Valentine's Day in Los Angeles

I've decided that if I were mayor or Eli Broad or whoever is in charge of Los Angeles, I would make Valentine's Day illegal within city limits.

Nevermind its obligatory aspects; those are universally regarded as repellant. I'd outlaw it because this town is already filled with alienated, lonely singles who are too proud to ask for company today and too mentally ill to ask for help. The last thing they need are public reminders of all the happiness they think they're missing out on today and strongly suspect they won't have tomorrow.

As an alternative, I'd devote 24 hours of public access cable to true-life video clips of couples who are miserable: public fights, recycled news items of celebrity divorces, reruns of Cheaters, all the evidence I can come up with that the grass is sometimes browner on the other side of the fence.

If anyone wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day, they'd have to do it privately, in a certain room, like that one room at parties where people smoke pot.

I'm not saying this out of bitterness. It didn't even occur to me until I checked my facebook page this morning that today is VD. (All these years later, I still take juvenile delight in its initials.) I'm saying this because the isolated misfits of this town need all the help they can get.

I'm also saying this because I'm no longer an isolated misfit. Yes, I'm single, but I'm rather proud of the fact that I'm pretty damn immune from lapsing into the dark side every time there's an invitation.

It'd be easy for me to tell miserable lonelyhearts some witticism like, "The greener the grass, the more fertilizer it's marinating in." But that's bitterness in disguise. Happiness is a state of mind -- whether you're in a relationship or not, whether it's February 14 or not, whether your dreams have come true here or not. For you see, Los Angeles, like money, does not make people happier. Our weather simply makes life easier.