Young Poor & Angry Press

I loath California. Yeah, I said it, and I’m not taking it back until some things start to change. Whether they realize they’re doing it or not, every single person in California, from your gang bangers in East L.A. to your coiffed eighteen year old and surgically altered blonde’s driving $100K dollar cars during a recession, are pretentious as shit.

Ever have someone from California come visit your state? I’m from Florida, it’s a pretty nice place. We’ve got beaches, we’ve got Miami, Tampa, Gainesville. We got some cool sports teams that are pretty damn good, and some amazing BBQ. All in all, I’d say Florida is a pretty spiffy place to live. Then my friends from California come in. Suddenly my nice sandy beach I spent hours learning to hone my craft as a writer are paudry faxcimilies of California’s North Shore. My quaint little town of Gainesville, with it’s Tom Petty roots and University of Floria is nothing compared to the technologically superior UCLA campus. Ask any Californian what’s better than California, and chances are they’ll tell you nothing.

There is having state pride, then there is turning your nose up at every state in the union because they arent as “cool” as you. There is a simple reason why too. They’ve got “celebrities.” I put that in quotes because if you’re from a place where most of it is known for Hollywood, you can’t really call yourself special or unique, and you can’t call yourself a celebrity because everyone knows who everyone else is. California is one big orgy of self obsessive and non-introspective personalities all feeding off of the latest gossip. Then they complain when they have no privacy. You want your privacy? Stop going to the Ivy at 3pm on a Wednesday with no bra on and act like your crew are all cast members from next weeks Entourage. You don’t see Jerry Seinfield eating in Tom’s Restaraunt.

The obvious comeback is “we set the trends, you’re just a hater.” First off, “hater” in that context is a made up fucking word that’s been spun through pop-culture so much that it’s probably in the dictionary, so stop using it. Second, keep your trends, I don’t want them. I want to stick to listening to the same fucking H20 and Madball records for the next three to five years, till they release another one. I’ll stay the way I am until it becomes cool again and you people from California decide it’s time to bring back 80s movies I grew up on as pop culture, and then ostracize me when I want to watch the VHS copy of Goonies I’ve had since the 3rd grade. Because we all know actually watching the movie wouldn’t be ironic.

No thank you, California. For the time being I’ll stick to smoking my pot illegally and in paranoid fear. I’ll keep my Honda even though it’s not a Hybrid car, and I’ll continue opting for plastic over paper at my local grocery store that’s not Whole Foods. I’ll continue to lazily drive around and actually find a parking space when I go somewhere. I’ll get everywhere I need to go in 20 minutes and I’ll suck it up when it’s 100 degrees out here because I know that I can actually see the sky and not a layer of smog so thick it looks like frosting on a cake made for Bill Clinton. I’ll continue happily opening the door for people, and using whatever “connections” I have to actually help without self aggrandizing myself. Thank you California, but you can keep it.