Battle: L.A. Vs. Cleveland

I lived in Cleveland and elsewhere in Ohio until I was 22 years old. Then, after I graduated from college (Beer University '04), I found several issues with the screening test given by Cleveland's only employer—Progressive Insurance—and I moved to Los Angeles, California, where they had a more freewheeling economy, where I could get a job (at least as a proofreader), and where I hoped to one day write jokes for South Park (or some blossoming equivalent).

A few months ago, I quit my job and moved—at least temporarily—back to Ohio.

I've been back here for a few months, and I've been surprised to reach the possible conclusion that I like and respect the people in Ohio a lot more than I like and respect the people in Los Angeles.


(The funny thing about that line is that it's somehow both factual and satirical.)

"But, Dan," you might object, "you're a relatively intelligent person, so wouldn't you prefer to live in a city full of other ambitious, intelligent people? Clearly that's not Cleveland's greatest feature, so what's up?"

I really should take a moment here and thank "you" for asking such a timely and thoughtful duet of questions.

It was my experience that the average Angeleno is no more intelligent or ambitious than the average Clevelander, and that's actually a big part of what I'll call "my problem," because the Angelenos believe that they are fundamentally smarter and better-off than other people. But I believe they are not "more ambitious" as much as they have ambitions that are regionally specific—like my abortion-and-unclefucking joke-writing pipe dream, which I could not rightly fulfill in Ketchum, Idaho (that I know of).

In my opinion, if you try to look at it with a fair amount of objectivity, Ohioans are easier to appreciate because they have overcome more adversity. They find, create, and keep jobs in one of the worst economies since the invention of pants, which requires a real mental fortitude, while Angelenos find and sometimes keep jobs in the fifth-largest economy in the world, which requires a heartbeat.

In short, I found that the majority of people in Los Angeles have a much higher valuation of their self-worth than people in Ohio, in the wrong way, for the wrong reason (which struck me as being the cultural equivalent of those piss-poor Republicans in the shit-sticks who demand tax breaks for the rich because they themselves plan on being billionaires one day, but in this case it's people who demand undue respect for the occasional brilliant things that have come out of the city where they now live). I can't tell you how many conversations I had in Los Angeles where I could see that the person I was talking to was simply going through the motions for my behalf, which is one of the most irritating things in the world for someone who enjoys vibrant conversation.

You almost never get that in Ohio. Sure, you might have a beefed-up swarthy Italian drunken fightmare come up to you, slap the drink out of your hand, and ask you, "What the fuck are you looking at, faggot?", which would almost never happen in LA (almost everyone in LA is a pussy, which is why they shoot guns rather than fight with fists), but at least that spittle-faced Italian aggression is being done with a sort of personal earnestness. Indeed, what the fuck ARE you looking at, faggot?

The conflicts in Ohio are real (even if they're "real dumb"); the "conflicts" in LA consist of a person of relative earnestness (myself) being tempted to violence by the intangible, unchokeable nature of his peers' half-listening condescension.

Basically, most of the people in LA are as bad as, if not worse than, the way they are depicted in the movies, but it's just not quite as obvious as it's made in cinema. In the movies, LA cunts and dickheads have the balls to make it obvious that they don't like you; in real LA, it's never obvious, but it's everywhere. And it's not like all the people I'm talking about are movie stars, rock stars, or Hollywood writers, either; they're aspiring movie stars, rock stars, and Hollywood writers who've completely chugged the pernicious logic of "Fake it 'til you make it."

In Ohio, and the Midwest, the philosophy used to be, "Work your ass off 'til you make it," but that was back when America would actually produce goods and services, which is a bygone era, so despite the fact that hard work doesn't pay off at all anymore, there's still the underlying ethic that says our self-esteem should at least be partly based on the objective facts of reality.

Consider this: I was voted "Easiest To Get Along With" and "Best Personality" in high school, and yet in six years in LA I made only a small handful of friends. I got along with almost everyone in high school and college, and, despite never having been in a fight in my life, I could barely make it through a party in Los Angeles without wanting to crack open the smug faces of half the people around me.

I understand the need to have ambition and self-confidence, but not when it manifests a self-worth that flies in the face of reality. (I am reminded of some truly wise words I read recently: "Funny how the Age of Positive Thinking coincides exactly with the age of the apocalypse.") I much more readily trust an honestly derived source of confidence, which is often quite difficult to come by, rather than the illusory, defense-mechanism self-confidence of the average trying-to-make-it Angeleno.

Women in Los Angeles are incredibly guarded. I understand that that's necessary, because so many of them moved out there and are alone in a very big and sometimes scary city, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not fun at all to talk to them, to have to slowly unwrap their ninety layers of defense before you can get to who they really are. In Ohio, most women are their earnest selves, and if they aren't attracted to you, you'll know it. In LA, who the fuck knows? If you're not Vincent Chase, you've probably got miles to go before you can sleep.

Or at least that's what way it was for me, and that could be because I have no game, but I have gotten laid in Ohio, so . . . there's that. Which I admit is not much. 

"So everyone was a big douchebag? You didn't meet anyone worth knowing?" you might ask. "Maybe everyone in high school was fucking with you. Ever think of that?"

Of course. Certainly. I met some wonderfully kind and talented people in Los Angeles—omnigenius Stephen Frick (who gave me the above "Age of Positive Thinking" observation), proofreader DeLane McDuffie, writer Peter Dirksen, musician Mike Costantini, and others—but that's a handful of people versus a region containing probably 20 million head of humans. I'm absolutely sure there are others as wonderful and bright and not-irrationally-full-of-themselves as Stephen, DeLane, Peter, Michael, and a few others, but what I'm saying is that the percentages are way off, and for some reason my blood turns into a justice wolf whenever it's around the faketry of confidence-undeserving metroids.

I used to think that people were the same no matter where you went, but unfortunately that's just not true. It's probably true of 90% of places, but not Los Angeles, and I think I know why.

I have friends in Ohio who've never left the state/city where they grew up, and they tell me that they wish they'd tried living somewhere else for a while, like LA. I can usually tell by the way they say this that they feel like there is some missing piece of enlightenment from their lives—that they're not "complete" people yet because they've never lived somewhere that was foreign to them.

I tell all those people the same thing—a quotation from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "The only enlightenment you find at the top of a mountain is the enlightenment you bring with you."

And that's the biggest problem with the "LA people" I met: they're the kind of people who moved from their hometown and expected to find enlightenment in a new city, despite the fact that all their demons followed them there like they follow everyone everywhere. And no matter how obnoxious they might appear, they're going to fake it until they make it.

I could have stomached all of that if the people at South Park had ever gotten back to me—if I were funnier—but they didn't (I'm not). 

I'm a joke-writing failure, and there's already enough of those in Los Angeles, so I'm back in Ohio now, where I am enjoying the company of people who have enough backbone to say what they really mean.

I returned to Cleveland in early November, and as I have endured another autumn and winter here, I have found a fresh observation, which I have been chewing thoughtfully for a few weeks.

When it comes to weather, Cleveland is a wildly "moody" place. In the same week, you might see a thunderstorm, a snowstorm, a tornado, and a vividly blue sky with towering monoliths of shifting white puffs of cloud. For better or worse, Los Angeles is the opposite of that—there are two seasons: Summer, and Not Summer.

The fresh piece of observation in the jaws of my mind concerns this idea: Cleveland is actually four different cities—Cleveland In Spring, Cleveland In Summer, Cleveland In Fall, Cleveland In Winter. And Los Angeles is only two cities: L.A. In Summer, L.A. In Not Summer.

L.A. In Summer is one of the best places in the world: ubiquitous clear skies, a natural cooling breeze off the cold Pacific, an ocean of pavement to be hiked or run or biked or skated or driven. And even L.A. In Not Summer is a very nice place, where the most you'll ever need to wear is a hooded sweatshirt.

But to see the leafless fingers of white-bark trees piercing the gray skies of Cleveland winter, and then to see those branches bud with colorful and aromatic flowers in the spring before popping open large green leaves that quietly cheer whenever the wind blows in the summer, only to be burnt to orange and brown by the cold fires of autumn—it is to walk through a vast spectrum of Life, a symphony of natural vicissitudes.

The only Life in Los Angeles is the ugly pattern of millions of human decisions. The skies and the buildings and the air are always the same.

Which is probably why fashion is so important there. It's the human-world's version of "seasons" in the desert.

I have such a disdain for fashion that one day in LA I decided to throw away all of my clothes and buy several Jedi robes and just wear those for the rest of my life. 

I didn't do it, but if I move back, I probably will.

Finally, I'm aware that in this post I'm coming off like exactly the type of LA person I was/am complaining about, but here are the two key differences: 1. I'm completely aware that I'm a reprehensible piece of shit (I did, after all, move to Los Angeles), and 2. I wrote this for your possible entertainment; I did not take over a conversation at a party and blast all this shit out to people who obviously don't care.

If I could give any advice to both groups of people, it would be almost the same advice, but on different ends of the spectrum. LA People: Quit being proud of things you didn't accomplish yet. Ohio People: Quit being ashamed of things you haven't accomplished yet.

The most troubling part of all of this is that I probably have to move back to Los Angeles soon. I'm starting a small publishing company with a lawyer-friend of mine, and it would benefit the business for me to be somewhere with a larger and younger population.

The way I see it, if our books can make it there—in that concrete stew of human vomit—they can make it anywhere.

Plus, my brothers live there, and I enjoy skateboarding.