Fade Up: Hollywood and Yucca

Doesn't sound quite the same, does it.

Perhaps if the motion picture business had started at this intersection, instead of its more famous and lyrical neighbor, today we might merely refer to the Boulevard of Slightly Chipped Idle Fantasies. Tinfoiltown. Cinema might have remained a dilettante's medium, outstripped by the white-hot entertainment of vaudeville. Need we be reminded: location, location, location.

This intersection is where I spend my first night in LA, thanks to the hospitality of Chris and his chihuahua, Ramon. This name is customarily pronounced in the voice of a Mexican midget, perhaps a cousin of Speedy Gonzales, urgently summoning kin: Ramooonn! Take a few minutes to practice. Like most dogs, Ramon hates clothing. This does not stop Chris from dressing him in little outfits. But only once in a while. The producers of Showdog Moms and Dads can have a night off, for Christ's sake.

If you want movies, stars, cheap sunglasses plump packs of tourists, or a commemorative photo with a nearly life-size (and vaguely life-like) cardboard cut-out of Patrick Swayze circa 1987, then by all means, go to Vine. But if wigs and hooker shoes are your bag, this intersection beats all others with a big old stick. I find it much more appealing. Although I don't really need them, I'm tempted to buy a pair of powder blue vinyl, 8-inch heel, platform thigh boots. Because really, where else will you find them -- for $30, no less?

I feel for the magic-makers whose Walk of Fame stars sit here. The innocents who, in their flashbulb moment of glory 50 years ago, as the star was unveiled, had no clue that their place in history would most frequently be trod by women who entertain only by private engagement, and 6-foot men who sing cabaret under the name Louise Quartorze. Who decides where the Walk of Fame stars go now? Someone actually gets to say, "there's a space in front of the hooker wig shop. We could put her there." Only Hollywood has a firmament laid in the street.

I don't remember whose stars are actually at this intersection. I'm disoriented by a cocktail of jet lag, sleep deprivation, a flurry of packing confusion (the tank top. No, wait. The razor. Definitely the razor. Or maybe the jacket. What will matter in a sweaty room for 9 weeks? The tank top. Maybe they'll both fit if I leave out a pair of underwear...) and a medication whose effects are reminiscent of DayQuil. I stumble around the neighborhood with Chris for about 20 minutes before fading.

Chris's Sunday morning custom is to troll the Hollywood farmer's market and get tamales for breakfast. I didn't know that smoked salmon and cream cheese tamales were possible. Again, I am proved short-sighted. We sit on the curb and watch people as we eat. This is the LA I want to meet. The daily lives of normal people. The Yucca people.

I never thought of LA as a place where people actually lived. I always imagined it as a place where people with ridiculous salaries have lunch, make deals, drive shiny cars, have plastic surgery and occupy homes with large windows and swimming pools. Or a place where people with ridiculous pieces down 40s, make deals, drive tricked-out Buicks, pop a cap in someone's ass and occupy homes that belong to the sister of a friend's baby's father, which should be cool for a couple days until her boyfriend gets out of jail and comes home. Because he ain't down with that shit, man. He don't care what you did for him in second grade.

A certain amount of my teen angst stemmed from the fact that my high school existence bore no resemblance to John Hughes' iconic trilogy of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. What was wrong with me? Was it my hair? My skin color? My clothes? Or was it my school? Dammit, why did my parents send me to an all-girls' school? Never mind the academic advantages. HOW WILL I FIND MY JOHN CUSACK?! (So he only had an incidental role in Sixteen Candles. He ruled The Sure Thing and I'd still take him over Andrew McCarthy. Will anyone dispute me?)

Thank god I didn't see St. Elmo's Fire until after college.

Although most of the angst was made irrelevant by the release of Dead Poets' Society and college, most of the questions still lingered until a few months ago. A cable rerun of Pretty in Pink finally provided the answer: I didn't go to high school in Los Angeles. Or on a movie set. Duh. It seems stupid, that it took this long to figure it out. I suppose fiction is responsible for more of my life expectations than I realized.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

So here I am, to tour some mental back lots and see what's behind some of the cardboard cut-outs. Maybe some Yucca people in wigs and hooker boots. If I'm lucky.