How to Sell a Surly City

I was lying on the couch the other evening recovering from the flu when a naked Ed Begley Jr. appeared before me.

At first I thought I was hallucinating due to a high fever. A friend who was on anti-depressant pills used to imagine he saw Ed McMahon when he forgot to take his medication.

But in my case, it wasn’t a feverish dream or severe depression. It was television. I focused on the set in front of me and there was the city’s former environmental commissioner, stripped to his shiny behind.

He looked pretty good. Years of bicycling around town and living on goat’s milk and brown rice soaked in Evian water have kept him trim and muscular.

The nudity, which was sedate and not frontal, came about due to Begley’s role in a strange and funny movie called “Amazon Women on the Moon.”

As I watched him, it suddenly struck me how L.A. can overcome its negative image. I rose quickly from the couch and headed toward my word processor.

“I have to work!” I said when my wife tried to stop me.

“Take aspirin and decongestants,” she said. “The urge will pass.”

“Not this time! I’ve just had a sign, I must write!”

“Never write when you’re feverish,” she said. “You know how much trouble that causes.”

“I must! I’m on a mission to save L.A.!”

“Oh my God.”

*

Let me backtrack. I was disappointed recently when, coming upon a current issue of the Conde Nast Traveler, I discovered that Los Angeles had once more failed to make the list of the 20 most desirable cities in the world and was also not listed among the 10 best in the United States.

Not only that, but in the category of people we scored the lowest of any city on the entire planet, meaning we are considered unfriendly, unhelpful, unpredictable and probably not too bright. Even Miami scored higher.

More than 30,000 readers of the magazine contributed to the annual contest that judged the cities. This is the eighth year of the competition, and the eighth year that L.A. has not been listed in either the top 20 or the top 10.

Susan Soriano, the magazine’s publicist in New York (No. 10 in the U.S. category), said that in addition to people, the City of Angles also failed in the category that included environment and ambience.

In other words, once you cut through the smog, there’s not a lot to see.

The rankings are personally frustrating because I have worked long and hard, despite frequent instances of high fever, to promote our town as the place to visit for excitement, danger and thrills.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: Visiting L.A. is kind of like being in a Bruce Willis movie. You want excitement? Stroll through MacArthur Park at night. You want adventure? Drive slowly through Hollywood with your doors unlocked and your windows rolled down.

What a great city for heart-stopping thrills.

*

I know we’ve had a high-powered television campaign in progress since last spring trying to change the nation’s impression of Los Angeles. The Conde Nast poll offers some idea of how well the whole thing has worked.

The campaign, unfortunately, is flawed. For instance, among its boasts is that Los Angeles is the No. 1 port of entry in the country.

While that may speak well for our economy, it’s hardly a lure to tourists. I doubt that crowds will come from miles around to watch the Haiku Maru unload Mitsubishis from its hold.

After I read the result of the poll in Traveler, I kept wondering what it would take to alter the perception of L.A. and get tourists thinking of us in more positive terms. Then I saw Ed Begley Jr. naked.

The commodities that L.A. are best-known for, due to our movie industry, are celebrities and nudity. Begley, were he still a commissioner, would have been a perfect example of combining those factors with city government.

Unfortunately, he took his environmental position too seriously, realized we were doing nothing to save the darter snail, and quit. But the germ of an idea remains.

Why not appoint to every city commission in existence those celebrities who have achieved fame through various forms of nudity on the big screen? Since the lure of their bodies causes millions throughout the world to adore them, perhaps it will also prompt them to travel to L.A.

While Sharon Stone sitting on the Police Commission might not lower the crime rate, it would sure create a lot of excitement waiting for her to uncross her legs. Let them find a category for that at the Conde Nast Traveler.