GROUND XERO: LIVE FROM L.A.
Hollywood scams: To live and scam in L.A.

By Xanadu Xero | RAW STORY COLUMNIST

So there sat I in a line in my car in the sweltering dusk, waiting to cross the frontier into Tijuana, coughing salt-air smog. A faint sewage-tinged beach smell poked through in spurts. A seagull flew over and crapped on my hood. The air conditioning had recently died for my sins, so the top was down, making things worse.

We pulled up to the guard house. The Dead Kennedys were caterwauling through my boom box (stolen radio). “We’re going to the Levine party,” I said.

Oh. Wait. Brakes. Fuck. I am so sorry; I screwed up.

We weren’t actually crossing into Tijuana, but into an enclave that looked a lot like it — the Malibu Colony. Yes, that world-famous vice pit favored by the rich, slimy, smarmy and famous for the fat part of a century.

The houses here are salt-eroded, conjoined mega-tuplets, crammed together like shantytown lean-tos. The ocean is polluted. Old power lines sag on rotting poles. The road is sticky, with trash-clogged pits. Rats dash across it at night, playing ‘chicken.’ You can get all this in Mexico for millions less.

Inside the Levine’s, though, the party was pumping. Eight flavors of fruit-infused vodka were getting slammed by Tits Ahoy! Euro/faux Euro thangs and gel-haired swains in D&G while strutting to the samba band.

I wore my share of Conformist Pig jewelry from my old life as a JAP. Aap looked, as usual, eccentrically princely. Twas not long ‘till we were bar chatting with a standard L.A. show-biz type (short, loud, over-groomed, thinning hair, with much taller ‘actress-spokesmodel’ — translation: hands out pens at conventions) who had checked us out and deigned to speak. With a vodka less, he might not have.

After a minimum of patter, no name exchange, the guy said to his date, “Let’s have these two over for dinner — they’re faaaabulous!” She nodded, Lobotomy Barbie.

“You like New York steak?” he honked. “I barbeque the real thing — aged (kisses his fingers) — over grape twigs from a friend’s vineyard in Napa...” He was talking fast now. Aap and I stared at each other.

He babbled on: “Can’t wait to tell you about my project — I’m a producer — its gonna save the fucking world. It’s like ‘Survivor’ but the ‘challenges’ are going to be, like, ECOLOGY PROJECTS! T-shirts, soundtracks, the franchise could be endless. I just need, you know, a little more fuel, nothing, like two hundred thou.” He paused. Then: “So. You guys live here? In the Colony?”

Aap’s eyes turned bleak and fearsome. “No,” he replied, disgusted, in his bass Afrikaans timbre. “I live in Hollywood, by the bus terminal. Near the freeway.”

The world thinks that ‘Hollywood’ is high-glam. But in L.A., saying you live in Hollywood is like saying you live under a bridge.

“What about... you?” Producer gaped at me, grasping.

“I got me a R.V. my grandpa left me,” I smiled. “So I’m really, really, free.”

“Nicetalkingt...” The rest was inaudible as the guy ski-effing-daddled like a flea on a hotplate, big babe in tow.

“What about my steak?” Aap called after, drowned out by samba sax. Aap’s skin started to mottle. I knew what was coming.

“Only in L.A. do you sit in traffic for two hours to get scammed your first ten minutes inside a five million dollar house! A five million dollar house that looks like a GARAGE!!”

“Duh. And your point is...?” I said.

See, I’m used to it.

I was pissed when I spent months writing a script and the producers took co-credit for a one line idea, but I wasn’t surprised. They wanted to get into the Writer’s Guild and score its health insurance. I was at the dawn of my (now deceased) career and they knew I wouldn’t make a scene or I’d be blackballed.

L.A. is one big grift, like a Turkish bazaar for sociopaths with eight months to live.

When my friend Chicano (he named himself, don’t look at me) moved to L.A. from Madrid, he had no idea where to go. A sadist cabdriver took him to a ‘residential hotel’ (crack den) near the airport, an area a.k.a. Hell’s Hemorrhoid.

The good news is that Chiccy didn’t have to watch the chained-to-wall T.V. that night. The bad news is that it was because a gang war exploded outside. He called 911. A recording. He left a message. No one came. Welcome to my home town.

Chicano started scouting for a room to rent at dawn. By noon Lady Luck had swept him to a gracious, big, old house in a cool neighborhood. The elderly owner adored him instantly. Voila.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lady Luck is, sometimes, such a ho. Chicano looks like a young Antonio Banderas... when he performed spirited gay sex acts in early Almodovar movies. Excuse me, but how has that lush dirt been suppressed for all these years? Talk about scams! What an actor! What an actor? Bush handlers — check it out.)

Now, two other men, Jake and Len, were new tenants too. They ran the ‘Miss Cosmos International’ pageant. They rented an entire wing for their office, or rather, “offices.” They both arrived, nine sharp, in Carreras and wore dark, custom suits. Women came and went, all dressed up, all day, all days, at hour intervals.

The first landmark pageant would be televised world-wide, Live From Brazil!, as soon as the details were all worked out. Contestants would have the choice of staying at a four star Copacabana hotel, or in the villa their company already owned. Len and Jake would be two of the six ‘distinguished judges.’ The winner would get a hundred thousand dollars, a Ferrari, a time-share in Capri, endorsements, wardrobes, on and on and on.

Len and Jake hired Chicano to work for M(iss) C(osmos) I(nternational), Inc. at first sight. His duties were to join them as they interviewed contestants and look gorgeous. He was to smile and flirt with the girls, milking his accent (ahx-cint), and work the following line into every session: “I joined this business to help lovely ladies such as yourself.” He also took photos ‘for their files.’ Sixty percent of the time, the women stripped.

Chicano knew something scaly was up when every girl, no matter how butt-ugly, inane or gauche, was ‘just what they were looking for’. The only microscopic membrane between girl and sure stardom was the ‘nominal’ hundred buck ‘office fee.’ Ninety per cent of the time they went for it. The MCI Inc. titans would alternate taking the hot ones for a private tour of the rest of the wing. Sometimes it would take quite a while.

After about six months, the irritated ‘contestants’ started to bitch. After about six months and one day, Jake and Len disappeared.

I was at a mall last week, when from afar I heard a woman’s nicotine-voiced cackle, “Hey, blondie, wit da platforms! Wait up!” Don’t ask me why I did.

She bounded towards me, ratty and wild-eyed. “I just wanna say that you so pretty baby, unh-huh, you look like-a angel.” She paused. “How ‘bout five dollars?”

“No!” Jeez. Around here, even compliments will cost you.

“Okay, baby — how ‘bout one dollar?

“NO.”

“Well, FUCK YOU, ass-ho!” she said. “You UGLY.”

My sentiments, in general, exactly.

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