L.A. Los Angeles Times Magazine | Sept. 7, 2008

My L.A.: City of Hope

“Showers!” a counselor commanded. All the boys around me began to strip until they stood naked at the edge of the institution’s showers. “Let’s go!” a second counselor shouted. “One! Two!”

Straight Outta Cali

At Rick Owens’ fall 2008 show, staged near his home in Paris last spring, raven-haired models strode out in his exquisitely tailored, dusty-hued creations like warriors fresh from a battle in Middle-earth. They wore snugly sculpted peplum jackets with off-center zippers, trailing capes, black-and-dung-colored shorts, flared shearling leg warmers and towering metallic wedge boots. The usual words sprang to mind: goth, macabre, apocalyptic, glunge (as in, glamour plus grunge, a term Owens himself coined to describe his deliberately scruffy, quietly luxurious clothes). Surely, one concluded, this designer must be as dark and intense as his work.

The Ear: What Larry Wants

Stand-up comedians need someone to bounce their stuff off of. It’s usually a close friend, because you have to say what’s funny out loud to someone you trust before you perform in front of an audience. Any comic with a brain has an Ear or two he entrusts with his comedic life—-in other words, his material. The Ear is a sounding board. He gets to know a comedian’s cadence, his point of view, his mind. Most stand-ups never step onstage without going through the routine with their Ear. I have had the opportunity to be the Ear for some of the greatest comedy minds in the business. One example is Larry David, my friend and colleague for more than 20 years, who was a guest on my show Sit Down Comedy.

Dating My Wife: The Long Ride Home

We’ve just dropped our youngest of three children off at college. After helping her settle into her dorm and feeling assured she is indeed ready to embark on adulthood, my wife, Robin, and I get into the car to begin our journey back to a home that will be empty for the first time in 25 years. After a marathon silence, I speak.

A Picture of Health: A Stroke in Prime Time

It started that morning with a headache—-an agonizing sensation of crushing pressure, just short of bone shattering—-along one entire side of my skull. My husband, Larry, suggested calling the doctor; I opted for two aspirin.

Briny Depth

Heartbroken, awestruck and hungry, I stood on a dock in Oxnard watching six 110-pound crates being forklifted into the Ocean Queen delivery truck headed to a processing plant. Thousands of sea urchins piled on top of one another-—onyx, purple, claret, dime size and lavender, wiggling and fierce.

The Comeback Kid

If you are a football fan living in Los Angeles, which has not had an NFL team for 13 years (since the Rams left Anaheim for St. Louis in 1995), how is it you have not gone crazy? The most probable reason is the ongoing rivalry between the town’s two Pac-10 teams-—one of which has been ranked at or near the top of the national polls for the last six years.

Better Half

It turns out she’s just a real girl. Or woman. Always has been. But the times they are a-changin’, and no matter what happens in November, she won’t be the same—-or maybe she will. Michelle Obama, 44, still has the same friends she has had all her life, including her best friend, her mother, Marian Robinson. She is a mom first, but also a professional, and as everyone now knows, an Ivy League graduate, a really big deal for a girl from the South Side of Chicago.

Hollywood Rules: No Grunts, Please

Even after several years working as a television writer and producer, it hadn’t occurred to me that you need a good assistant-—probably because I’d never had a good one to begin with.

Beyond Ballroom

I am a dance lover. As a child, I was a serious dance student, but I peaked at seven. Now I dance for the sheer fun of it. It’s a way to get back to a more joyful state.

Cooking for Izzy

I am obsessed with my dog Izzy, a two-year-old, 80-pound standard poodle. And even though Cesar Millan would disagree, Izzy is a person. Just walking down the street with him is an experience. I mean, he’s taller than me (I’m five-two) and gorgeous.

City of Angels: Riding Tall

Mayisha Akbar is running late. With good reason—-she’s at the Mandela Children’s Learning Village picking up eight students who can’t travel on their own because the area is too dangerous.

Manners Matter: Behavior Tips

Mention manners, and people think of phrases like please and thank you and about behaving in a civilized manner where food is served—-good qualities to have and the absence of which will only result in people not inviting you out.

Catbird Seat

It’s not hard to see why Rosson Crow loves L.A.: She’s fascinated by its rich history of manufacturing mythology and laundering images of power for mass consumption. But if you ask the 25-year-old Texan why she chose to settle here after finding success in New York and Paris, her response is surprisingly conventional. “I liked the idea of Los Angeles—-sunny skies and warm breezes,” she says cheerfully. “I wanted a house, a car, a big studio and a dog.”