10/17/2005 12:36:00 PM|W|P|Danny Eagle|W|P| The first thing you notice when you're in LA is that it's sunny and dry and you're glad for it. After escaping the latest New York monsoon weather, I was relieved and amazed that there was a place that had sun, a comfortable breeze and palm trees. After descending through a giant brown fog it was sunny, 70s and blue skies all around. I felt like an earthworm that was just flung onto a driveway in July; happily and blindly drying up. The second thing you notice is that celebrities are like trees in LA. I saw Eric Estrada driving a black Rolls Royce. I saw Bill Maher, smugly chillin' outside a restaurant. At the bar was the Transporter. I saw Chewbacca drinking coffee (he has human hands!). To the LA folk, this is no big deal; they eat hot dogs and drink cocktails with these cats all the damn time so don't expect them to share your amazement. As for me, I felt like I was in an animatronic wax museum; straight up fuckin weird. It was sort of like that cheesy painting of all those dead actors hanging at the diner that you can buy at Spencer gifts... except they were real and not dead! LA has many contributions to American culture not the least of which is their expertise in making amazing fast food. It's fresher, tastier and more inventive than any fast food I've had anywhere on planet earth. You'll eat it and like it. In-N-Out Burger didn't make me feel like pooing and was served, to order, with a smile! All walks of life partake in the fast food binging -- young, old, pretty, not so much, they all eat the burgers and they're generally all good. They'll do some wild shit with their food too: chicken and waffles for breakfast?! Yes indeed, and it's so goddamn good. Secret jargon for ordering your burger? I was instructed to order my burger "animal style" and was highly successful though I'm unaware of how "animal style" differs from the regular. Everyone in LA has a car and drives all the time. Many of the cars are of the awesome variety. They're everywhere. Pal Jared? He's got a classic T-bird. Bad, bad Chad has a swanky coupe. Champ David? A mint Civic. Completely devoid of rust, LA cars live well beyond their east coast counterparts; you can actually drive and maintain cars that are more than 4 years old! Cyclists are few in number and visibly scared, the fabled LA subway really doesn't exist, and it seemed to me that nobody who's anybody rides the bus. You can sit in traffic for an hour going the same distance it would take 15 minutes to ride on a bike. You can burn over 600 dollars of gas in under a half hour in LA. Yet everyone just drives. The people there are damn cool too. The only other people I've seen acting this cool are New Yorkers. While the rest of the country is relatively grounded, reasonable, red-necked or "simple," the LA kids (like their distant NY cousins) have no problem making themselves and their beautiful looks the center of their own tweaked universe. It's a theme park for the glamorous and stylish, where only the glamorous and stylish are visible while normal people, homeless zombies and tourists meander through the fray of obscurity taking lots of pictures. I love LA. It's intoxicating and bizarre. In my first 24 hours there I peeped a stripper beat up a friend with her private parts, ate the best steak of my life, shut down a bar, was re-admitted secretly into said bar with a secret pass code and was greeted the following day by a crippling hangover that made me vomit. I spent over six million dollars on nothing but amazing times. I wish I could take the people I know there, the steaks and maybe even the naked girls with me back to my hood. But the truth is, these things can only exist in LA; you just can't take Space Mountain home with you. Shoutouts: Big up to the newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Dichter who were the cause of much celebration and antics. And another big up to my gracious hosts Chad and Ricky who let me roost in their lovely home unannounced.|W|P|112957786175650924|W|P|California | Los Angeles|W|P|scottlmoe@gmail.com10/11/2005 11:26:00 AM|W|P|Danny Eagle|W|P| On paper, the formula sounds familiar, and while perhaps interesting on weeeed, it doesn't sound any different than other shows on the thousands of nature/reality/documentary channels on your cable box: British guy explores the outer reaches of the civilized world, and plops himself into the middle of cultures of faraway tribes. This is true. But... this guy has some serious balls. I'm not talking Croc Hunter balls that enable you to wrestle dangerous animals for no reason. I'm talking going to Africa and eating hallucinogenic roots for two days straight to find and battle your inner demons. I can see the Croc Hunter now, trying that shit on for size, being clobbered by a giant imaginary dingo that represents his obsessive Mum, all while actually just rolling around with a muddy sleeping bag in front of laughing villagers. What makes the show great is th lengths to which the host goes to get close to his hosts and earn their respect. Imagine that, a white explorer earning native respect! He visits places so far away you'll start to doubt that snack foods and cowboy hats will actually overcome the entire earth. There is nothing out in those places but happy, relatively healthy people living the way they have for generations. Sure, they might drink cow blood, whack each other with giant sticks, or push their dinks into their abdomens, but these are GOOD PEOPLE; genuine people without mousse in their hair, unphased for the most part by the looming monster of globalized culture, at least for now. The show reminds us that at the core these exotic cultures are just like ours in the great civilized west, if we weren't such corrupted, fat and greedy jerks. Going Tribal is smart, respectful and deep, worlds beyond the average National Geographic fare. Catch it on Discovery, Tuesdays at 10. The videos are worth a look, particularly the stick fighting and cow blood drinking.|W|P|112905521526074828|W|P|Going Tribal | Discovery Channel|W|P|scottlmoe@gmail.com