There's the Real World, Then There's LA

The city of Los Angeles has many nicknames, one of them being "La La Land". You can take the "La La" to mean "LA LA", LA being the abbreviation for Los Angeles. However, more often than not, "La La" refers to the chant repeatedly uttered with fingers inside one's ears when one is indicating that they're choosing to ignore a stimulus, like another person stating a point of view in strong disagreement. I've traveled to various cities and countries around the world, and what I've learned from all my travels is that Angelenos are unlike people anywhere else. We put our fingers in our ears and ignore the rest of the world. After all, our own little world is much more interesting...and a lot less depressing. I've known this for years, but events from this past week made me think pretty deeply about it. Rewind to yesterday. In order to protect the privacy of certain people, let's just say I was in a ladies' restroom somewhere in the city. In walks 2 minor celebrities. Like many female celebrities, they look like models. One of them gets into a stall to do her business, and she squeaks, "Omigod! These toilets are huge! You can fall in!". I'm thinking, Huh?! Honey, they're not that big to me! Let's just say I have a womanly figure, but I am in no way obese or even overweight (I wear a size 6, thankyouverymuch), and those toilets were just fine for me. If they were fine for me, I'm pretty sure they're fine for at least 90% of the women in America. But LA is not America. In LA, it's not uncommon to walk into a boutique and find that a size-6 woman like me can't fit into any of the clothes and has to walk away empty-handed, even though she really didn't want to. Drive along the streets and into the shopping centers...is driving a Range Rover really necessary for navigating CITY streets?! How often do Angelenos need an 8-passenger vehicle, especially in a city where everyone over the age of 16 has a car? Yup, those huge $100K cars that seat 8 passengers have just one passenger in them 98% of the time! Oh, and it's awards season. That means street closures galore. That's in addition to the traffic so bad that "I'm 15 minutes away" could mean you're 1 block from your destination. No Angeleno ever mentions how far away they are in terms of actual distance. It means nothing. And let's not mention the whopping 9.75% sales tax we pay for every purchase and the enormous state taxes. Groan... I once read an article that equated LA with ancient Greece. The gods lived along with the mortals, but of course everyone knew the difference. That's true in LA. A few years ago, I had been in a high-end shoe store with a B-list celebrity. We happened to be finished shopping and ready to pay at the same time. My total was given: full retail, as stated on the box. Her total: full retail, as stated on the box. Then she blurted, right in front of me, "Is the manager here? She usually gives me a little discount". The saleswoman gives her her new total: 20% off retail. Didn't even bother with discretion. After all, this is LA, and mere mortals like me should understand. Then, just as my annoyance with the city peaked, I drove along the Cahuenga pass. Sunshine all over the luscious green mountains. I look at the temperature display in my car: 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the annoyance passes...