Flaky LA--Fact or Fiction?

Flaky, not as in dandruff or a perfect homemade pie crust, but as in those people you know never to invite for a sit down dinner since no one can predict whether or not they would show up.

LA is known as the Flaky capital of the country, if not the world. I'm wondering how much of this is pure myth or how much of it is, in fact, reality? And sitting 3000 miles away in the heart of New England Pilgrims--those sturdy, dependable types-- well, now seems like the appropriate time to reflect on this stereotype of Angelenos.

Now, I'm not purposefully going out of my way to give credence to this stereotype of LA, thereby letting everyone think that all those who are natives, all 100 people, are to blame for this awful presumption. In fact, the most flaky individuals that I have met during my time there are those who have come from places like Kansas (yes, I've met two people from Kansas). It is as if once the cross the state line, they morph into the myth of an LA person where flighty, flaky, laid-back, and a little dim are accouterments along with the surfboard and convertible . You know the kind that talks about the healing properties of crystals with as much seriousness as if they were discussing world hunger. The few natives I've met are either incredibly proper, the perfect disciple of Emily Post, while the others were more like what you would expect. One native, who was crazy in that LA way, told me with a straight face that she and her husband fasted for 76 days, and that it was a transforming experience. Try to picture me not breaking out in laughter at her seriousness and the sheer lunacy of what she was saying.

The most important lesson I've learned about life in LA is never to expect the requisite RSVP. It is almost a disease here where people rarely, if ever, actually call or respond to invitations of the paper variety, and certainly not the Evites that people now like to use. We found this behavior very trying when we were planning our wedding, which was a sit down dinner, each head accounted for in dollars and cents. I remember having to call a few people directly to ask whether or not they were going to attend--they were, of course, but assumed I knew that. Annoying? Of course. After these few experiences, I decided to put on the invitations: Regrets Only. Even taking away the onus of having to call to say they will attend never made a huge impact since those who weren't coming never made the call to send their regrets.

What, you ask, makes people so inconsiderate? Well, where does one start? There is the excessive narcissism, with a capital N, that defines LA. This city is the capital of, "You have a problem, well, let me tell you about my bigger problem." It is the place where normal social mores have been relaxed to the point of a coma. Nothing is discreet, modesty is not a virtue, and showing and telling take the most explicit forms--the culmination of which is the Valley being home to the porn capital of the world. It is a city of individuals who are all blond, and all that implies by the stereotype of blonds, by choice.

Again, I have to stress that the 'natives' should not be to blame for these characteristics since I have met people from places like Boston or St. Louis who outdo the native Angelenos in vapidness, self-centeredness, materialism, and flakiness.

Martha's Vineyard, despite it being a vacation haven, seems and behaves like the New England of the Puritans. It is modest, discreet, grounded, and a bit Puritanical in its mores. People here have the restraint typical of this region where small talk with a stranger is truly about the weather--if they talk to you at all. In fact, this is the place where a person will engage in small talk of the most impersonal variety after they have seen you a number of times--usually over a few years. It isn't that they are impolite and rude, but just that there is none of that weird kismet between strangers, where they act, behave like best friends, despite barely knowing one another. And once they do speak, there is no intimate disclosure about family dysfunctions, finances--the success or failures-- or anything else that would reveal one's life to a stranger.

Now that I am so far removed from LA, I can reflect on what all of these differences mean to me, but to the way life gets lived. I think it will take me time, perhaps years, to unpack my time in LA. I don't know if I will ever be nostalgic about any of it. Only time will reveal whether I will miss those conversations about fasting, religious practices that are a hybrid of only the best aspects of all religions, raw food as a diet that helps you to be healthy, certain crystals that helps heal ailments, homeopathy as the only medical opinion that matters, where to go for an African drumming circle, invitations to Al Franken's fund raiser, and impassioned conversations about global warming--the cause du jour--with a woman, chugging water out of a plastic bottle, who drove to the lunch in her Range Rover, who doesn't see the irony about any of it.