once the work is done - Monday May 29 2000    

Los Angeles, though there's no here here, is the place people go when they want the world to know they are alive. It's the unspoken fact providing traction for the activities of the people living here. Everyone I talk to identifies with this feeling. Anthea says "it's like being in Rome during the time of Julius Cæsar." Kim says she thinks the people who end up here are talented, driven, and just a bit crazy. She thinks Los Angeles attracts an unusual concentration of bizarre brilliance. She feels an energy here, an energy of people being "out there, but with a keen sense of marketing" that she's never felt in any other city, not even San Francisco.

But before I can become the driven, oddball person I'm supposed to be in this town, I have to work off my indentured servitude. Sometimes I wonder if I'll still be the same person once the work is done, or if I'll be intractably old and boring. Only time will tell, I suppose. What's on VH1?