Following Britney Spears

How do you know you're in Hollywood? When you're looking for a parking space outside an apartment building at 2:00 in the morning on Friday, and you have to gently swerve to avoid giggly blond girls spilling out of their cars (and their dresses). Wait a minute, you say. How is that different from New York? Well, in New York, all the cars are cabs, and no one drives except cabbies.

As with New York, I arrived in Los Angeles with a list of things to do, places to go, and food to eat, all of which we will get to in the next few posts. The morning after we arrived, for example, I checked "drive on Mulholland Drive" off my to-do list. Also, I checked "drive past the the parking lot on Ventura Boulevard where Britney Spears drove into a car and left the scene on August 6 2007" off my other list. This other list is called "Things I did unintentionally." Obviously, there is a major sub-section of this list that involves celebrities, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot escape the stifling awareness of celebrity in Los Angeles.

I use the word "celebrity" in the loosest terms, of course.

Coming up... the blondest state.