I’m in LA for about the third time in four weeks and as I continue to spend more time here, I can’t help but be confused – confounded, even – by this city.

- After several nights out at clubby/loungey/chic bars, I begged my friends to take me to a real dive bar. So on Saturday night, they did. Well, at least they thought they did.

A dive bar has very few requirements: no frills, cheap beer, decent music, and ugly people. This bar had the first three, but not the last one. Not by a long shot.

A bar can not be a dive bar if its patrons have teeth so bright and white that you could spot them on the ocean floor from a schooner above the waves. A bar can not be a dive bar if its patrons wear shirts that cost more than my last three pairs of dress shoes combined. A bar can not be a dive bar if its patrons can each either bench press 250 pounds or run a marathon in under 4:30. A bar can not be a dive bar if its patrons are more likely to order a Jagerbomb than a pint of draft beer. I’m sorry, but thems the rules.

On my last visit to LA, my mom asked me why I wanted to get back to NYC so badly. I told her I missed my stuff, pizza, and ugly people. My friends and I, God bless us, are not easy on the eyes. We have poor taste in clothes and bad hair, we do not work out, our eyes are bloodshot from excessive boozing and our fingers are stained from nicotine, and more than a few of us actually smell. But this is part of our charm. It’s also part of the reason that we’re going to have to marry each other or at least do each other if we have any desire to procreate.

(I’m guessing most of us are sterile or barren anyway, so the point is kinda moot.)

I do not like walking into a room and consistently being in the bottom 3% of attractiveness (and I was one of People’s 50 hottest bachelors for Christ’s sake, though I’ll be the first to admit that that was a total fluke). I’m not saying that I’m attractive in NYC, but that percentage increases at least to the bottom 16% or, on a good night, the bottom 19%. At any rate, I don’t think of my attractiveness when I’m out in NYC. I’m mostly thinking about getting my next beer and wondering what Prince does on a day-to-day basis. But while out in LA, I’ll look around at all the fake boobs, the tans, the white teeth, the fit people; and then I’ll look at myself, with my scraggly beard and my crappy clothes, looking all chubby and coked out, and it makes me sad and, worse yet, impotent. Or that could be all the coke. Whatever. I’m not a doctor.

The point is that the LA social scene is, for lack of a better description, really something else. Over the past two-plus years, I’ve been out here maybe a dozen times and I’ve yet to find a place that I feel comfortable drinking in or even one that reminds me of the places I frequent in NYC. I didn’t think I was asking much of LA in this regard – nothing fancy, cheap beer, good music, some ugly people – but I guess that I am. So my options are two-fold: I can either hit the gym, hit the beach and start brushing my teeth with regularity, or I can drink in the bathroom of my buddies’ apartment. I’ll have to think about this one.

(The good news is that it’s a nice bathroom.)

- From the kick ‘em while they’re down department, time for two horribly overused clichés but entirely legitimate complaints: the bagels and pizza here are really, really bad. I had a "bagel" the other day for breakfast that tasted like a cardboard box that was used to ship ass. I had late night pizza over the weekend that was so greasy and bland that I actually cried in the cab on the way back to my apartment. Life is not worth living without decent bagels and pizza (and dive bars).

- But there are some good things, though. I really like my morning drive to work. Getting up at 5:20am is a fate nearly worse than death, but there’s something pretty dang cool about going out to the car in the pre-dawn light, turning on the windshield wipers to clear off the dew, tuning into the Adam Corolla show (which is supremely entertaining), and taking off for work when 90% of the population is still asleep. There is a peacefulness to this that I can not find in NYC, where no matter how early I wake up, there are two dozen 100 year old Chinese ladies screaming at each other outside my apartment door.

- Another good thing: After driving around town during previous visits in "economy" rental cars that are only slightly larger than most desktop computers, on this trip I’m rocking a Chevy Blazer because they didn’t have any smaller/cheaper cars available. I’m not a truck guy – or even a car guy, really – but there’s something to be said for riding high and dominating the road, laugh manically, throwing garbage out the window, feeling like you could crush all of the other cars around you. I’m getting hard just thinking about this. Seriously. And it’s pretty awesome. It’s just too bad I’ll never own a car as long as I live in NYC. Whoops.

- There is something inherently wrong and possibly even evil about waking up at 9am to watch football. The Eagles game (which was lovely) was over by 1:15pm, which on a normal Sunday in New York City is just about the time I’m first cursing the Eagles and saying to my friends, "Drinking this beer is making me die a little bit."

My LA friends say that the benefit of getting the games early is that they then "have the whole day in front of you." This may be true, but understand: Sundays are for football. That’s how it is. You are grossly overestimating me if you think I have something to do on Sunday besides waking up at 12:15pm with a hangover, making bets, then eating and drinking and watching football for ten straight hours. This is what Sundays are for, nothing else. What am I supposed to do – go to my yoga class? Hit the driving range? Meet with my book club?

Sheesh. Football at 10am. Shit ain’t right. Shit just ain’t right.

- Last night, I spent an hour on the beach in the early evening dipping my feet in the water, looking out on the hills, and watching the sunset. It was incredible. Even more incredible was that the beach was completely empty – I was the only person I could see on the entire stretch of beach. Again, clear skies, warm water, sunset – and not a person around. When I asked one of my LA friends about this, his answer: "Sometimes we’re over the whole beach thing." I don’t know if he speaks for all LA people, but that makes me sad. That beautiful beach I stood on in Hermosa last night made the one I summer at on the Jersey shore look like the yard of a Brazilian prison. It’s a shame, really, that no one else was there appreciating it.

- After spending said time on the beach, I went to Chili’s for dinner with some friends. And it was awesome. I had never been to Chili’s. And I couldn’t be happier about how the experience worked out.

- Tonight for dinner, I’m going to the Olive Garden. I have never been to an Olive Garden. I couldn’t be happier about this, either. I’m not going to lie – the suburban livin’ element of LA is definitely intriguing to me.

- I’m taking a red eye back to NYC tomorrow night and going straight into work on Wednesday. If you don’t think I’m going to break the record for "most diet cokes consumed by a man with a beard in a seven hour span," you are sorely mistaken. My Wednesday night after work will consist of Sea Thai, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, a murder show, a Xanax, and twelve hours of deep, uninterrupted, narcotically-induced sleep. I couldn’t be happier about this.