City of the Soft Shoulders

Whenever I go on vacation, something dreadful happens to L.A. I was in Kenya, for instance, during the last big earthquake, in Rome during a dangerous brush fire and in Hong Kong when Dick Riordan was elected mayor.

The same spooky phenomenon continued recently on a less elemental scale. I took a week off last fall and while I was gone, our leaders tried selling the paper off section by section, the first chunk going to Staples Center. But we caught them at it.

And then about three weeks ago, as I vacationed in Paris, other leaders actually did sell the whole paper, this time to the outfit that runs the Chicago Tribune. I left L.A. knowing my work-home as Times Mirror Square and returned to it as the square formerly known as Times Mirror.

“Well,” my wife said as we descended toward LAX and a sea of lights from the City of Lights, “at least they didn’t sell it to Victoria’s Secret. A pair of lace panties flying atop the building would hardly seem appropriate for a daily newspaper. Not that you wouldn’t have liked it.”

I’m not sure I dislike the sale to the Trib, even though we’re all uncertain as to which direction this will take us. But I guess any direction is better than no direction, so weigh anchors and let’s get sailing.

But first, it might be wise to explore the influences the Chicago Factor might have on us. We’ve never had a relationship with a hog butcher to the world before.

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Seeking answers, I turned to where one always seeks answers, which is to say a metro columnist. Her name is Mary Schmich and she writes for the Chicago Tribune, the mother paper.

I asked a few simple questions and she responded, in typical metro fashion, with several hundred words. I wanted to know what Chicago was like and what impact it would have on L.A.

She managed to turn that into a whole column, which proves that nothing is ever wasted in the business of writing columns. Unknown to me, Schmich was once an intern for the paper formerly known as the L.A. Times and remembers me as “a wild-haired writer with rolled shirt sleeves and a big laugh who chomped on a cigar.” I think she’s confusing me with Pierre Salinger, but that’s OK.

She refers to the “colonization” of L.A. and offers instructions on our behavior, the way the king of England laid down laws to the New World:

“For example,” she begins, “ ‘dos’--as in the beer Dos Equis--will no longer mean two. It will mean ‘dos,’ as in ‘dos guys over dair at da bar.’ ”

Freeways will become expressways, “and instead of referring to them by numbers, you’ll have to call them by names, preferably the names of arcane, corrupt politicians.”

She adds: “We’re in charge now. You’ll talk da way we talk, yaknowwhadimean?”

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I know that many of youse, I mean you, have never been to Chicago and are therefore ignorant of its, well, culture. It is in that cold, windy section of America that is situated on a series of ponds that they call the Great Lakes. We don’t call our water the Great Pacific, but then we don’t have to, do we?

We do, however, have to start thinking of Chicago as the flip side of L.A.; sort of as antimatter or our evil twin. They swagger and spit and drink boilermakers while we sip a little white wine and cry during cell phone conversations with our agent while seated outdoors at trendy food boutiques.

I think the reason Chicago is so raucous is that it has always been the Second City to New York and is now the Third City by comparison to L.A. Oakland suffers from the same inferiority complex in relationship to San Francisco, and as a result is a boisterous little place with Jerry Brown at the helm chanting and spouting Zen homilies.

We, on the other hand, feel no need to compare ourselves to anyone because there is nothing close by except San Diego and that doesn’t count. We are just, y’know, L.A., take us or leave us, sunning ourselves on the beach and auditioning for parts in “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” or “Touched by an Angel,” whichever comes first. Angels, devils, blood-sucking teenagers, who cares? A job is a job.

As for Mary Schmich’s effort to whip us into shape, I don’t think that will be possible. L.A.’s influence may be more pervasive than Chicago’s. I know people from real places like Allentown, Pa., who have been here less than six months and are already calling everyone dude and hanging out at the oxygen bar where Hillary Swank is said to sniff oh-two.

I have a feeling you’ll be there too, Mary, if you can break free from hog-butchering for a moment. Bring your own Evian Water.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays, for the most part. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.