A few weeks ago we mysteriously started receiving a subscription to US magazine. It has our address on it, but someone else's name. Nothing too surprising about that... not knowing where you live? That's so Bako. We figured it would get sorted out soon enough so we might as well enjoy it while we get it.
Flipping through the pages it became painfully obvious that we are now completely out of touch.
Who were half these people?
Paris Hilton was arrested? Again? Where was I?
Why on earth are the Kardashians famous?
Why does any of this matter?
I must say it's somewhat liberating breaking free of the gravitational pull of the Celebrity Industrial Complex of LA. Until you leave you don't really notice how much celebrity and fame are deeply woven into the fabric of Los Angeles. And that aint necessarily a good thing.
Celebrity foibles and sightings are such a staple of the local news that at times it's indistinguishable from "Entertainment Tonight". And we aren't even talking Brangelina A-listers here. Thanks to the new Reality TV manufacturing base, a new crop of famewhores is dumped on the market weekly. A year ago the meatheads of "Jersey Shore" were less than nobodies and now they have book deals and fragrance lines and "Snooki" has entered the lexicon.
It isn't overstating it to say celebritydom is pervasive to every aspect of life in LA. You can't escape it driving down the street, where "stars" leer down on you from every bus and billboard. Streets get closed for crews filming NCISCSI:Miami/LasVegas/NewYork. Or get blocked by roving packs of paparazzi watching Paris shop at Kitson.
Every mom and pop establishment has a wall of signed head shots, as if it really matters that Howie Mandel uses the same dry cleaner or Ricardo Montalban once used the same car wash to detail his Corinthian leather. Restaurants and clubs rise and fall on who's seen and who's not and they secretly pay to get an appearance. I hear Paris charges a cool $100K to show up at your door.
Probably a lot more for the gratuitous cooch shot sliding out of the Bentley.
We used to have a townhouse in West Hollywood two doors down from an unassuming French restaurant. One day it closed without notice and became shrouded in scaffolding. Six months later it emerged as DOLCE. Ashton Kutcher was an investor and it quickly became the white hot center of the A-list club crowd. Now the paparazzi were trampling our front yard and you couldn't leave because the driveway was blocked by a limo full of Olsen Twins. Within a month or two, Ashton cashed out and sold it to some other investors and soon after the celebs departed like a swarm of locusts for the next new thing. Last time I was in LA I noticed DOLCE was gone.
It's now an unassuming French restaurant.
One afternoon on Sunset I was almost run off the road by careening SUV's driving on the wrong side of the road chasing a white Range Rover, followed by a couple of squad cars. It was complete pandemonium and ended up as a massive traffic jam at rush hour. When I got home I turned on the local news to see what it was all about.
It was Britney Spears going for sushi at Blowfish, pursued by stalkerazzi.
Last summer, just as we were packing for exile, Michael Jackson died. His last tour stop, the rented Beverly Hills Mansion, was just down the hill from us. For weeks after it was like a scene out of "Apocalypse Now", with squadrons of helicopters hovering and swooping over a now deserted house. Why? Why not?
Up close it all looks like glitz and glamour, but looking at it from a distance now it all just looks so stupid. What a complete waste of time and effort. I thought I would miss it quite honestly, since I worked tangentially to the entertainment industry, or "The Industry" as it's known in LA (as if there's no other kind). And I have to say it's a bit of relief that I don't.
There's something to be said for living in a place where the biggest celebrity in town is the high school quarterback.
