Southland’s Just a Garden-Hose Away From Reality

I was out driving around the other day, still bummed that Tom Bosley didn’t get the nod to host “Masterpiece Theatre,” when I saw my first Hummer. That’s the civvie-street version of the Humvee military all-terrain vehicle that was the official pace car of Operation Desert Storm. Wide as a mobile home, low to the ground, a desert dun color--it would have been hard to miss on the highway even without its young ‘n’ affluent passengers hooting along like they were in their own lifelong Budweiser ad.

According to Rick Evans, president of Huntington Jeep-Eagle, which sells the things, Hummers go for $43,000 to $66,000. That latter price comes from tacking on such options as air conditioning, stereo and a “central tire inflation system,” technology that sure sent the Iraqis reeling.

I’ll admit to owning a pair of ‘Nam boots back during that camouflaged fracas. In the hippie days they were the closest thing to dress shoes that I had. But I don’t get spending 50 grand, give or take, on a wartime status car that looks as sexy as a convertible Brinks truck.

Back in my ‘Nam boot days, I was so deeply naive that I thought the whole refute-materialism, appearances-don’t-matter credo meant just that, rather than just being a “look” that others carefully cultivated. That may be one reason they appeared “foxy” in their disheveledness while I looked like a “dork,” an impression further enhanced, no doubt, by my actually being one.

The times we now live in may become known as “the preening years.” It’s more honest, at least. Rather than pretend not to be concerned with your looks, these days you’re practically considered a bag-person if you aren’t righteously obsessed with your image to the point of getting liposuction for your chicken before you eat it.

I just got a little sample vial of a men’s cologne called Egoiste (add a couple of superfluous dashes and umlauts above the letters to get the proper look). The black packaging comes with a little blurb reading: “To assume he is uncaring or aloof is to misread him. He walks on the positive side of that fine line separating arrogance from an awareness of self-worth.”

Wouldn’t it be great if you could hire someone to follow you around--maybe Tom Bosley since he’s available--explaining your personage in just those terms to those left in your wake? Say you ran over someone’s feet with a shopping cart and kept on going; Tom would be right behind to enlighten them: “To assume he is uncaring or aloof is to misread him...”

You likely would be wearing more than just cologne. My favorite sartorial trend of recent years has been “pre-distressed” clothing, apparel that comes from the factory already weathered and torn to give the impression that the wearer has actually experienced something in his life.

Rather than have machines and acids do this, it could open a whole new realm of designer wear if they were to have the clothing pre-distressed by actual bums (OK, let’s be PC and call them the “hygienically challenged”). Each piece of astronomically priced clothing would bear a designer label stating which “man of the street” had personally distressed the clothing.

The kids at Corona del Mar High could gather around, admiring, “Hey, look! Todd got a pair of Benny’s jeans!”

“Oh, let’s see!”

“Look at that! No one can wear in a seat like Benny.”

A friend and I were having a typically Cal-Italian meal--do caramelized onions and goat cheese set the scene?--and she was bemoaning that Southern Californians are so antsy all the time, so on edge, so desperate in our jobs, so much the opposite of our laid-back image. If you’ve traveled much, it’s hard not to notice that life does seem more anxious and tenuous here than elsewhere. Perhaps that, and maybe also our desire to be so defined by our outward image, comes as a response to the knowledge that the very land we live on is masquerading as something else. Recent deluge excepted, we live in a desert.

We’ve tarted up the region to look like a Mediterranean paradise. We spray down our driveways with water like we just can’t get rid of the stuff. But if the water, food and energy that arrive from elsewhere via a fragile network were ever to stop, life for the quantity of people living here now would become flat-out impossible. Except for those few who are sufficiently in touch with nature--i.e. those with Hummers, canned goods and Uzis--we would mostly die, which at least would avoid us having to sit through another Angels season.

Compared to most other critters, mankind isn’t particularly sensitive to its instincts. But deep down, on a level far more basic than trust in our institutions and tap water, we must sense that our existence here is on shaky ground. The reality that we’ve not only imposed an artificial ecology on an untenable area, but we’ve managed to screw it up too has to weigh a little heavy on the collective panic switch.

That’s the gut knowledge I think we live with, garnished from time to time with the fears brought on by earthquakes, riots, terrorist spectacles and TV news (which seems incapable lately of saying, “Oh, it might rain,” instead of “Deadly storms are poised to pummel/lash/masticate the Southland real bad”).

Personally, I don’t think Californians are going to get their own special Apocalypse, unless that happens to be the name of a new Jeep off-road vehicle. Eskimos live with snow. We get to live with the unease of knowing that the ground we walk on is a consensual illusion. Maybe that makes us what we are, why we’re called La La Land, why this is the place Hollywood and Disney spin their fantasies.

Is that worth the aggravation? I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out what a “central tire inflation system” does.