This Ain’t A Scene It’s An Arms Race

“I don’t like LA. The majority just seem to be so artificial. Look at how they worship everything they think is fashionable. Isn’t it sick?”
-Billie Joe Armstrong

I figured it would be apropos to title this post after a song from Fall Out Boy. After all, 95% of my current job consists of covering this band and the copycat bands that, like FOB, are the current boy bands of a generation. And no, I am not bitter about my current vocation. In fact, I am grateful to have the chance to work at an interesting company like Buzznet.com. I am learning a great deal about how a social networking site operates, and even more importantly am seeing how broken our young people are.

Yet, this post is about LA. Living in LA is a fascinating sociological experiment. The town is a fishbowl that every fish in the sea is dying to go swimming in. FOB got this right in their song “This Ain’t A Scene Its an Arms Race” which is about Los Angeles. LA is glamorous; at least that’s how it is portrayed in every movie and television show we see. What the entertainment world fails to show us is the dark side to the “scene”, and maybe that’s because the entertainment word is responsible for the “scene” and would like to see the “scene” grow and thrive.

So, now the question becomes, what is the “scene”? Although I’ve only been in LA for three weeks I think I have it figured out. The “scene” is an invisible community that only exists in the minds of people who have a misguided representation of what LA, and their own lives, should be. Some have called this being fake, or in Holden Caulfield’s case  -phony. I disagree with this notion that people are being fake and phony, but believe instead that people are just trying to desperately fit into a crowd that never existed in the first place.

Hollywood (a.k.a. the media and entertainment industry) has done a nice job of giving us a fantasy “scene” of what it is. Hollywood is hip, young, sexy, intelligent and in shape. People are relaxed, laid back and would rather be surfing than be in a board meeting. This is the false perception that is given to those outside the fishbowl. I know this for a fact, because when I lived in Missouri people automatically expected me to dress in a tight $300 graphic tee, say “dude” all the time, and know how to surf. Problem is, I am a huge dork who only buys Hanes $10 t-shirts and have gone surfing three times in my life. But that’s exactly the point.

The one stereotype that is true about LA is that nobody is actually from LA. Therefore, LA is the fishbowl it pretends to be because everyone who comes here from places like the Midwest assume that there is this awesome fishbowl out there with a bunch of pretty fish. LA is not actually the “scene”, but instead false perceptions have created a “scene”.

So, you may be asking, Shawn what really is LA then? Los Angeles is like everywhere else. There are rich and poor, good looking and ugly, smart and dumb and broken people in search of finding truth and a purpose in their lives. This last part is the only true difference between LA and everywhere else.

LA is a broken place because of the false perceptions its people are attempting to life up to. Everyone is trying to be someone that never existed in the first place because they believe that’s who they are supposed to be now that they live in LA. Insecurity runs rampant in Hollywood more so than any other place I’ve ever lived. People in their tight skinny jeans and driving their brand new BMW’s just come across as being sad because you know they are trying so hard to fit into a crowd that doesn’t even exist. They will try in vain to belong only to find themselves disappointed in the end. It’s an arms race that can never be won and only leads to personal annihilation. Call it the Cold War of LA.

A trip down candy cane lane

To my (2) readers of this blog:

I would like to apologize for once again lacking a commitment to my writing in this blog. These last three weeks have been a whirlwind of change and personal search that has left little time for writing -and anything else for that matter.

As you may (may not) know, I have accepted a job as web producer for a start-up music social networking site called Buzznet.com in Los Angeles. I officially live in Glendale, or as I like to call it G-dale, in an apartment with sparse possessions (I sleep on a portable air mattress).

Yes, living a minimalist life is difficult yet enjoyable at the same time. But the one thing that is truly driving me up the wall is the lack of internet in my apartment. HOW did we ever survive without wireless? Looking back on the first 18 years of my life it’s a miracle that I survived without wireless internet. It’s almost as if I was living in the Congo with a dangerous species of intelligent gorillas who were trying to kill me for 18 years until wireless internet came around and rescued me. (This brings up a good point: Whatever happened to that movie “Congo”? It seemed tailor-made to be an instant television classic….you know, one of those films they play in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday on USA Network. Someone should look into why USA is constantly playing “Weekend at Bernie’s II” and not “Congo”.

Anyway, I’ve done a ton of writing in the last 36 hours -because I know nobody in LA and am bored- on such issues as the false perceptions of Los Angeles, the new counter-culture, and why it would be ironic if Cosby died from eating poisoned Jello (OK, that last one isn’t true.)

Enjoy!!