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Misadventures in Journalism - Rubbing Elbows With the Beverly Hills Elite

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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."

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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.

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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.

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Someone did a rockstar parking job of their snazzy Fortwo.

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