I was recently in Chicago for a few
days. My friend, Emma, was there for a business conference with her baby, Samuel,
who happens to be precisely one week older than Emerson. Emma and I
attended college together, which included a three-month
'co-op' in LA. She was a nanny in the Pacific Palisades. I, despite
everyone's best efforts, could not get a paying job. So I crashed on
the futon-couch-thing at Emma's friend's apartment in Brentwood – a
stone's throw from where Nicole Brown Simpson had only just been murdered (the police tape was still up). I ended
up working for free doing script coverages for Oliver Stone's
production company, and was even an extra in Nixon. I played a
sleeping hippie on the steps of the 'Lincoln Memorial' who was oh so
rudely awakened when Nixon and whoever James Woods played walked past
me. Regardless of being in so so shiny Heidi Fleiss-y LA in my early
twenties, the intrigue of being in such close vicinity to the most
humongous murder scene since Manson days and the seemingly
cool Hollywoody-ness of the Oliver Stone/Nixon stuff, I was
miserable. By the end of that Summer, I vowed never to return to the
vapid cesspool commonly referred to as Los Angeles.