Growing up in Connecticut, all the Colonial houses looked alike. In Los Angeles, the diversity is so extreme, it's baffling.

People assume that somehow fame and wealth will keep mortality at bay.

Many of my friends back in New York and elsewhere have a glib or dismissive attitude toward Los Angeles. It's a place of strip malls and traffic and not much else, in their opinion.

I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.

I'm a terrible cook, so I usually eat out with friends.

The progressive movement needs more crazy and amoral/immoral right-wing politicians and pundits like Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.

If someone is cynical and doesn't vote and ends up with a crummy job in a crummy country with a decimated environment, they only have themselves to blame.