I know I haven’t put an email on here in a while, but this one’s a good one. It’s from Greg here in LA.

Jason,

That’s it, I’ve officially reached the stage where I can’t wait for you to get the fuck out of town so your continuous bitching will cease! In my opinion, your whole negative/bullshit/false LA experience is a direct result of one decision – moving to the South Bay. Let’s break it down:

1) You moved to the LA equivalent of Staten Island and then complained it’s loaded with guidos. Did you consult anyone actually living in LA before moving to LA? How did your agent let this happen?

2) Due to this impossibly poor choice of housing, you lived and died in your land yacht and spent an estimated grand total of 3 nights in LA-proper with any (imaginary?) friends you had already in town. You know, because they actually lived in LA.

3) According to my careful study of your LA posts, I don’t believe you made a single new friend.

4) You love music, but did you see one band at any of the great venues we have around town?

5) Did you go to any restaurants? I loved your NYC reviews!

6) LA is a city of neighborhoods; did you explore any of them? Did you ever travel east of La Brea?

7) Lastly, you also somehow managed to find the three liquor stores in LA that don’t sell 16oz Bud Cans. I have 6 in my fridge right now and don’t think I could find a store that doesn’t sell them. For a while I thought “Bud Bombers” were some Canadian/metric can size only available back east.

Listen, I get your ambivalence about LA coming from NYC, but can you really say you lived in LA? Now that you’re in Westwood, make it your mission go out and bang a summer school dummy before you depart. They’re ripe for the picking!

My bitching aside, I’m a huge fan and can’t wait for the book. Now, I’m off to the fridge to start cracking bombers and get fooked.

- Greg

P.S. California Wok is fucking fantastic.

Thank you for email/dressing down, Greg. I guess the easiest way for me to do is to take these one at a time.

1) I did actually consult with some people (including my agent) before moving to the South Bay, and nearly everyone advised me against it. However, a room opened up at a house where I knew people – a room that was 1/3 of the rent I paid in NYC – and between the cool people who lived at the house and the cheap, cheap rent, I decided to take it, even though I had established contact with a girl on craigslist who was offering a bedroom (and it’s own bathroom) in her two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in that nebulous area known as Beverly Hills Adjacent.

And you’re right – choosing the South Bay was a huge, huge mistake. If I could have done it all over again and changed just one thing, I would have taken that room in BHA. Not only would I have been about three miles/a ten minute drive each way to work (as opposed to the 17 mile/one hour twenty commute each way from the South Bay), but I would have been closer to all my friends who lived in Hollywood, Burbank, Santa Monica, Brentwood, etc. Instead, I spent my first year in LA stuck in traffic, getting angry, and losing what former LA friends I once had because we never hung out.

So yeah. Whoops.

2) I can only recall one night that I spent in LA proper, when I went to Hollywood last year for a night for my birthday. Otherwise, my time’s been spent in the South Bay, with a sprinkling in Santa Monica and now Westwood, and maybe two or three nights in Venice. So you got me there, too.

(I was having a discussion with a friend the other day and he said, “C’mon – you have to have had at least some good nights in LA, right?” And – honest to God – I can’t recall one single fun night in LA. Not even one. Some fun day-drinking days, but there’s not one night I can look at and say, “Wow – we really tore that mother fucker up last night, huh?” Oh well.)

(Wait a minute – when I first moved here, and shortly after I signed the current book contract with HC, I threw a party for myself in Santa Monica. That was fun, especially because my buddy Brian got so drunk that at one point he picked up the jar full of cherries from the bar and, thinking it was his drink, took a sip. That was pretty cool. The $55 cab to Santa Monica and the $80 cab back to Redondo, not so much. And since I can have a lot of fun for $135 in a number of different ways, I don’t think this night counts.)

Verdict: Greg wins #2.

3) My first reaction was to say that this is true, but I have made a few new friends. (Note by “friends” I mean those people who, if you asked them “Do you know Jason Mulgrew?”, they’d say, “Who?”, and you’d say, “The chubby guy with the beard who drinks Bud drafts?”, they’d say, “Oh yeah, I think I know that guy. He’s gay, right?”) However, I will concede that I have significantly fewer LA friends after having lived here for a year-plus than when I lived in NYC and only visited LA every so often. This is due to a number of factors, but mostly because when I was coming here before, it was like going on vacation. Therefore, I was more likely to be pro-active, to get out, to see people, to experience things. Likewise, my LA-based friends would be more likely to out and meet me because, hey, I just flew 3000 miles and am only in town for a few days!

But then once I moved to LA, I became just another shit-dog, stuck in traffic, growing more self-loathing by the day, constantly fantasizing about something better. In short, the true LA experience.

So while I have made a friend or two in LA, because my total number of LA friends has decreased since I moved here, Greg gets this one, too. Crap.

4) Nope, I have not seen any concerts in LA (saw Motley Crue in Vegas, but that obviously doesn’t count). Going to a concert in LA, like seeing my favorite artist last night at the Greek Theatre, eleven miles from my apartment, would require driving and parking and not drinking, so I’ll just download the live CD and booze it up at home, thanks.

(Greg 4, Mulgrew 0)

5) No, no restaurants to speak off. I feel like my agent and I went out a few times – I ate and subsequently pooped my tooth out while at dinner with him, but that restaurant was in a mall, so while lovely, it doesn’t count. I did, however, go to my first Chili’s and first Olive Garden while living in LA, so that has to count for something. Also, I’ve been to Houston’s like a dozen times.

(Greg 4, Mulgrew 1/2)

6) Is Dodger Stadium east of La Brea? I’ve been there four or so times. Also, once I drove through Hollywood to pick up my buddy Brian on the way to San Fran, and have had a couple of meetings in Burbank. So while this doesn’t count as “exploring,” I mean, physically, yes, I have been east of La Brea. I think, anyway.

Greg 4, Mulgrew 3/4

7) This, my friend, I’m willing to throw down about. Sure, I haven’t covered all 4700+ square miles of Los Angeles County, but you can bet your ass I’ve explored many, many liquor stores, supermarkets, beer warehouses and convenience stores all over the South Bay and Westwood, and I have not seen a 16oz can of Bud anywhere. This, finally, might get me to get out and start exploring LA. So if you’ve got a lead on where to find these, preferably within a one mile radius of Westwood and Olympic, please let me know.

************

But you’re right, Greg – I guess I can’t say that I’ve really “lived” in LA. And in truth, I have no one to blame about this but myself. But when I moved to LA, I said that I looked at it like a year of rehab, a chance to get well physically, mentally, emotionally, financially. And sure, I’m probably dumber and angrier than I’ve ever been in life, at least I’m in pretty good shape and have some money saved away. Two out of four ain’t bad.

All joking aside, LA is a great city – but you really have to work for it. You do have to get out, have to drive, have to be proactive, go out of your way, to see places, people, things. Most importantly, you have to plan ahead. In NYC, every Friday I’d come home with my aforementioned Friday night special (two sugar-free red bulls to mix with vodka, six cans of bombers), eat dinner, start drinking, shower (while drinking), and then start in on “Jackass” or “Wildboyz” or some VH1 Classic and at about 9:30pm, send a mass text message to about 20 different friends: “What’s going on tonight?” Within 30 minutes and a $10 cab ride, I could be in Gramercy drinking with Philly buddies, in the Lower East Side boozing with my old roommates, or in the West Village, partying with some lady friends. I love NYC because it’s easy, because everything is at your fingertips. The one sentence description that I’d give buddies from Philly or Boston who asked me about living there was, “Well, my local McDonald’s delivers 24 hours a day” (which was true). That’s some crazy shit right there.

I moved to LA from this culture and I still haven’t gotten over the shock. At my place in the South Bay, I could walk a half-mile in each direction and find nothing but houses with lawns. Even now that I’m in Westwood, there’s one bar within a mile walk from my home, and though I love it, boy is it kinda sad (more on this later). Compound this with the fact that I’m naturally averse to “working” at anything, and you get me, bombed and alone in my apartment, blasting the Rolling Stones and writing a will on a Friday night.

(Also, I’m not going to spend $50 in cabs, crash at a friend’s place, or not drink when I go out. I was joking with another buddy that LA would be a phenomenal city if you had a best buddy or roommate who didn’t drink or a wife who was always pregnant to act as your designated driver. That would help with a lot of my LA issues.)

But like someone with a terminal illness, I’ve made peace with all of this, as the end is quickly approaching. I’m about 100 days from moving back to NYC. In the meantime, we’re exactly one month from our big Vegas blowout. Football season is just around the corner, so I look forward to Sundays at the Shack with my fellow Eagles’ fans. And I have a number of visitors coming and a couple of trips on the horizon (I think San Diego has been knocked off the ledger, but we’re still planning a weekend in San Fran in the fall).

So everything’s going to be ok in the end, Greg, even if I could have gone about my LA experience better. Now if you can just send over the list of places where I can find the Bud bombers, I’d be much obliged.