Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/caldream.txt

Text File | 1995-06-02 | 22.6 KB | 491 lines

CALIFORNIA DREAMING
by Anne Marshall

"East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to
Californians. Californians are a race of people, not
merely inhabitants of a state."
- O. Henry, "A Municipal Report", Strictly Business,
1910.

I have California cousins. Two girls, both strong,
blonde and beautiful, on whom I have not laid eyes in
ten years. I guess they'd be women now. They're my
mother's cousin's kids, not all that closely related -
just close enough that we could tastefully impose on
their hospitality every few years growing up, when my
brother and I needed a Disney fix. They actually live
in Anaheim. On clearer nights in their backyard you
could see the fireworks from the Magic Kingdom. I've
never envied anyone so much.

Heidi was my favorite and my idol. She had long, shiny
hair and knew a lot about makeup. And boys. Her
younger sister, Alison, and I deferred to her in every
situation. Alison was chubby and friendly, and
insightful in a way I didn't recognize then. She cried
easily. Heidi loved to boss her around.

They had mysterious customs. One night they made me
run around the neighborhood with their gang, throwing
toilet paper all over people's palm trees. I'd never
heard of such a thing. They said "yuh-huh" for yes and
"nuh-uh" for no, and called me "Ayun". They were kind
to me, but they never let me forget for one second
that I wasn't one of them. I didn't need reminding;
their Otherness was made manifest in their every move,
so much freer than I could dream of in strapless
terry-towel shorts sets, snapping their gum and
shining in the constant sun.

I suppose that's why I never really made it there. In
1985, the last time I was in California, my dad was
offered a job in La Jolla. We could have moved there
right away, spent the rest of our teenage years
beached and blissful, but when asked if I wanted to go
I just couldn't say "yuh-huh." Like O. Henry - writing
before the summer of 1920, when the population of Los
Angeles at 508,000 surpassed that of San Francisco for
the first time, effectively usurping its position as
the Capital of the Coast - I understood that
California doesn't exist for those who dream of all it
has to offer; it exists for those who think they
deserve it, and those who have never known anything
else. To live there all the time, you'd have to be
pretty greedy - or pretty special. I chose to be
neither, and now I live in New York.

New Yorkers just don't get California. We rarely get
anything outside Manhattan, come to that, but we
really don't get The Golden State, particularly Los
Angeles. That's not to say we don't think about it. I
know I do, a lot. Perhaps because my memories of the
place are of the sun-drenched childhood variety;
perhaps because all road trips seem to end there, in
the movies and in real life; and perhaps because I
live in New York, and am denied the very basic
pleasure of cruising around in a car. It's hard to
know what California means to the rest of the world,
having encamped myself firmly on one side of the
East/West blood feud, but that's exactly what I want
to find out. People can't still be going there for the
weather, can they? As a Philadelphian friend of mine
puts it,

"I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who chooses
to live in California, when God has given them every
conceivable sign - excepting maybe plagues of locusts
- that people are just not meant to live there!"

A quick hitch up the Pacific Coast Information
Superhighway later, I discover just a little more
evidence to support her opinion than I care to.
Baffled by the number of California Disaster-related
online sites, I settle for the Weekly Earthquake
Report for Southern California, March 9-15, 1995,
prepared by Kate Hutton of the Seismological Library
and Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey at
CalTech. Hutton and Jones, without the slightest hint
of humor or terror, state,

"This week's report covers the time period from
midnight Thursday morning, March 9, to midnight
Wednesday night, March 15, 1995. We recorded 268
earthquakes of M1.0 or larger during the 7-day period
covered. It was another quiet week. The largest event
was a M3.5 Landers aftershock, that was located about
6 mi. E of Barstow. ...Two smaller quakes were also
felt ... ."

Other treats Mother Nature has tossed CA's way in the
last few weeks include: dangerous flooding of the
Sacramento river, threatening the population of the
state capital and surrounding area; massive flooding
of Clear Lake, at Lakeport; and winter storm warnings
for virtually all of Northern California as of this
writing. According to the State of California's online
Emergency Digital Information Service, which
distributes up-to-the-minute disaster information via
their Oasis satellite, Californians in every part of
the state should be aware of current fire, flood, and
wind advisories. I decided to forego whatever wisdom I
might have gleaned from the California Hazardous
Materials Response Plan seminar. I assume it
disseminates helpful hints for those living in
proximity to any of the state's numerous nuclear
reactors. Earthquakes and radioactive substances? It
doesn't get any better than that, kids!

Of course, if you can ignore the earthquakes, the
flooding, the fires, and the inevitable avalanches of
crystals, there's apparently still a very peaceful way
of life to enjoy out there. If you don't mind being
utterly deluded, I guess. Delusion is big business in
California. Listen to the words of Walt Disney, who'd
recently turned 180 acres of Anaheim orange groves
into "The Happiest Place On Earth"TM,

"I don't want the public to see the world they live in
while they're in Disneyland. I want them to feel
they're in another world."

To many, Disneyland might as well be the capital of
California - and California the capital of the U.S.A.
The idea that anything is possible if you only put
your heart and mind to it is a sweet one, but even the
folks in Iowa probably regard it with some irony
today. The words with which Walt opened the park on
July 17, 1955, could just as easily have come from
some founding fathers' document, suitable for carving
into a big marble arch at the state border to welcome
travelers to Neverland.

"To all who come to this happy place: welcome.
Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond
memories of the past ... and here youth may savor the
challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is
dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard
facts which have created America ... with the hope
that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to the
world."

And, indeed, Disneyland has attracted hundreds of
millions of visitors in its forty years of operation,
many of them notable. Guests on the park's opening day
included then-and-future California governors Goodwin
Knight and Ronald Reagan; and a host of entertainers
including Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Stewart, Buddy Ebsen, Roy
Rogers and Dale Evans. Future crook and
then-Vice-President Richard M. Nixon opened the
Monorail in June, 1959. The official Disney
publication "Disneyland - The First Thirty-Five Years"
features photographs of: Ethiopian Emperor Haile
Selassie; all the Kennedys; King Hussein of Jordan;
and numerous distinguished others, all getting in
touch with their inner children at the park. When
Nikita Krushchev visited the U.S. in 1959, he
expressed a desire to visit Disneyland. According to
the book,

"At a film industry luncheon attended by scores of
movie stars, he was advised that too many security
precautions were necessary before he could visit the
Magic Kingdom, and that he would not be able to go.
Like a child who had been denied a toy, the Soviet
leader ranted,
'Just now I was told that I could not go to
Disneyland... . For me, the situation is
inconceivable; I cannot find the words to explain this
to my people!' "

Public response to this international crisis was
swift, say the "Disneyland" authors, as VIP's from
every walk of life leaped to the tantrum-throwing
leader's defense.

"Author Herman Wouk wrote, 'I don't blame Krushchev
for jumping up and down in a rage over missing
Disneyland; there are few things more worth seeing in
the United States, or indeed anywhere in the world.' "

Had little Nikita known about the dark underbelly of
the world's most celebrated theme park, however, I
suspect he might have counted himself lucky to have
escaped the place. Surfing the 'Net in true California
style, my eye was caught by one of many peculiar
Disney-related postings: "Waiting in Line to Die
(Death at Disneyland)". The text, from a 'zine
entitled "Murder Can Be Fun" (issue #13), outlines the
relatively rare, but incredibly disturbing, Disneyland
fatalities that can be attributed to the park's
attractions rather than natural causes. It's a
hilarious article - who knew the Peoplemover had
undone so many? - that makes no attempt to gloss over
the park's responsibility in some of the incidents.
The most upsetting anecdote involves the park's only
homicide, which occurred in March of 1981. A scuffle
broke out between two young men near the Tomorrowland
Skyway. James O'Driscoll, a 28-year-old man from San
Diego, accused 18-year-old Mel Yorba of Riverside, of
touching his girlfriend. O'Driscoll produced a blade
and stabbed Yorba, and was eventually convicted of
second-degree murder. According to the author of
"Waiting in Line to Die", John Marr (of San
Francisco),

"No one criticized Disneyland security's handling of
the killing. With efficiency rivaled only by certain
Third-World dictatorships and some former Eastern Bloc
police states, they swung into action. ...O'Driscoll
only managed to evade the kingdom-wide manhunt for
little more than an hour before he was found hiding in
the bushes in Adventureland."

He levels a more serious charge at park management's
treatment of the victim. Apparently in keeping with
Walt's policy of letting guests forget about the world
outside, a Disneyland nurse decided to have the
seriously wounded Yorba driven to the hospital in a
park van, rather than calling an ambulance. Marr
writes,

"By the time the van, lacking flashing emergency
lights, made its leisurely way to the hospital (which,
unlike other nearby hospitals, did not have a trauma
center), Yorba was to all intents dead from a knife
wound piercing his heart, liver and diaphragm. For
once, Disneyland was roundly chastised in the media.
Two Disneyland workers claimed "the rule at the park
is don't call the paramedics." Presumably, flashing
red lights and uniformed rescue personnel tearing up
Main Street would mar the park's atmosphere."

As a result of this bad publicity, Disneyland hired an
ambulance and changed its emergency procedures
slightly - but in the ensuing trial, the jury found
Disney negligent to the tune of $600,000.
This isn't the only scary bit of evidence that "The
Happiest Place On Earth"TM may be just slightly rotten
on the inside. A friend of mine who works every summer
at the Park will attest to the legend that Disneyland
employees, or "Cast Members", as Walt styled them, are
paid peanuts and treated like dirt by the corporation.
They also refer to the park as "Mouschwitz" or
"Duckau". She produced a frighteningly long list of
park attractions that still contain asbestos, but in
the interest of self-preservation. I won't go into
that this time.

I don't mean to suggest that poor old Walt - who, as
legend has it, may float, cryo-preserved, beneath the
climate-controlled warehouse of "Pirates of the
Caribean" - is the only famous Californian in the
delusionary business. The whole point of the Hollywood
film industry is the creation of fantasy, both
on-screen and off. Louis B. Mayer, the Walt Disney of
his Hollywood heyday, exercised a degree of control
over every aspect of his stars' lives that would make
a career in the military seem like a relaxing and
creative atmosphere. When Hollywood was the planet's
capital of illusion, and the "star system" was at its
peak of operation, the public knew nothing about an
actor that the studio did not approve. As the
always-astute Quentin Crisp noted in an interview in
New-York based Casting magazine,

"Anyone who's been on television wears permanently an
expression of fatuous affability. I'm sure Miss Taylor
does that. When Miss Taylor arrives, she doesn't wave
at the audience and she doesn't ignore the audience:
she steps out of the limousine far enough for the door
to be shut behind her. Then she turns her face, and on
it is written: 'This is what you came to see ... and
here it is.' And that's what you have to do, to
present your image. Marlene Dietrich was the first
person I ever heard use the word "image" in the modern
sense; she said, 'I dress for the image.' She
controlled her image. In the old days, we only knew of
the stars what Mr. Mayer wished us to know; and he
wished them to be glamorous. But he also wished them
to be domesticated, because he had this weird idea
that they must be nice people. Now, we know everything
about everybody.

Back in the day, a star could virtually ruin his or
her career by filing for divorce. Engaging in an
extramarital affair, should the public find out about
it, meant certain career death. (Look at what happened
to Eddie Fisher after he left Debbie Reynolds for Liz
Taylor. They crucified him!) Now, such "scandals" are
practically de rigeur in order to remain in the public
eye. It's only in the last decade or so that phrases
like,
"There's no such thing as bad publicity," have
been echoing through the hallowed halls of Creative
Artists' Agency. Entire careers have been built upon
rumors that would have once been considered too
distasteful for public consumption (Joey Buttafuoco,
Jessica Hahn, John Wayne Bobbitt, Kato Kaelin).
Remember when tiny Scientologist Tom Cruise left his
wife Mimi Rogers to marry mail-order bride Nicole
Kidman?. He had her shipped over to be his co-star in
the wretched "Days of Thunder" after salivating over
her work in "Dead Calm". This all unfolded smoothly,
despite the common industry knowledge that he had
already proposed to Nicole before he even informed
Mimi that he was unhappy with their marriage. The
Hollywood community supported his decision, and
consequently, so did the rest of the world.
Apparently, abruptly ditching one's wife for a younger
woman is an acceptable sin in California, but getting
fat is unforgivable. (When was the last time you heard
anything nice about, say, Delta Burke?)

What, exactly, constitutes a scandal in Hollywood
these days is fairly difficult to predict. Industry
types were quick to blackball Vanessa Redgrave for her
stance of non-support during the Persian Gulf Crisis;
yet no one is willing to make a strong statement about
Michael Jackson. Or O.J. Or just whose power-player
names were contained in the disposable Heidi Fleiss'
little black book. Everyone's heard, but no one's
willing to say. In a culture so wholly dependent on
image as a commodity, when push comes to shove no one
wants to admit, maybe even to themselves, that
anything is wrong. Cracking up in public is certainly
not advisable in California. Unless, of course, you
can turn the situation to your advantage. Comedian
Denis Leary, himself an increasingly significant
Hollywood presence, decries this phenomenon in his "No
Cure for Cancer" special, talking about his plans to
revive his moribund career by staging a feel-good
comeback, complete with thumbs-up smiling cover story
in People magazine. But for every Liza Minelli, David
Crosby, Patty Duke or Dennis Hopper, California can
produce any number of unfortunates who have achieved
the same degree of notoriety, but somehow fallen by
the mental wayside: Brian Wilson; Howard Hughes;
Crispin Glover; Marlon Brando.

It seems particularly tragic that Wilson - the gentle
genius of the Beach Boys, who gave the world the cult
of California set to music - could stop having so much
fun fun fun after three bad trips and a failed
marriage that he literally stayed in bed for years.
Maybe, just maybe, he was ashamed to admit that he
wasn't as goldenly happy as he should have been. Of
course, twenty years and a lot of radical therapy
later, he's "back", presumably better than ever, and
has just resolved his long-term differences with his
nasty little meditating cousin Mike Love. (Read
Wilson's heart-wrenching autobiography, Wouldn't It Be
Nice?, to get the real story on that no-talent sponge,
as well as tremendous insights into Brian's deeply
Californian madness.) Now that Love's managed to
extricate Brian utterly from the clutches of his
beloved (and, oddly enough, also insane) therapist Dr.
Landy, we can look forward to even more "let's parade
the freak" public appearances by Wilson and the
remaining Beach Boys. "Dead Man's Curve" survivor Jan
Berry, the brain-damaged half of Jan and Dean, is
wheeled out of hiding every few years in much the same
way, which only serves to remind us that Californians
leave no situation unexploited, no matter how
indelicate.

None of this should come as a surprise - I imagine the
good citizens of the state take incidental mental
illness in stride, given the enormous pressure to
relax and stay mellow. California is built on
escapism. First it was the great frontier, then the
moving picture show, Disneyland, LSD, EST, the Betty
Ford Clinic, Virtual Reality. In California, they have
discovered that the frontier needn't be an external
thing. It's more of a Golden State of mind. In the
future, hopefully, no one will ever have to leave
their car.

It's hard not to draw analogies between California
culture in 1995 and the many other influential empires
the sun has sadly set on. Rome, say, about the time of
the Decline and Fall? Even California icons like media
darling/demon Charles Manson have been quick to
compare the greater Los Angeles area to the setting of
the final Apocalyptic showdown (as artistically
rendered by St. John in his "Revelations"). Perhaps
it's the idea of living so deliciously close to the
Ultimate Destruction that turns people on. Death is
certainly a major player out there. Used to be,
California was the province of the young and
beautiful, who'd conveniently cash it all in before
plastic surgery was even necessary. The land, as in
pagan times, required a few of these sacrifices per
generation to keep things fertile. Now, before you can
finish listening to the Hard Copy broadcast of the
River Phoenix 911 call, up pops Leonardo, Eddie, Brad;
any one of an endless supply of babes who will
doubtless live forever, land be damned. Perry Farrell,
who was my surest bet for the first rock'n'roll martyr
of the nineties, is looking richer and healthier with
every passing day. Those who should have died young
are living a long, long time in California, and
someone is going to pay the price.

When did California start to suck? The impression I
get, from people who've been there more recently than
myself, is that it used to be better than it is. The
two major cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, are
by all accounts just as rotten as New York.

"Even worse in some ways", says a friend who tried
living in both last year. "Everyone in California
still suffers under the illusion that other people
envy them, that they're really cool and cutting edge.
At least people in New York have the decency to be
miserable."

Of all the people I've talked to, only one would even
consider moving to California - and only because she's
an actress and she wants more film work. I find this a
bit odd, as it's traditionally portrayed as the last
stop on the way to achieving the American Dream. This
sentiment isn't held by non-Californians alone.
Apparently, if anything, the trend is turning the
opposite way. The U.S. census reports that a projected
four million, forty-nine thousand people will leave
California for other states between the years 1990 and
2020, indicating a previously unheard-of migration
from the state. The remaining population, meanwhile,
will be older than ever before. As of the 1993 Census,
10.5% of the state's population was over the age of
65; for 2020, the projected number is 13.8%. The
expected number of births between those years is
20,129,000, with only 8,300,000 deaths on the horizon.
However, net immigration to the state over the
thirty-year period is expected to top ten million.
What all this means is, although people will continue
to flood California from all over the country (and the
world), there will be more oldsters amongst them - and
for the first time ever, Californians will be leaving
in droves.

Perhaps these figures are indicative of the kind of
xenophobic attitude that has brought about proposed
state legislation like the anti-immigrant Proposition
187 in recent times. Obviously, the proposition's aim
is to make life in California even more difficult for
undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom are
Mexican - which is strange, because if it weren't for
Mexico, not only would California as we know it not
exist, it would probably be a lot more like its
trashier cousin, Florida. The state that is now called
The California Republic (yes, it says so right on the
flag) was initially explored between the 16th and 18th
centuries by the Spanish, who were also the first to
colonize it, in 1769. The colony was under Mexican
rule from 1822 to 1848, when it was ceded to the
U.S.A., and became the 31st state of the Union in
1850. Now, a century and a bit later, state
legislators are attempting to shaft the descendants of
a population to whom they owe most of their
place-names, cuisine, and knowledge of psychedelics.
As my nan would say, well isn't that a fine how-de-do?

I don't wish to blame anyone. But when a whole nation
tends to look towards one place to find out what's
acceptable in the mainstream - through film,
television, music, advertising - it's important to
make sure that we're not all following a stampede of
incompassionate, self-absorbed, yogurt-swilling
lemmings as they plunge headlong into the Pacific.
Bear in mind that in addition to vast resources of
oil, natural gas, gold, salt, tungsten, and 60% of the
country's supply of mercury, California possesses the
largest natural stores of vibes in the world - and how
much longer they'll be good is anybody's guess.