TALES FROM THE BARSTOOL
By: Clint Lien

"Back in L.A."

This isn't the column you're suppose to be reading.

I wrote another one last week. The subject was my fortieth birthday. Unfortunately I wrote the thing on my desk top, got a call to come to L.A. and left the next day. I forgot the column. I forget a lot of things at my age. So here I am in a Starbucks on Sunset writing a new one. I was struggling for a subject to write about when this guy approaches my table. He introduces himself as "Brad." Brad figures he's seen me somewhere before and wants me to help him figure it out. After we run through the usual exchange of friends and haunts we fail to come up with a common denominator. "Oh well," I say with a smile and turn back to my lap top - the lap top without a new column on it. I'd read my fellow columnist Lynn Paris's most recent effort this month and was suffering column envy. I had to come up with something good.

Brad pulled up a chair and sat down. He felt like talking. Being Canadian, it was impossible for me to tell him I was busy, but I didn't really mind. I had no idea of what I was going to write about anyway and sometimes a little conversation with a stranger can plant a grain of thought. The time was 1:24. At 5:08 Brad explained he had to get back to the valley to meet someone. Almost four hours of valuable writing time gone, but Brad was an interesting cat, there's no doubt about that, and he reminded me of something I loved about L.A. - just how many interesting people there are in this town - and how very different it is from anywhere else in the world. I'd been here less than 24 hours and already I'd seen more interesting things and met more interesting people than I would in six lifetimes in Victoria.

Trust me when I tell you that Victoria has a long list of its own charms but it does not have the fantasy element that LA has. Within one hour of arriving here I was in a meeting with a famous young actor at the St. Regis Hotel discussing my script. He was a nice fellow and said nice things about the work.

Later that night a friend and I went to Skybar to meet someone and discuss the project. We got to the bar but were not deemed cool enough to get in. Of course the doorman/actor didn't say that. He said the place was full. My friend is an Academy Award nominated director. I know that had the doorman known that we would have gotten in. We had to call the guy we were going to meet, who had been cool enough to get in before us, and move to a restaurant next door, with lower standards, where we could sit down and discuss the casting of this movie. From the table we were sitting at we could see into Skybar. It was nearly empty. The place we were at was a highbrow affair and we could have cast the film from the clientele. It was packed. Everywhere you looked there were beautiful people. All the clichés were present - old men with young women, movie stars with other movie stars and line-ups to the restrooms where the folks really were powdering their noses.

During the six years I lived in L.A. I seldom went to places like this. While you're welcome to look at the other patrons you're not allowed to talk to them unless you have a three-picture deal with Miramax and can offer parts - besides, I couldn't afford the $10.00 for the local beer and the music sucked. But still, once and awhile, it was fun to sit and give the old neck a work out.

Brad, my impromptu coffee guest, would have fit right into this crowd. He was young, good looking and worked in the industry. He had the ability to drop some pretty big names without sounding like he was name-dropping. That's a real skill. Brad had a movie to pitch. It was a good one and I told him so. He wanted to know if I'd write a two-page synopsis. I told him I probably could do that. He left after we exchanged email addresses. I probably will never hear from him again.

After he left I opened up the lap top but wasn't able to begin writing right away. Angelique, of the famous Angelique billboard fame, had come into the café and sat down across from me. She beamed me a massive smile. My god those things were big. How could a man write with those things in his face? And still I didn't have anything to write about.

So that's a run down of my first 24 hours back in L.A. Not everyday is like the one I've just had but often enough they are. If you can sit back and just smile at the ethereal feel of it all and not fall into the desperate pit of desires that seems to fuel so many here, you can walk away with some moments to hold on to and smile over them long after they pass. I love this town but I just can't think of anything to write. There's a nice little bar up the street. I think I'll go have a beer and see what happens.

Reactions? Comments? Write me at barfly@netlistings.com