In 1979, I returned to Los Angeles after five months of purgatory with mononucleosis at my parents’ house in Dayton. I had only been in LA for one eventful month the previous fall, before symptoms of that nasty virus exhibited, my illness was diagnosed, and I bid a hasty retreat (determined to return) back to the Midwest to convalesce. Fortune presented me with an opportunity that is one of those moments in ones life that everything that follows depends on. So much so that my two kids today will sometimes note that they owe their existence to their dad winning $4400 on the game show “Password”.

It felt like purgatory because, for my own sense of self-respect and not feeling like a quitter, I knew I had to go back to Los Angeles even though I was very uncomfortable there, hated the place in fact, if I would have been willing to admit that. It seems like most everyone I had encountered there was either scheming or scamming or otherwise had a precarious grip on their life in the city of angels. I had not encountered the solid thoughtful people there, like my “Feminist Aunts” back in Ann Arbor, who were anchored and could help me anchor myself. Of course I had only been there a month or so before I baled with my mono. (more…)

In 1978 I arrived at LAX on a plane from Denver, the last leg of my journey that began with leaving behind my hometown of Ann Arbor and seemingly all the values and community that encompassed my youth and went with that special college town. I had had a number of compelling adventures in my life so far, most notably eleven weeks of backpacking on my own through Europe, but none more profound than this half-baked plunge as a very little fish into the very huge pond of Los Angeles.

I had been warned! I had seen Andy Warhol’s movie “Heat” laying out in every grotesque detail the worst case scenario of being a nobody wannabe with delusions of grandeur in the City of the Angels. I had heard my fellow Michigander, Bob Seeger’s song “Hollywood Nights” and the Door’s “LA Woman”, and knew that there might be no there there in “tinsel town”. (more…)