With The Legal Alien – Monthly Musings from an Englishman in LA
By Darren Darnborough
There are over 3.8 million people in Los Angeles.
That’s no small number. Yet, live here for more than a few months, and you’ll find the same few folk seem to be regurgitated around the city, like a sesame seed in the teeth following your morning bagel.
I was sitting at my local coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard recently, heavily captivated by my blank Microsoft Word page, when a shadow darkened my table, immediately chilling my fresh latte.
“Darren!” exclaimed the mysterious figure.
“Dude! Oh. My. God! This is kerrrazy!”
I glanced up from my laptop to witness a generic handsome twentysomething brunette guy, indistinguishable due to the ridiculously large sunglasses covering more than a decent ratio of his face. After staring for a few seconds trying to place this guy, all I could muster was a “sorry, who are you?”
He relieved the tension by removing his retina forcefields to reveal an old acting colleague whom I hadn’t seen in several years. “Hey, how you doing man” was my blasé response, as I offered him a seat to catch up.
The early conversation leant mostly towards how crazy he thought it was that we could bump into each other in LA, miles away from our homeland. Having been here now long enough to father a child, I assured him that it’s a regular occurrence, hence my nonchalance to his sudden appearance. I further justified it with the example of a director with whom I went to university nine years ago; despite working in the same industry and living in the same part of London, I hadn’t bumped into him once back home, yet here we passed on the street on his first week. Before I even got to the climax, said director friend high-fives me, as he pops by to grab a coffee, unplanned.
“See?” I explain. Unconvinced, my pal begins to fill me in on the last few years and what he’s doing in LA. It turns out he’d started to enjoy the feminine company of a certain S Club 7 star that is now living in Hollywood. I throw away a comment about it being strange that I haven’t bumped into her yet.
This was met with various oppositions: it’s not that weird; we probably don’t hang out in the same areas; we have different friends; we probably live different places; she clearly wouldn’t be seen near anyone with ginger hair, etc. So, we then head down the street to a local bookshop, and who do we bump into? The look on my friend’s face was priceless.
As Paris would say, this kind of thing is just sooooo LA. It is really strange. Back in London, a place where I have lived for over 25 years, studied, worked in various jobs, and partied lots, I find it really surprising if I bump into someone that I wasn’t intending to see. Yet here in the City of Angels, I really don’t think I’ve been out for one whole day without seeing someone I know out of the blue. Not just people I’ve met here either, but friends and acquaintances from all over the world.
We’ve all tried to brainstorm various theories. Are there only a few places that people hang out? Perhaps not, since I’ve had encounters as much at the latest hotspot as I have in a 7 Eleven in Burbank. Plus, it is a vibrant city full of many restaurants, bars, hotels and the like – there is no shortage of places to choose from. Another idea is that LA people just know more people, and go out more. It’s a town full of freelancers, networkers, and partyheads, so it makes sense that their phone books fill up more quickly than those of your average surbubanite. What’s particularly strange is how the English expats all magnetise towards each other.
At one particular event, I was accosted by no fewer than seven different UK soap stars, each from a different show. These are people that I didn’t meet back home, yet they recognized me from “out and about”. Whatever the soap machine churns out, you can be sure as hell they wash up this side of the Pacific, where everyone knows everyone, yet no-one knows any of them.
There are, of course, also several dubious claims of nepotism that circulate – our Robbie Williams being one common denominator. I have met so many people that allege to play on his Tuesday night five-a-side team that he could well have enough players for a full World Cup tournament, each instance accompanied by an offer of taking me there to join in. Yet I have never shared the pleasure of a sideline satsuma with the Robster. For those Hollywood types that really want to show their worth in the “who knows who” stakes, movie website IMDB has come up with the perfect solution, which definitely combats potential fraudsters. Their “Bacon Number” rating shows how each actor is linked to Kevin Bacon – quite the dinner party conversation piece. I’m currently at three degrees of separation, but I’m set to rocket to number two after filming with Forest Whitaker later in the year. If your Bacon number can’t pull the ladies, what’s a boy to do eh? It’s not what you know. It’s not who you know. It’s what you know about who you know, or more importantly who you know knowing what they know about you, that counts in this place. So go about your business, but be careful who you shout at/insult/ compliment/work with/ rip off/ sleep with. It may just come back to bother you like that sesame seed in the teeth at the breakfast meeting.
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