My office was the living room closet in a huge one-bedroom in a 1920s East Hollywood apartment court, across the street from the big blue Scientology headquarters in the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. There were built-in bookshelves and just enough space for a chair and a laptop and an ashtray. The neighbor lady's rescued pit bulls romped outside in the overgrown garden, and that electric L.A. sunlight came filtered through the grimy old French windows to the hardwood floors. It was a very pleasant place to work, my friends lived within walking distance in other cheap apartments in Los Feliz, and I had a bad case of being in [...]
Spawned by a stern former Nazi Sturmabteilunger who disliked him and believed that he was someone else's son, Arnold Schwarzenegger spent years torturing his body into an exaggerated caricature. This expression of dysmorphia led him on a path to riches in America's film industry, much as dysmorphic expressions of emaciation do for women. After accumulating tens of millions of dollars, it seemed a convenient parlay of attention and cash into running the whole state in which the film industry resided, and he announced his campaign for governor of California on the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
To this day, no one knows how tall he is.
Dark times in California, with the state facing a $21 billion budget deficit after voters rejected a series of ballot initiatives intended to fill the gaps. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supported the measures so fervently that he spent election day touring the state to rally voters in Washington with President Obama, says the message is loud and clear.
