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I took my brother to Union Station in LA this morning. It took me over two hours to get there, and I made it back in about 55 minutes (not even speeding). Every time I drive into L.A. I remember why I hate doing so.

I'm kidding myself if I think I could ever be happy living there in the hypothetical.... I think it would take one damn fantastic job to ever make me live in Los Angeles. I'm in Orange Country right now and I don't even care for it, but at least it's not as busy, choked, stifling, polluted, and colorless as L.A. The air is gray, and the sky is gray-brown, and everything is loud, and the stop lights never give you a left-turn signal so you just have to yeild and hope for the best.

I know that all cities are crowded and polluted and noisy-- I grew up in San Jose, so I'm intimately acquainted with cities. There is simply something about L.A. that puts me off. Of all the enormous, intense cities I've been to-- San Jose, San Francisco, Vancouver, Denver, New Orleans, D.C., San Diego, Salt Lake City, even Des Moines... Los Angeles puts me off the most. I just have to drive into the area and I'm overcome with a general sense of irritation, nerves, and apt-to-bite-someone's-head-off urges.

This could be because of the traffic. Maybe I'd like the city better if I never drove anywhere? But it feels deeper than that. My happiest moments in L.A. have been in art museums, where I couldn't see the city anyway. ((And one rather hilarious and fun evening a few years ago with