Considering I had bought 80 percent of my outfit from Ross Dress for Less, it's a wonder they let me in.
Growing up as a happily naive kid in the Midwest, I always wondered if Beverly Hills was anything close to the myths I had grown up with on television as dispensed through Buddy Ebsen, Eddie Murphy and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Was it full of movie stars and the moneyed elite and their hangers on? Men with $3,000 suits and women with $10,000 necklaces where everyone is as Weezer recently suggested "all so beautiful and clean?"
The answer is yes and no. But attending the frou-frou State of the City Address Thursday at Greystone Mansion in the hills, I felt kind of like I was stuck in a Midwesterners' fantasy of what Beverly Hills is like everyday.

"Will you excuse me, I left my other tie in my Lexus."

The view wasn't altogether horrible either.

Beverly Hills Mayor Jimmy Delshad calls for more hor'dourves in 2008.
People wore suits and other formal wear despite the fact that it was 1 billion degrees on Thursday
My sad attempt at "real photography" at a fountain near the mansion.
This SLOW sign apparently is supposed to look enough like a boy that you're supposed to feel bad for driving fast, but not enough to believe there are glow in the dark children with no faces and clawed feet.

If life was like an episode of 24, the guy on the right had a nuclear device in that bag designed to destroy LA if Jack Bauer doesn't kill 100 men with bad facial hair and torture a giraffe for information.

Would you believe she's sipping Tab? Probably not.


Someone did a rockstar parking job of their snazzy Fortwo.




Just goes to show that the kinds of people who show up at some Beverly Hills political functions on a hot Labor Day Weekend have fashion tastes that could do Cincinnati proud. Dull, dull, dull and frumpy.
All these women who could pass for young wearing drab-colored skirts below the knee, shoes with no flair and hair with none, either... They should be dressed like for a garden party at least, not in the colors and style of Nowheres-ville in the fall. As for the guys, well, they're about as nondescript.
You think these were really city staffers from the Valley or Inland Empire forced to come in for the day and bribed with wine in fancy glasses and good hor d'eourves? (Never can spell that word right.)
Any Beverly Hills restaurant has a better-dressed and looking crowd. WHO are these people really?
You mean there are no glow in the dark children with no faces and clawed feet?
Then what the hell is this thing that I gave birth to???
Sup with that food?