On the longest day of the year, LA showed its colors, smells and fogginess. You hear people grumble about LA. You hear people praise its diversity. There’s so much there that it’s overwhelming. Michael Jackson impersonators, skateboarding mobs that run through traffic. Honky-tonk women and pedaling men. But they have some damn good chicken and waffles (read Roscoe’s). The Hollywood sign blasts you from the hills and million dollar burbs run into block housing. Dull isn’t a word that I’d use to describe it. The colors run into each other as the city ends at the sandy beaches of Venice. The salt of the earth are working just to live and living in their work: models, actors, lovers and the patrons of the arts, all gathered to appreciate the center by the sea. Trend-setters and envelope-pushers. All a bunch of freaks. But that’s what’s weirdly enticing about the city of angels. They may all be fallen by now. It is honest and grimy. It is full of blood, sweat, and tears. Cigarette smoking on the corners and parks filled with Mexican blankets and casual afternoons seen through rose-tinted glasses. She remains an image of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland as the pockmarked face of the moon shows in her alleyways and gas station blues. No apologies. No high standards. Just requesting a peace of your soul.