Hooray for Hollywood: Part 1

How Tinseltown made me a worse person...

This morning I was searching for an essay I’d written about Roy Cohn and Donald Trump and the Substack search engine apparently hadn’t heard of either one of them and instead offered me three articles I’d written about Hollywood. Which I posted not long after I started this blog and took my first trip to Hollywood to visit my son and back then I didn’t have many readers and this one got seven views, another got six and the last one got two, which I assume was me and one of my sons and the other son didn’t give a shit. So I’m going to repost the three articles nobody read because a bunch of you could not care less about Torpedo Bats and this will give you something to enjoy — or not — while you wait for me to get my shit together and write about Trump’s Tariff Fuckups which I plan on doing tomorrow.

Until then, enjoy this examination of what a horrible town Hollywood is and how it makes you a worse person and I’ve done just a little bit of editing and if you see any comments in italics that’s me updating to the story.

And a-way we go…

The Cons of Hollywood

Apparently, one of the ploys for bumming a cigarette on Hollywood Boulevard is to ask to borrow someone’s lighter, because that implies the person doing the bumming already has a cigarette.

But then after you let that someone use your lighter, they’ll ask: “Can I borrow a cigarette?” And that implies that someday soon they’ll have cigarettes of their own and be more than happy to return the cigarette they borrowed even though a blizzard in Malibu is more likely.

A very small con, performed countless times a day along Hollywood Boulevard.

My son Paul (who at this point lived just around the corner from Hollywood Boulevard) has said he now knows how hot girls feel; he can look a block ahead and see someone loitering aimlessly while gazing in his direction and know he’s going to get hit on, even though it’s for nicotine, not sex. (On the other hand, this is Hollywood Boulevard so it could be both simultaneously.)

OK, So You Don’t Have A Spare Cigarette, Do You Have The Time?

Another more serious con is someone asking you what time it is and if you check the time using your phone and the phone is nice enough, having it snatched out of your hand and being forced to chase a bum down Hollywood Boulevard to get your phone back.

Not only will you lose your phone, but you’ll find out homeless people in LA are living a healthier lifestyle than you are when that bum with zero-percent body fat and a day chock-full of aerobic exercise keeps right on running while your fat, Midwestern, BBQ-eating, corn-fed ass has you wheezing after a block-and-a-half and you decide it’s easier to buy a new iPhone than have that coronary you felt coming on just as you passed the shop selling novelty sex toys.

The friends that know me best also know I’m perfectly safe from this con because my phone is a piece of crap. (I have since upgraded to a piece of crap smartphone.)

I originally bought a less expensive phone because I had no plans to use it to search for “novelty sex toy shops near me” — I already know where they are and when I enter they greet me like Norm on Cheers — but sometimes being cheap works in your favor and if some future competitor in the Bum Olympics runs off with my phone, I’ll just watch him go.

Avoiding being hustled is one of the reasons Paul avoids Hollywood Boulevard.

I asked him at what point does he finally trust somebody out here in Hollywood and he said never. Everybody’s on the hustle and doing it in ways you might not expect.

Which leads us to…

The Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame

When I first read that some people had multiple stars on the Walk of Fame I was impressed; imagine being so talented that you got honored with a star for your work in TV, movies, music, radio and the soft porn you appeared in both early and late in your career.

But then I read that each of those stars cost the people honored $40,000 and if I’m here another week I expect the opportunity to buy one of my own. The Walk of Fame is a hustle that takes advantage of the stars honored and the people that come to Hollywood to see them.

(Re-checked those figures and it’s now up to $85,000 which covers “creation, installation and maintenance” which makes me wonder just what maintenance is required for a metal star embedded in concrete that homeless people urinate on and Paul made the perceptive comment that Hollywood Boulevard is the only place in the world you can step in shit and hope it was dogshit.)

BTW: This morning we were walking along and just as we passed James Brown’s star a black family stopped to take a picture of their mom kneeling next to a star and being a stereotypical White male I wondered what star she found worth a picture: Lena Horne, Sidney Poitier, Stevie Wonder?

Turns out it was Angela Lansbury.

As she stood up, the mom said, “I just love Murder She Wrote” and made me feel like a racist. My bad and I’ll try to learn my lesson, which is...

Clearly, people of all races, creeds and colors can have horseshit tastes in entertainment and I say that as a really really White man who watched Die Hard on Christmas Eve, thought it was a great movie all over again, then got overly enthusiastic and forced my sons to watch Die Hard 2 on Christmas Day and realized it was a flaming piece of dog poop that you’d be happy to step in if you were strolling down Hollywood Boulevard.

More on that experience soon because it explains a lot about Hollywood.

Gold Records

I walk into Paul’s apartment and ask where he keeps his Gold Records.

Paul explained that while he has earned four Gold Records (500,000 sales) and one Platinum Record (1,000,000 sales) if you want something to hang on your wall the Gold Record people charge you for that too and according to Wikipedia the plaques can cost up to $275 so it would cost Paul $1,375 to let everyone know he’s good at making music.

Nevertheless, people buy those Gold Record plaques because they’re a status symbol and in Hollywood everything is about image so they want those Gold Records hanging on their office wall.

Paul does not have an office, so he made a wise decision when he decided to invest his money in a really nice TV instead. Since I’ve been in LA we’ve watched two movies and a Lakers-Clippers game and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent eight hours staring at some wall plaques.

The Achilles Heel of Niceness

Paul says that Midwestern niceness thing is real and something you have to get over if you’re going to survive in Hollywood. The water is filled with barracuda and they’ll eat the goldfish that stop long enough to lend a cigarette or tell someone the time of day.

So however big a jerk I was back in Kansas City I’m a bigger one now and I’ve only been in LA for 48 hours. By the time I leave here, I’ll be able to give Heinrich Himmler a run for his money.

I can now walk right by someone who’s engulfed in flames because I know if I stop and ask if I can help them I’m going to end up without a cellphone and at least one less cigarette even though I don’t smoke.

So what have we learned from this holiday experience?

If I was Jimmy Stewart it would be that I ought to treasure what I have, but it’s me so I’ve learned to never make eye contact with someone pushing a homemade robot down the street while having an argument with himself…and Die Hard 2 sucks.

It’s a Christmas Miracle.