That’s right, I’m not putting up a Substack post. It’s not because I’m too busy. I’m writing this the day before this email is scheduled to go out, explaining that there will be no emails sent out today. I’m in that sweet spot in the school schedule where it’s after the midterms (did very well btw), so the only work are the odd papers and quizzes, but before Thanksgiving vacation and finals season starts.
I’m not hungover from the amazing World Series Game 7 where the Los Angeles Dodgers won in extra innings. It was a thrilling game, and it’s always exciting to be in a town when they win a championship. Or I guess, it’s sometimes exciting.
I was scheduled to headline the Pittsburgh Improv located in Cranberry, PA, the weekend the Penguins won the Stanley Cup. It was a lonely show, but a funny story. Let’s bookmark it and come back to it when I decide to post something on this Substack again.
L.A.’s a funny town for sports championships. Great athletes - and the Dodgers have one of the all-time great ballplayers in Shohei Ohtani, maybe in any sport - inspire hope in the population that roots for them, and a feeling that maybe they can also do something amazing or miraculous with their lives.
The problem is, there’s a huge itinerant population in Los Angeles who come to this town because they have a tremendous amount of hope that for them the future will be exactly as amazing as they’ve planned, and for whom life is always on the cusp of being miraculous and amazing any day now.
And the operative word there is “itinerant” the majority of people in L.A. - or at least the people who count - are from somewhere else. A friend once described Los Angeles as a factory town, where the product made is showbiz. And from across the four corners of the world, they come, like the Okie Dust Bowl farmers during the height of Great Depression, looking for work, any work, that pays at least half a million a year.
Just like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath: “Ma, I heard that in Californee, every TikTok audience is as big as your head. Why, they practically handing out Givenchy endorsement details at the border. They got streaming-sitcom jobs growing on every branch of every tree. I heard a man can practically just reach up and grab a job as story editor on The Baldwins.”
What I figured out the first week I moved here is that if you want to really make it rich in L.A., open a parking lot.
These are not loyal sports fans. I’m certainly not. During the World Series, I rooted for the Toronto Blue Jays to not only beat the Dodgers but also win so decisively that they take their wives back to Canada.
No, the reason I’m not writing anything today is that I find withholding to be the easiest way to get what I want. And what I want is simple:
I want you to subscribe (you can do it for free!) to this Substack if you haven’t already: Subscribe here.
Also, I need you to buy or rent my first ever solo special. You can buy or rent ‘Liam McEneaney: West Coasting’ here.
I need you to buy today’s amazing illustrations on a shirt. I’ll split the proceeds with the young artist who made them:
INFLUENCERS GO WEST (header illustration alt.)
And I need you to listen to a song Woody Guthrie wrote almost a century ago called ‘Do Re Mi’, as sung by his son Arlo:
Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin’ home every day
Beatin’ the hot old dusty way to the California line
‘Cross the desert sands they roll, gettin’ out of that old dust bowl
They think they’re goin’ to a sugar bowl, but here’s what they find
Now, the police at the port of entry say
“You’re number fourteen thousand for today”
[Chorus]
Oh, if you ain’t got the do re mi, folks
You ain’t got the do re mi
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas
Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee
California is a garden of Eden
A paradise to live in or see
But believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot
If you ain’t got the do re mi