care about their craft, instead of fame and everything that goes with it, the ones that despise all unnecessary stuff that the Hollywood industry has created, and match to the beat of their own drums - I’m here to see them, hear them, buy their art.

The ones that give headaches to those industry power players who make rules that don’t make any sense; it started with Brando, well maybe not started, but that’s the first ANTI that I can remember; they make this town bearable.

Brando was a new breed of star for that time, a real full-blooded anti-star who didn’t give a rat’s ass about fame and only exploited it to bring attention to political causes he cared about. I loved Brando because he did to Hollywood what Hollywood does to others: uses you, makes money on you, and spits you out. He was a poster boy for fuckin’ attitude and constant angst and laughed to the industry face so loud, calling acting “a neurotic and unimportant job”, while collecting money from them at the same time, only to once donate his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity.

Later came River Phoenixes and Keanu Reeves’ of the world who, in their own way refused to play by the industry rules, refused to care about fame, walked around LA in ripped clothes, drank beer on the sidewalk of 7-Eleven, cared for craft, and not fame.

That is the Hollywood and Los Angeles I love and respect. All the writers that created their most valuable words while crossing through this city.

In the world today, where talent doesn’t matter much, where all that matters is mind-numbing reality shows, making perfumes or clothing lines without having to do anything with principles of fashion or design; a world where they all walk on the streets in designer clothes and styled hair 24/7, with paparazzo’s at the speed dial, where industry puts them in the movies left and right, while real actors can not get a chance, it refreshing to me when someone like ‘Twilight’s Kristen Stewart falls down from the sky.

HW is calling her the epitome of bitch-ness, and I say – thank god. She doesn’t look, talk, walk or dress Hollywood. She hates interviews, she hates talk shows, she appears at ones as if somebody blackmailed her to do it (probably did). Questions bother her. She just wants to act. She only wants to be an artist. She hates the screams of the ‘Twilight’ fans, she thinks most of them are losers, she’s losing it when 14-year-old girls are asking her idiotic questions like – “how is it to kiss a vampire?”, and so on.

She also hates Twilight books. She thinks they are ridiculous. She’s just unable to say anything positive about the books. Or the author, Stephenie Meyer. She reads Charles Bukowski. And loves ‘Stranger’ by Albert Camus. The same Camus most Americans don’t even know who he was. And she’s only 19.

No-show at the Academy Awards; a few days later, strolling with her dad at the LAX, they ask her why she didn’t come to present and her Dad says – “She is going to present when it’s the great movie, not just the one that makes a lot of money…”

Kristen : Hollywood = 5 : 0

And I'm finding my way, being Alexis in Chrystal's house, and all