Dealing With My Dullness
Thank God, Los Angeles magazine has departed from its customary listings of the 10 cleanest public toilets in the county and the 10 sexiest dog groomers to favor us with its latest perception of the L.A. Times.
We are dull, superficial, inconsequential, overbearing, self-important, fatuous, stupid, impotent and quite possibly evil. I’m just sick about it.
There were tears in the city room when the October issue of the periodical appeared. An editor cried at his desk. A reporter prayed for guidance at his word processor.
Here and there could be seen copies of the issue in question, the one with “Melrose Place’s” Courtney Thorne-Smith on the cover peeling off her winter duds. Next to her were the month’s listings of top articles: “Fave Desert Hideaways,” “Telluride: the New Aspen” and “Why We Hate The Times.”
That’s us.
Inside, we are referred to as “the Gray Lump” by writer Joe Seldner, who spares no prose in describing exactly how we have failed to please anyone, especially him. It’s a miracle we’re still in business.
I asked several colleagues here at the Gray Lump how they felt about the critique.
One reporter is heartbroken that the same magazine that found her the best Ersatz Euro-Indonesian restaurant in L.A. with an entree under $12.50 could have turned on her so. Another has formed an encounter group to deal with those undergoing emotional crises as a result of Joe’s article.
And I have made a new commitment to fight personal dullness. From now on, I’m writing in the nude.
“You don’t mind my asking,” my wife Cinelli said to me a few moments ago, “but why are you sitting naked at your word processor?”
“I’m fighting vapidity,” I said.
“Anyone’s in particular?”
“My own. L.A. magazine says we’re dull. I intend on countering that perception.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you could just buy a brighter tie or get tattooed or something less . . . well . . . obvious?”
“I felt nudity made a more precise and immediate statement. I don’t think Joe Seldner would have settled for less.”
“Well, I’m glad you write at home. The world isn’t ready for naked whimsy.”
Then she asked if the article said I was personally dull or just part of the total dullness that is a pervasive characteristic of the Gray Lump.
I wasn’t sure, so I read the piece a second time.
Joe says of me, “True, it (the Gray Lump) has local commentators, columnists like Al Martinez in ‘Metro’ and Robin Abcarian in ‘View,’ but they tend to muse about things that strike them as funny more than shape the hard edge of public opinion.”
“He didn’t exactly say you were dull,” Cinelli pointed out, “he sort of said you were . . . well . . . unimportant.”
“Is that better?”
“It’s different.”
I don’t know Joe Seldner, but no doubt he is a sweet young man who only drools with rage when the Gray Lump is mentioned.
He does make reference to having once worked at the Denver Post, which possibly casts him in the role of disgruntled ex-newsie, though I’m not sure he isn’t perfectly gruntled and happy to be.
Occasionally, someone named Joe Seldner has written us letters to the editor and in one case a talk-back piece. The letter-writer Seldner is described as a former executive with Columbia Pictures, a former development executive and a screenwriter.
If they are the same Joe, I suspect he came from Denver to Hollywood to be in the movies, failed to make the cut, then awoke one morning to declare himself a media critic. It came to him in a dream.
But, hey, I’m not here to speculate but to learn. After reading Joe’s article, I studied several issues of L.A. magazine and found it to be a paragon of tough, intriguing articles and bright writing.
There was a hard-hitting story on “Spuds”--”5 reasons why the once-lowly Idaho has become the hottest dish in town”--and a piece on “12 Unexpected Places to Spot a Star” that would have knocked your socks off. Both in the same devil-may-care issue.
For bright, meaningful writing in the ‘90s, I found celebrity columnist Nikki Finke, an ex-staffer for the Gray Lump, whom God directed into covering Hollywood cocktail parties.
She tosses off phrases like “Geena Davis, looking mucho glam” as though she were born to write descriptive prose and would rather die than miss “CAA’s Jay Moloney planting a big, wet one on ICM’s Risa Shapiro.”
I’ve learned a lot reading Joe Seldner and studying L.A. mag. “Perhaps now,” Cinelli said, “you will at least wear underwear.”
What? And lose my dazzle?
