I recently moved from NY to LA and as I settle into settling in I find myself searching everywhere for the familiar.
This place is not completely foreign to me. I lived here for over 25 years working on sitcom staffs, writing movies, collecting swag bags and raising California kids until one day the party balloon in my brain suddenly burst and literally all the air was out of me.
So back to NY I floated and lived a kind of writer's paradise. I always dreamed of having a job that did not require pants. Mission accomplished.
I lived up in Westchester in a right-by-the-Hudson-River town where I collected friends like sea shells and plumbed the depth of my soul that had been long ignored almost to the second that I wrote my first "You got it dude!" on Full House....which I called "Awful House." I know that little children and shut-ins will militantly disagree with that pun, but hey, you didn't write on it. Then again neither did I. That wasn't writing. It was Mad Libs. (For the record I did love the guys. They were witty, fun and down to earth good people and my buddies who ran the show Warren and Rinsler remain to this day two of my most favorite people).
I have spent my time east coast nesting and writing plays, books, pilots, features...whim creating, convinced that I was da-done with LA.
And then the tremor arrived: a show that I co-created with Mr. Adorable Famous Person Face was picked up to go to series. Now I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a Star Trek phaser and thus this phase of my eloquent writing and peaceful by the river mediation was officially over.
Leaving on a jet plane was far easier for Peter, Paul and Mary. Especially because I had been helping co-raise my best friend's kids and I missed them all before the heading to JFK cab door slammed shut.
Once here it felt like I got to pack everything but my soul because souls tend to clash with the overall theme of LA.
Every major city transforms itself every ten years and LA is no different so I am guardedly hopeful. But for now all I have is first impressions but I can tell you now that life without Tower on Sunset seems inconceivable to me. I went there so much that more than once my then wife, when she couldn't track me down, had me paged there.
Yeah, they found me. Bin there. Done that.
The overall feeling that I get is that nothing in today's LA comes to you. You have to go out every day and search out things like human contact, a friendly happy to see you too dog or any kind of mental or spiritual nourishment that doesn't have the word "kale' in it.
This place has always been shaped like the just escaped liquid of a large bottle of Clamato juice. It just splatters illogically every which way. I hear new borns are being fitted with GPS systems in order to locate the hard to find nipple.
To keep that odd metaphor going, I think what I am experiencing is a Born Again identity. Armed with my east coast maturity and deep thoughts, I'm in search of some kind of counterbalance as opposed to my younger me who spent most of his time scrambling in manic serpentine circles in search of a DEAL with all the grace of the spastic, arm-flapping 1960's Jerry Lewis.
But one thing I discovered and it is a blessing:
Sundays travel with you.
The very same kind of New Year's day, tucked-in-shhh-the-whole-world-is-still sleeping kind of quiet is here too.
Just like everywhere else Sunday people tend to commune almost telepathically and do the same ritual things on Sunday mornings as if we're all following the instructions that God left behind on the refrigerator.
Sunday people casually, often hand to hand, stroll to their coffee places of worship, they tippy toe to newsstands to lure in the New York Times like a skilled New England crab fisherman, float through Farmer's Markets where they lovingly cup and squeeze fruit like they were Bridget Bardot's elegant bottom and they walk their happy, plodding dopey dogs or little daffy happy toddlers who stumble around like they're drunk on a big tent hire wire.
The other days of the week here may continue to baffle me for a while or forever, but at least I know will have my close friend Sunday morning to look forward to.
I just hope it never greets me with "You got it, dude."