II. The King's Fool: Written in January, 2006.

It seems counterintuitive, but I received some of my juiciest background on Los Angeles from a farm boy who grew up in the Midwest.

“They’ve seen the Valley. They’ve seen Beverly Hills. They’ve been through Hollywood and they think they know L.A.”

Daniel pauses briefly, his jet-black non-coiffed ‘hawk falling over dark eyebrows, thin arms crossed across the table.

“…So he puts a picture of a fucken’ dollar store and a tiny taco truck up on his blog! Cos that’s what most of this city is made up of. And that’s what I fucken’ love about it!”

But later on in the conversation, talking to a fellow L.A. transplant originally from Chicago, he expresses consternation over the future of his adopted city:

“But now Silverlake just equals Williamsburg equals Silverlake…” he calculated, referring to the newly gentrified yuppie havens of L.A. and New York respectively, decrying the rapid homogenization of what once was fresh, what once may have been—dare I utter the phrase? —cool. As one who has had his eye on Williamsburg since visiting its Mandela-quoting street art alleys and alluring Asian-American female inhabitants last year, I feigned similar ennui at the swiftly changing face of both neighborhoods.

“Goddamn hipsters,” I muttered under my breath, wondering whether I should feel the slightest bit sheepish for owning a Members Only jacket.

Raised on a farm in Iowa, one would never have guessed that Daniel’s tenure in this most starry of cities amounts to roughly two years. It might be the effortless way in which he wears those remarkably tight black jeans. Or perhaps it’s his preference for Japanese glam rock and musical outfits whose passage-length names suggest a Faulkner-esque indifference toward brevity. Just to rub it in a little, he’s a 23-year-old who drives a motorbike to his job in Beverly Hills and has cartoonist friends who “are paid two hundred thousand to sit around in their studio watching DVDs.” Daniel is also adept at slipping too-perfect anecdotes on L.A.’s colorful demography and personality into conversation, including personal tales I can see etched into the smoky air outside the front door of hundreds of its bars:

“You wouldn’t believe how many times people call me, trying to pitch me their script! And I don’t even have anything to do with the selection process!” he laments.

I felt even stupider. Earlier in the evening, I’d just babbled excitedly to him about my (fanciful) thoughts on writing a biopic screenplay about the revolutionary guerilla leader and current president of the world’s newest nation. This was just after he had explained his current position at Participant Productions, financiers of recent acclaimed gems including “Syriana,” “Good Night and Good Luck,” and “North Country.”

“Think ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ meets ‘Hotel Rwanda,’” I had told him.

Following this ridiculous faux pas, I thoughtfully decided to consign myself to actually speaking only when the conversation approached subject matter of personal semi-authority. As the topics of hard-left political theory, British views on Irony and the ethnic dynamics of neither Malaysia nor Australia arose; I was more or less silent for the remainder of the evening. I did, though (perhaps as partial result), get past the first level on Donkey Kong on one of the circa-’81 arcade games the bar carried.