Crocodile Talk Show

I've been meaning to write about my new city of residence for some time now. So, perhaps this blog should have been titled "Beautiful Downtown Burbank." But it's not. And later, maybe you'll see why.

Yes, I now live in Burbank. And, yes, I do realize that it actually has "burb" in the title, and that Johnny Carson meant the "beautiful" part ironically. But as I came out of the post office on Magnolia yesterday, the post office where the workers greet you pleasantly, and, if you've been going there awhile actually call you by name, and walked past the record store (yes, record, as in vinyl), and various other small non-chain gift and furniture stores, I remembered that my first introduction to Burbank came in the form of a crocodile. A famous crocodile who knew my name.

It was one of those personalized books that my parents must have ordered for me. So my name showed up on just about every page of the book, in conjunction with my adventures with this famous crocodile. I can't remember why the crocodile was famous, but maybe it was because he could talk and maybe do a soft shoe. In the end, he became so famous that he got a talk show. And this talk show, as any talk show worth its salt did, taped in Burbank.

Which, come to think of it, is a little odd. I mean, if you're writing a children's book, and one of the characters becomes so famous that he gets his own television show, wouldn't you say that he went to Hollywood to be on TV? Instead, the writer of this book, having shot realism to the wind with a talking, dancing crocodile, decides that, no, accuracy is important here, The Tonight Show tapes in Burbank, so this Crocodile show is going to tape in Burbank.

And now that I live and work in Burbank, I have to say, I appreciate that. Because how much of what happens in "Hollywood" actually happens in Hollywood the city? There's actually only one major studio still located in Hollywood - Paramount. Guess where the other ones are? Burbank, even-more-maligned Glendale, and once-maligned-but-now-hip Culver City.

Actually, Hollywood, the idea of Hollywood is an excellent example of the Buddhist idea of emptiness, or ultimate truth. (Never thought you'd see "Hollywood" and "ultimate truth" in the same sentence, did you?). Often, emptiness gets misconstrued or misinterpreted as nothingness. But this is not its meaning. To illustrate: When I say "Hollywood" you probably get some idea or image in your head of what Hollywood is - movies, movie stars, swimming pools, fancy cars, red carpets - probably that ubiquitous shot of a studio backlot teaming with extras from westerns and apparently ongoing productions of Spartacus and Cleopatra. Your image of Hollywood is probably also populated with movie stars who are no longer living, and landmarks that may or may not still exist.

So now, Buddha might say, if that Hollywood actually exists, you would be able to find it. So you get in a plane or you get in your car and you start to look. Now, Hollywood Boulevard isn't as seedy as it used to be (much to the chagrin of some, I mean, you used to be able to find free street parking in Hollywood. No more!), but it probably still doesn't live up to the image in your head. Maybe you go to a studio, where precisely no one walks the lot in costume. (Okay, one exception, at Disney, you do occasionally get to see Mickey and Minnie and other costumed characters.) You drive down Sunset Blvd, maybe you buy a star map. But you can buy as many maps as you want, and you will never find the Hollywood you are looking for, the one that matches the image in your head (or maybe it's just a feeling).

This lack of a Hollywood "out there" that exists separately from your idea of it "in here" is the emptiness of Hollywood. That Hollywood only exists as a concept, idea or image in your own mind. This is the ultimate truth of Hollywood. Conventionally, of course, there is a physical place called Hollywood, there are studios, there is...Burbank.

But it's useful to remember, especially when I'm feeling that I haven't quite "gotten there" yet, that most of what I'm imagining "there" to be doesn't exist. That, in the end, most of it is just, pretty much, a crocodile talk show.