Fun, by definition (from the Middle English fonnen, "to act foolishly"), involves a partial suspension of the self, the shedding of your inhibitions, cutting loose some of the weighty ballast of who you were before you took off. But the high-flying Angeleno in search of fun gets blasted out of the sky by antiaircraft fire from two overriding myths — one true, the other utterly false.

The truth: L.A. is a city of cool people. We look, sound and act cool because the weather's terrific, the accent's flat and we're all in the movies (or at the very least, acutely aware of their counterfeit potency). But what price cool? Asked his idea of fun, a well-known film producer and former studio boss confessed that he and his son like to go up to the theme restaurant at LAX and watch the planes. Fearing reprisal from the Cool Gestapo, he was adamant about staying anonymous. In other words, be all that you can be — just don't let the stitches show. Go anywhere west of Needles and south of the Grapevine, and you'll find a logarithmic relationship between coolness and tightness of the sphincter. Fun means messy hair, taking risks and occasionally being photographed from your bad side — unhappy news for the tragically hip.

The patently false: L.A. is a city of laid-back people. On the contrary, this city is one big title fight, where the last one standing wins — no decisions. The only laid-back people are waiting for autopsies. Of the 7,600 members in the Writers Guild, less than half actually posted earnings last year (ouch!). According to the IRS, L.A. represents one of the highest areas of self-employment per capita in the nation. It's not that we've forgotten how to have fun — in playing the nonstop Chutes and Ladders game of carving out a living here, we don't even know what it means anymore.

Michael Angeli, Are We Having Fun Yet?
Originally published in Los Angeles Magazine, June 1996
Copyright © 1996 by Los Angeles Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted 26 May 1996

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