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greetings from someplace warmer than where you are

Unless you're in Florida or something. I have escaped my cold and rainy climate for sunnier pastures. I am writing from a guest bedroom in the Los Angeles area, and oh yes, haterz, I am blogging poolside. 65 degrees is not exactly sunburn weather, but it is dry and warm here, with a cooling breeze. I always thought Brain Candy got it wrong--it shouldn't feel like 72 degrees in your head at all time, it should be somewhere in the 65-67 range.

I have a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles. Most of the people I love and am not related to and therefore love with free will live here. But I also have some unpleasant memories of this place that are tied specifically to living here and hating the traffic and congestion, and the rather high maintenance fakey glame. If you wonder why Orange County seems so plastic and high-lighted and spray tanned, it's because it's imitating Los Angeles. Still, as I'm in a suburb just outside of Los Angeles, I am so far immune from the stiletto-and-designer jeans-wearing crowd, and I am comfortably wearing my Patagonia fleece jacket that's been branded with TD's company logo. No judgment can reach me in my lovely guest bedroom with the queen sized bed dressed in robin's egg blue with the vase of fresh flowers next to it. Dude, everyone should vacation for cheap this way. I am helping out with the cooking for my dear hosts, and really, I am eating awesomely.

Although, if I could afford to/had need to go out for dinner, Los Angeles is the place to go. Other than NYC, I can't think of a place that has better (and a greater variety, and a greater number) of ethnic food choices. I'm outside of Los Angeles, but if I were in LA proper, there'd be any number of neighborhoods to drive through on Pico Blvd. and get awesome meals. The food (and live theatre and music scene) is almost enough to make you want to put up with the necessity of driving, unbearable traffic, and lip-glossy fake glamour. Almost. I will take my own cold/rainy climate, good bourgie but so-so ethnic food, excellent public transportation and comfortable non-glamourous fleece-wearing compatriots any day. They may be sanctimonious in that crunchy granola sense, but they never implicitly demand that I wear heels and flashy designer duds.

That said, it's a nice place to visit. I never focus on the place so much as the people I'm visiting though, so I highly recommend that you visit my friend The Teacher and stay with her.

Full post as published by Law and Letters on March 06, 2009 (boomark / email).