I’m having a self-image crisis ““ or maybe its a
metaphor crisis, I can’t tell. Even if I could be any part of
the newspaper, I’m not sure which part I’d be and
why.
I have no life platitude that fits in a tagline. I haven’t
lived long enough to be a whole story. I’m not popular enough
to be the crossword puzzle. I’m not smart enough to be a
graphic. I’m not interesting enough to be a window. I’m
not cute enough to be a piece of art or a photograph. And I’m
certainly not a headliner.
I identify with the subhead. That’s me: I’m a
subhead. A nondescript, bland, informative, often glossed-over
subhead.
And now I’m a California subhead.
I don’t know how this happened. I started off as an Iowa
masthead (or at the very least a promo) and suddenly I’m a
California subhead.
I moved to Los Angeles three years ago, promising myself
I’d go back to the Midwest as soon as I finished UCLA. I
spent the better part of the last 36 months comparing everything to
“home” with a snide shake of my head and a mutter that
things were better in Des Moines.
Then why the heck am I staying out here for a minimum of seven
years?
It isn’t the weather; I miss snow, clouds, wind,
tornadoes, hail ““ and I hate that quasi-misty half-fog that
Californians call rain. It isn’t like I have a girlfriend who
couldn’t bear to see me move away. It certainly isn’t
the traffic or rent prices.
Frankly, I think it’s the movie theaters.
Midwestern movie theater’s are mostly small,
stadium-seating multiplexes with movies that have been out
everywhere else for two weeks.
They are clean, have decent sound systems and pleasant
attendants, and you can find your seat if you leave in the middle
of the movie to go to the bathroom.
Out here, the theaters are gargantuan monstrosities suitable in
size for debriefing the entire Fighting 405th. If you sit on the
side aisle, you could spend two hours with Robert DeNiro’s
mole filling the only portion of the screen you can see, wondering
who is playing the female lead.
The floors are sticky. There is something called a balcony. And
I love every minute of watching movies in there. It’s a
magical experience, unless you are watching “Battlefield
Earth.”
It’s easy to fall in love with the grandeur of big movie
theaters ““ or the rest of L.A.’s deliciously
ostentatious trappings. This city’s commitment to barely
serviceable showiness (Christmas lights in puny Westwood trees
despite the absence of snow, for example) is laudable while being
laughable, especially with millions of people intentionally acting
out a stereotype with the goal of perpetrating it. That’s a
commitment to a lifestyle I can respect even if I can’t share
it.
Even if I really wanted to leave, I couldn’t; too many
good people and good memories. For every shallow, L.A.-airhead
stereotype I’ve met, I’ve found 15 wonderful people. I
credit that to the Daily Bruin. I’m not one to be sappy
““ which would be way too serious for a subhead ““ but
the people I’ve met on the newspaper are among the finest
I’ve ever known. I owe the world to them, though whether I
use their influence to win a Nobel Prize or become the most popular
inmate on Cell Block D at San Quentin remains to be seen.
Maybe that’s why I’m hanging around and why
I’ve spent the last three years working at this newspaper.
I’m trying to figure out what makes you people tick.
It’s a foreign world to me and I’m not ready to give it
up just yet.
Not until I’ve simplified it all into a three-line subhead
with a one-word identifier, p6 from the colon, assign it, thank you
copy.