My reaction to reading this collection in 1998.

I’d never heard of Johnson and gossipy memoirs of life in Los Angeles are usually not my thing, but I’m glad I read this.

She is a talented writer, skilled with metaphors and in observing life, but she also is obscure at times stretching too hard for metaphors. Some of the essays bored me probably because of their origins in fashion magazines, and I didn’t understand much of what was being talked about or alluded to. Nor am I interested in drag queens. Her outsider take on glamorous LA life was interesting. I liked “Titty Safarai” with its account of a Playboy party; “Sirens” with its account of the grotesque cosmetic habits of Eartha Kitt and Carol Channing. “Valley of the Dongs” with its visit to a ranch while porn movies are filmed there; “Angry New Ager” (Johnson’s anger and refusal to buy into the meditation and peace of New Age thought is one of her charming characteristics) with Johnson attempting meditation; “Pizza Boys” with Johnson basically hiring a male prostitute; “Penance Race” with its account of the terrors of the IRS and car troubles and the idea that the rich of LA think wealth is simply a virtue and reward for leading a proper life, “Something hard work or education can’t get you” and that poverty and being overweight is a sin; “Guns and Ammo” and “Escape from LA”, the last two essays, are my favorite. Johnson buys a gun and takes up shooting as a form of meditation (which it definitely can be) with “death and rage and desire and pain”, “The only comfort zone … lies on the extreme edge of possibility and decision”. “Escape from LA” uses the movie of the same name to talk about how LA already is a weird, science fictional kind of place. ( )