I Swear That You Are Godless

Oh, don't look so angelic, Diablo. We know what you're up to. We've been waiting for weeks for this Thanksgiving-related post to finally make its way onto the Entertainment Weekly website, and now that it's almost Christmas we see it's quietly popped up there. Don't think you can sneak it past our watchful eye. Been Googling your own name again, I see?

Hey, what could we possibly have to say about a column in which she straight-facedly describes this:

Hollywood is a perpetual summerland, a temperate, godless yaw where the very word season has been co-opted by television executives. There are few harbingers of winter here. Yeah, there's a mall called the Grove that has a Christmas trolley and a part-time Santa. And last year, a few anemic snowflakes fell in Malibu, giving billionaire bohos in the Colony an excuse to wear their Uggs. But mostly, traditional year-end signposts are absent. (Increasingly, I hear about ''Fakesgiving'' dinners, where family members are eschewed for younger, hipper friends and industry contacts. Where better to give thanks for good plastic
surgery?)

Oh come on, look at the association here: We're summery, we're temperate, and we're therefore godless, people. Godless! Who wouldn't make a connection between moderate weather and an amoral atheism?

I mean, look at the list of holiday traditions that she can't possibly find here: Yeah, the mall has a Christmas trolley and a Santa, and there's a little snow, plus all the lights and carolers and gift-givers and families that she conveniently doesn't mention, but who cares? We live in an irrigated desert, people! Christmas is dead.

Now don't get me started on her description of those who've "eschewed" their loved ones. A lot of people move to Los Angeles to pursue their creative dreams -- you know, like Diablo Cody -- and -- unlike the well-off Cody -- many artists can't afford to fly home to be with their much-missed family and hometown friends every holiday. So what's wrong with making the best of things and sharing dinner with other holiday "orphans" also in town? If her next few films do as well as Jennifer's Body, Diablo may experience a few "Fakesgivings" herself.

And the plastic surgery comment is just cliched and gratuitous. Merry Christmas everyone!

Land of Fruits and Nuts

You know, you're just living your life, relaxing with a little Top Chef, when this seemingly innocuous commercial for Sun-Maid Raisins comes on:



Oh, good lord, Sun-Maid. First off, your sweet li'l harvest girl is now totally stacked. Secondly: Come on, raisins? You too? You'd think if we Angelenos were spared this garbage anywhere it might be in a commercial for dried fruit, but now even raisin marketing jam-packs in the Los Angeles cliches.

But what do we expect from a commercial which makes no sense whatsoever, other than whatever the 3D animators thought would be cool to work on? It's been a while since my logic courses in college, but I think Sun-Maid is trying to say this:

1. In LA everyone is healthy and...
2. Raisins are grown kind of near there, therefore...
3. If you eat raisins you will be healthy, therefore...
4. You can walk down the red carpet at a film premiere (because that's all we do here other than jog above the Hollwood sign) wearing a silly bonnet and inappropriate nighttime sunglasses

That's it, right? Sheesh. This is why I always shop at Hadley's.

Hard to Explain

Remember the Next-Big-Things of New York City indie rock circa 2000? (Not to be confused with the Next-Big-Things of Williamsburg indie rock circa 2009.) Every band playing every dive on the Lower East Side was ready for their writeup in Spin (or, more likely, Spin.com, being 2000 and all), and one thing they shared in common was their essential New York-ness, a rough-and-tumble blend of CBGB and Velvet Underground leather-jacketed Television-meets-Ramones cool. Right? I mean you could never see a member of this band packing up and preferring to live in Los Angeles:

Oh wait. Okay, well, these guys are really New York through and through:

Or they were until Strokes leader Julian Casablancas came out here for a bit. As he describes in LA Times:

"...I'm here for like two months, and I've gotta say, man -- I'm starting to kind of get sold on it."...Casablancas fingers the usual suspects for his pro-L.A. attitude. ("I didn't realize weather was such a big thing," he says.)But he also singles out a feeling of newness he says he doesn't get from New
York.

Mmm hmmm. And guess what he's been covering regularly at his shows at the Downtown Palace Theatre:

That's right -- and, surprisingly, that's that song's first appearance on this blog, too. (Yeah, we realize that when you really listen to the song it's about as pro-city as "New York City Cops," but it's become an unofficial anthem so we're gonna roll with it.)

All right, who's next? Paul Banks, we're looking at you.

Crash Into Me

Oh, would you take a look at what we've got here? In case you can't read the small print in the above ad for the Starz series Crash, here it is enlarged:


Okay, have we got this straight? LA has no accidents, but does have a binary system of roadblocks/shortcuts/using people. Because, you know, all anyone cares about in this highly diverse city of millions is using people to get what they want, right?

They somehow left off my favorite, though: You're either a hack ad copywriter spewing lame Los Angeles generalizations or you're not.

Miami Hit

Entertainment Weekly, who haven't been our faves as of late, for some reason fill their choice front-of-book pages with tons of short-form listicle-type crap, most of which is roughly as humorous as the average Marmaduke cartoon. (The Shaw Report... gah!)

Which brings us to last week's Hit List, which is a listing of ten ostensibly newsworthy items with ten ostensibly funny pithy comments attached. Usually I hadn't heard the news items in the first place, since I'm not an EW reporter closely following Nicolas Cage's press junkets -- but this one did make me take notice:

9. Burn Notice's Jeffrey Donovan allegedly tells arresting officer in Miami Beach: ''The only mistake I made tonight was drinking Benadryl with three glasses of wine''

He needs to move to L.A., where that's not considered a mistake so much as a lifestyle choice.

That's right; move him here! That way he can combine all the perfectly legal over-the-counter medications and alcoholic beverages that certainly are never misused anywhere else in America. I mean seriously -- is that really a behavior that characterizes Los Angeles more than Miami Beach? Talk about gratuitous.

Also, the original news item is a lot funnier than the witty comment.

I Am Trying to Stereotype Your City

Oh good, I was hoping someone would post a YouTube clip of this moment from Tuesday's fantastic sold-out Wilco show at the Wiltern:



That's right, Jeff, you can't stereotype Los Angeles! Not even our BPM. (And it's "Angelenos," by the way.)

I'm So Cliche

Oh, MYNX, you thought you could slip your viral YouTube sensation quietly by me, didn't you?



Ack! I hear "La-la land!" And every other cliche in the book, but you could probably assume you would from the title alone.

It's too bad, because I usually like music that basically sounds like this, but let's get real here, MYNX. You guys met as models on the set of a music video, yet are complaining that people tell each other they "look amazing" or are following fashion trends? Plus my BS meter goes off when I read things like this in their LA Weekly blog interview (by friend of NWiLA and fellow LA native Lina Lecaro):

Ara: My friend went on a date with Angelyne. He's not into blonds, and wasn't up for it, but I begged him to do it. "Do it for me!" I said. Anyway, halfway through the date, he tracked me down, and handed her off to me. We danced together and it was amazing.



Mmm hmmm. Pics or it didn't happen, dude.

And, in what should be a shock to no one, guess what else they bring up in the interview?

[Lina:] Satire, social commentary or pure celebration of excess?

Holly: It's definitely equal parts. We love all the excess and glamour of the L.A. lifestyle, but we're not blind to the flip side of that. We celebrate that too.

That's right! My favorite cliche, LA's Dark Underbelly didn't make it into the video itself, but it didn't take long for MYNX to let it rear its head again. So I thank you very much for one thing besides your catchy indie-electro-dance tones, MYNX: I've been saving up appropriate underbelly-related jpg's in anticipation of such a reoccurrence, and haven't gotten to use one in a while. Enjoy!