Phony

So here I am in Irvine, California. I just left Nashville where the people are really nice and honest. We went to a place called Robert's Western World, saw a great house band play, ate steaks, etc. Now I'm in LA and everyone is dressed so that they look better than the next person.

For some reason I come out here and get all tense. The weather is nice, the landscape is nice, I can actually see snow capped mountains from my room. There is just something about the driving, the laid back attitude, the never ending fashion show, the trendiness that drives me nuts. Now I now New York has some of those same things, but it just feels different. There is an undercurrent of honesty in it that doesn't make it so bad. You're as likely to meet a power broker as you are a garbage truck driver, and to be honest, you can talk about the same things with both of them. Bring up the Yankees and you can talk for hours. There is a common threat that just feels nice.

On a side note, on the flight out here I was reading the latest McSweeney's Quarterly and it had a lot of Icelandic writers in it. There is a style there that was weirding me out. I can't full describe it.