Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Fink

Something like this always happens: the night before I went to Los Angeles to see my little brother graduate from college (let's not even talk about the ramifications of this, vis a vis my advancing age/receding accomplishment index; i am, however, proud as proud can be of him), I'm flipping around channels during West Wing commercials and find my grandfather's one and only Twilight Zone appearance, "The Old Man in the Cave," which I am duty bound to watch every time it comes on (not often), despite the fact that A) I don't really like it (I can list 20 other TZs I prefer), and B) it reduces me to a blubbering mess every time I see it. His acting career was never very distinguished (nor was his father/my great grandfather's, for that matter, but Frank got a lot more work, usually as the old country doctor or the kindly old curmudgeonly doctor), but I really like him as a screen presence. (Frank, by contrast, was a terrible old ham, especially in the opening bit of Litvak's City of Conquest.) And because I never got to spend much time with him, the bit part nature of all his roles (note that his character on the episode is credited as "Man") has a weirdly acute mimetic vibe. It's safe to say I've seen him more on TV than I ever did in life. My favorite moment for him is when he chews Red Skelton out in the original Ocean's 11.

Anyway, of course this would happen the night before my trip, because every trip to L.A. is suffused with an ungovernable mix of nostalgia and sadness for every period of my life, never moreso than where family is concerned.

No need to even talk about the rest of the trip. It was full of complicated emotion, though I did see Rob Reiner driving a car.

One other thing: when buying the Sunday NY Times at Gelson's in Century City late Saturday night, the clerk asked if I was from the East Coast, and I said no, I just like to read the Times every week. He then said, "Yeah, a little flavor of old New York. You know that magazine, Los Angeles? Well, there's another magazine, called The New Yorker. I used to love to get it, just to see all the wonderful pictures of New York."

He absolutely (totes) wasn't joking. Nor was he special needs. It was just Los Angeles. I didn't know what to do or say, because every sound in my head made me feel like the worst snob in America. So I just said, "I'll keep an eye out for it."