Woke up this morning at the Artisan’s House because we stayed up so late. She walked by as I was waking. "You’re the girl with the blond ponytail that the psychic told me about a few months ago." "What?" "Yea. Really. She said it would be out west. And there you are with a blond ponytail. And here I am out west. Fucked up."

Mom had a Christmas party. Lots of people. Mostly new-agers. Today, we heard it all. But it was so refreshing being around people that are on the cutting edge of brain, mind, and spiritual research and practices, all coming together to hang out and explore and share, all different ages. Very different from a music party, where the talk is always music and pop culture, success and money, looks and your next gig. Real sincere, genuine people talking about things like, the messages from Michael books, the Abraham Hicks tapes, remote viewing, est, ESP, landmark forum, Avatar, scientology, reiki, channeling the other side, psychic healing, etc. Brother Beav walks in and stays for about a half hour, says, "dude there's a bunch of freaks in there man..." "I know bro, but just appreciate it. Not everyone can eat white bread you know." Not your typical parents Christmas party though, that's for sure.

Thinking. Must we possess everything that we find beautiful? Do we have to take a picture of everything we find captivating? Do we have to tape every show we like on TV or buy every movie we like on DVD? Or make love to every woman we find attractive? What is that?

What if one day you just decided to stop censoring yourself from that moment on? Decided to just accept that everything is O.K. just the way it is. To not be impatient or fed up, or wanting more or always telling yourself that you shouldn’t think that, or be this way or that way. What if you just decided to be cool with the way that you are, like this feeling just started to overtake you that everything is alright, that you are alright just the way you are. And what if you caught yourself now and then when you second guessed yourself or got frustrated with a thought you had, and just there in the moment in a matter of milliseconds thought, "you know on second thought, that's perfectly alright that you're that way or that you thought that. Don't even worry about it." For the last three days I have been feeling more and more of that. It feels like this really loving warm self acceptance. Like a moving away from resistance and wanting and moving towards acceptance and happiness. It feels like bliss. I don't know where it came from, I mean, aside from the fact that I have been diligently and consciously working on achieving that state for years. So yes. There it is. Lets hope it sticks around.

Splendid day with a good friend in Scottsdale. Lunch at a French restaurant: pinot noir, parmesan crusted goat cheese and arugala salad, potato onion soup, and hanger steak with shallots and red wine sauce. 

New movie, Gangs of New York. Daniel Day Lewis was fantastic. Movie was a bit too long. And unnecessarily violent as is all of Scorsese’s films. Italians are not known for their subtlety. The U2 "Close" song was rather superfluous, their ubiquity becoming an annoyance. Coffee, good conversation. Acorn squash and baked apple soup and organic kale and homemade pasta with Italian sausage for dinner. 

More smiles from Arizonians than I received all year from Miamians. The people here are really something special. I can feel my heart opening up like it hasn’t in a long time. Problems are starting to feel lighter. Light is starting to show at the end of the tunnel. Attention is becoming less stuck. Talked a lot about the new album and the Rise and Shine as well. Decided to not feel so down about Rise and Shine not getting picked up by about 60% of the stations who received it, but instead feel good about the fact that it got picked up by about 40% of them. It's all in the way you look at it. Decided to stop with the diaries for a while and get back to editing fishy. What's it going to take to get that thing finished...  hot chamomile tea and a little smoke while I write tonight.   

Current Spin: Moby, "Play." System of The Down, Steal This album. 

"Are you there God?"

"Yes. I am here."

"Who are you?"

"I am you. And much more. I am all that is. I am I."

"How do I know it's you and not me?"

If we were born on a desert island with no one else but our self around. Worked and lived and played, all alone, all our life on this desert island, with no one else to be seen, would our mind conceive of the notion of God if no one ever told us of such a thing? How would we create it? If there were no books around, no bible, no religions, no voluminous tomes about heaven and hell and God this and God that, would we one day look up at the sky and just think the thought, “God is up there.” What would he/she/it be like? Would God talk to us? Reveal himself to us? Knowing that we have no way of knowing that he exists on our own? Would we still pray? Would we even consider it? Would we recreate the God concept all on our own? If so, what would we call him/it?  

"Are you there God?"

"Yes."

"What do I call you?"

"What do you want to call me?"

"I don't care. I just want to know that you exist."

"Well who are you talking to then?"

"What if it's just me?"

"What if it is?"

Current Spin: Phoenix, United. I love this CD so much. Hip fresh old school summer pop.

Last Good Movies: 13 Conversations About Nothing. Life or Something Like It.

Came home to a beautifully decorated house with the smell of homemade cookies baking and the sights and sounds of Christmas and family everywhere. Really cold in AZ right now for some reason. People here are so friendly you think you’ve walked onto a movie set from the fifties. 

I have heard so many of: "excuse me, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, pardon me, hello, how are you," since I have been here. It’s been great. People actually smile and look you in the eye. Like so many other places all over America, but Miami. I think maybe it's just Miami. Here I have to keep reminding myself that it is O.K. 

To look people in the eye and smile. In Miami you have to keep reminding yourself not to. Really in all of South Florida, not just Miami. There seems to be such a strong cloud of rudeness and indifference there. Some people claim it's because of the seasons and how they never change. Other people say it's because there are so few Americans left there now, it's mostly South Americans and Caribbean’s and maybe it's a language barrier. Maybe it's the lack of natural beauty, like mountains, valleys, wide open spaces, streams, rivers, or trees that change color. I don't know what it is. It is like some kind of a ‘too cool’ mentality that sucks people in after they live there for a while. And you totally forget that you live in it until you travel to other parts of America and everyone starts acting so friendly. 

At first you are just taken aback, like why the hell is everyone so damn friendly around here. Till you hit the next city and they act the same way and you start realizing it's just Miami itself. Bas asked me the other day right before I left, "hey Fishy do you think that Miami is ruining us? With its unfriendliness and rudeness do you think it's like maybe going to ruin us and we won't be able to go back to the way we used to be when we leave?” I answered him, “I don't know bro. I really don't know.” That question broke my heart, knowing that he came from Vermont, one of the friendliest places in America. 

Woke up this morning firmly committed to finding and deciding on and starting to plan to move to the new place I will call home. I didn't feel LA as much as I wanted to so I don't think it will be there yet, so it looks like it’ll be New York. People always say a lot about New York but I have always found it be a very friendly place. Tough, but friendly. There is such an excitement in the air that people cannot help but be friendly. 

A Must or Want?

At the airport to fly home for the holidays. Long lines to check your baggage. Another long line to obtain boarding pass. Long lines at security. Empty your pockets. Open your laptop, turn on your handheld, open your phone please sir. Take off your boots please, sir. By the time you are finished just checking in and going through security, it's been over an hour if you're lucky, longer most of the time. No food on the flights any more, so you go hungry the whole time. 

Couple in front of me had a baby in a stroller. Going through security for them was a mess. Empty your pockets please, sir. Mam, we need to see inside your purse. Mam, please take the baby out of the carriage. Sir, you're going to have to pack up the stroller and put it on the cart please. Ten minutes later and we’re still waiting for them to go through security and the man turns around to me and says, “sorry about this.” I had already gone through twice myself due to having a butane lighter and a retractable pen in my briefcase, which I had to check. “No problem,” I said, “we’re all in this together,” I mumbled to him and smiled. 

Trying to sort things out with the whole love/relationship thing lately. Spent the night with Madelynne and Mohdie and the Ferret and Bas doing the Christmas thing like always. Haven't spoken to Cleo since Friday, which still just feels very weird. Haven't totally come to terms with our present situation yet. God, maybe I never will. But the theme of the month, really for the last year and a half has been love, romance and relationships.

Is there a way to appreciate beauty without feeling like you have to own it and possess it? And is there a way to spend really good quality time with someone without feeling like it has to own you? Without feeling like it has to go on forever? I have always been of the mind and heart where once I love a girl, I don't necessarily stop loving them ever. The love may change a bit, but it doesn’t go away. That doesn’t mean that I want to be with them or marry them or get jealous of their new boyfriends or husbands, but it's like I am just really sentimental. So I do want to stay in touch with them and I notice myself think about them often and want to talk to them and buy them gifts as friends from time to time, and just be there for them. But some girls do not like this. 

It's been very cold here in Miami. Made all the difference in people's attitudes. Noticed more and more this year how much our focus during this particular holiday is on buying things. As contrite as that may sound, I just never thought about it. you always hear people talking about that, but it really is true. There is this mad frenzy all around shopping. 

I have had fun though buying presents for all my friends and family. But notice myself with a certain longing deep inside for something more profound and meaningful from this holiday season. I am spending countless moments meditating at night and in the morning, what it is known as praying with open hands. I told God last night, “look I know I may be one of your problem students, always saying that I don't believe, and that you don't exist, but I'm here anyway, you know, kind of sneaking in here late at night to have a look around, you know. So…” 

Today Al Gore announced he would not run for president in 2004. Mission control I think we have a problem… it feels like a dark cloud floated over America with that announcement. I'm not a huge Gore fan necessarily, but I don't personally see anyone who could have beaten Bush except for maybe Gore. The only good thing about George W. was the fact that he was so evil and heinous and unintelligent, that he was only going to last for four years. But now… who knows? If Bush gets reelected for another term, God help us all. 

Woke up tossing and turning to this agonizing fear of growing up too fast, being too grown up for my age; a phobia I know intimately. We go way back. Almost as good of a friend as my fear that I am not grown up enough. Couldn’t go back to sleep. Reminds me of that quote from that 21 year old girl who wrote that coming of age book I hung on my wall last year: “when will I feel like I am enough just the way I am?”

Talking about Microsoft Outlook with John. How it revolutionizes the way you think and work. Totally compatible with our pda’s. “Microsoft’s the bomb dude,” he says. “Shit man between grunge rock, Microsoft, and Starbucks they must have something pretty magical in their water there in Seattle.” I say. “Yea either that, or it's all that doobage man,” Beav says. Reminiscing with Beav tonight about the old days when we were teenagers before he was married. We were totally on our own at a very young age. How he used to stay up all night getting high and playing video games and he would always sleep through his first day of a new job and I would wake him up at noon and he would scramble around the room trying to get dressed fast as he could only to be fired that same day. Or how he would register for college every semester and drop out by the fourth week for never going on time. Then he got married at the age of nineteen. I was the best man at his wedding. ‘dude you're not tripping are you?’ ‘dude, I think I still am man.’ ‘oh shit. Well look, just try to keep it cool till it's over, o.k. just look at the giant statues but don't get freaked out. please man... this is my wedding for God sakes....” crazy times. 

He gets married and moves into the guest room of his in-law’s house. He goes to work at a video store during the day and a pizza hut at night while his eighteen year old high school sweetheart wife goes to college. He puts her through college. She graduates, starts working, he starts going to night school, works his way up the corporate ladder of an oil company. Twelve years later he’s an accounting manager of a whole floor of people twice his age, pulling in over a hundred thousand G’s a year, two cars in the garage, and two beautiful babies. It's the goddamn American dream if there ever was one. We’re sitting here tonight looking at each other like, ‘holy shit man you did it.’
  

Current Read: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci in Italian and English. A gift. He wrote left-handed, and from right to left. Painter, sculptor, scientist, writer, inventor--invented the first flying machine—in the fifteen hundreds no less. Inspires me to continue to say no when invited out to clubs parties or bars to hang out and stay home even more to work. My friends already call me a hermit. But I am most happiest when I am working. And when I am out I am always just thinking about working. But I don't want to lose my friends. Sometimes when they are all getting ready to go out and don't invite me I get mad and say ‘hey what the fuck?” They're like, “well we didn't think you would want to go anyway.” “yea I know. But still at least invite me so I can say no.”   

Christmas in Miami feels like… is it really Christmas time yet? Christmas all over the world, but so much harder to notice in the southern states, even though lots of cards are coming in from all over—that is the only reminder that it is Christmas. 

I stood outside today, had to take my shirt off, perspiring like crazy in the high 80’s maybe, low 90’s—so un-Christmas. I think they have put up some carnivals or something in certain parts of town, I swear to God—big flashing lights and rides begging for you to spend money, maybe that's Christmas to them... very weird. No one really decorates. I think I had a nervous breakdown sometime in the last 48 hours. I haven't heard “Happy Holidays” yet, or even a Christmas song. 

It's Christmas Day. The five nieces are opening up their presents like wild animals. Their eyes are glossy and I think I noticed them even drooling. They are all smiles. Jumping up and down and screaming "Oh my God! Oh my God." I'm kicked back with my guitar and my new cannon powershot. I woke up this morning, looked up to God and said good morning, Merry Christmas. He said, "Good morning to you. Go outside and let go of your fears and count your blessings." SO I took some time outside early in the morning and walked around reciting everything I feel blessed with in my life, enjoying the cold air and a very strong cup of java, I walked around the lake.

Over one hundred TV and movie stars sent a letter on live TV to president Bush asking him to stop the war talk. This may be enough to get more people to get off their ass and realize that it's O.K. to speak up. This could be a good thing. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/DailyNews/celebrity_activists021211.html 

So it's happening after all.

Just recently read a profile of ex-prez Jimmy Carter. Turns out that after his inaugural address he shunned the bulletproof limo and walked the 1.5 miles from the Capitol to the White House. Normally after they are sworn in they get in their limo for the first time and drive to the white house waving to supporters, and then they get out of the car about four blocks before the white house and walk the rest of the way, waving and shaking hands. Jimmy wanted to show people that he was one of them, so he walked the whole way. Now contrast this with George W. Bush twenty years later, who didn't even get out of the limo, due to over 20,000 protesters lined up along Pennsylvania avenue throwing eggs and tomatoes at his car and screaming “hail to the thief.” They didn't show this on TV that day. We have come a long way in the last twenty years. This was a very close race. Gore only won by half a million votes. I bet a lot more of us will vote in the next election, that's for sure.

Current Spin: Mum. Great sonic ambiance. And Audioslave. And new Pearl Jam. 

Every time we hook up with someone romantically our hearts our minds start racing towards this marriage idea. I notice it in myself all the time. it just starts thinking about it every few seconds whenever I meet someone new or start getting romantic with someone. It's like we’re in this race to get married and then of course once we are married it's like time just drags on forever, I mean you start to realize that now it is forever. 

With la Princesa she was always talking about that she didn't have time. "I don’t have time to waste if you’re not the one or I'm not the one for you. I don't have time." She was in a race. Her childhood was awful according to her own account, mother and father never got along, should have never got married, he was always drunk screaming all the time, money was their love, and I always used to think when she would tell me that she didn't have the time, well what are we in such a race for? She had already been married once and divorced. So what are we trying to do, make me the number two divorce??? I mean why are we rushing to this marriage thing so fast, so we can have kids and be miserable and get divorced and never speak again? I think of the Italian stallion and her telling me how her parents never got along and her family life sucked. 

Good show last night. Band was very loose, out of control at times. A few fans showed up, small crowd though, but enthusiastic. New version of the journey was awesome. Love is you rocked. Oh you pretty things by Bowie is a nice addition to the set.

Sat with fernie from the band Humbert after the show talking about our new album. Listening to the tracks. His band played before ours did that night. They were awe-inspiring. They were the music. They were rock and roll embodied. I told him what we were trying to make and what a challenge it has been. He listened to our rough tracks intently. His eyes closed. Every now and then he would say something. “What this song needs is something out of the measures, just totally fucked up, off of the rhythm of the rest of the instruments.” Or “this song is not sexy. You should scrap it.” He was right every time. It was good to talk shop with someone who was so aligned musically and philosophically.

A lot of reconciliation this week. With little Lisa, with Cleo, Jennifer, (God Jennifer, what a hottie) others. It really reconfirmed for me the importance of communication and persistence. You are either committed to cleaning up disagreements with others or not. Usually where there is a will there is way. And if you are willing to take a look at what responsibility you had in the conflict and forgive, then you can usually clean it up and get along again. That was the major win, and lesson, of the week.

Bas says to me tonight, “I wish there was a way to show the rest of the world that we weren't all blood thirsty war mongers like Bush, that dumb-ass cock-knocker.” We talk about a website where people can post their picture and a simple message to the rest of the world, that we oppose any more wars or violence, but that we are prisoners of our government. One such site is www.votenowar.org but I think we may need more. This site does not show the pictures and signatures of the tens of thousands who have signed it. This site would be a simple message to the rest of the world that regardless of what our president says or does, that we aren't out to hurt you. and we trust that you aren't out to hurt us either. That we aren't half as interested in our rather twisted and brutish foreign policy as we are in just keeping the peace around our own borders and getting our economy back up to where we need it to be.

  

II

Tonight we watched an episode of The World at War called, The Final Solution, about the Nazi death and concentration camps during World War II. We listened as the survivors talked about the screams of the people being shoved into the gas chambers. About their constant prayers to their God. About the utter brutality and the insane game that went on for almost five years as over five million of them were murdered in mass numbers. We heard the stories of the women being stripped and shot with their screaming children still clinging to them. we watched as the bulldozers pushed hundreds of dead lifeless bodies into big pits in the ground. And as Jewish prisoners dragged their friend’s and relative’s skinny-little chicken-like bodies through the dirt into mass graves that they themselves had to dig, only to be shot and thrown into when they were finished.

As we watched, we talked about this concept of God that we carry so strongly within us. As many of the survivors talked of God and asked the question where was God when these people were screaming for him to help them, day after day and year after year. Many of them who were very devout Orthodox Jews before they got to the camps could not understand why God was ignoring them and so they killed themselves when he did not eventually offer any help or means of salvation for their plight. They realized for the first time that perhaps we really are alone here on earth. Where strength and the will to live, and not justice or God, rule the land.

Went to see new world school of the arts one person shows at a local theatre. Really good. Inspiring. So much talent all over the world. Thinking about a website that acts as a simple server where arts organizations can upload their shows, art exhibits, photo exhibits, film events, plays, concerts on their own so people can be in the know about what's going on. Yesterday two different people told me that Miami was a cultural vacuum, which is really hilarious because it is the opposite of that. Tonight I had to choose between an indie film opening, a photo exhibit opening and this live theatre thing, a songwriter in the round concert at Wallflower, and an anniversary concert at tobacco road which I may still hit later tonight. And of course countless other events. So it's just people don't know what's going on. Art is thriving in Miami. There is always too much to do.

Four minutes to cook your dinner in the microwave can seem like an eternity, while four hours in a dark room with someone you love can seem like four minutes.

Current Spin: phantom planet, the guest. Love it. Sigur Ross, the new one. Love it more. 

Last Movie:  Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill. Amazing, brilliant, funny, amazing, brilliant, fucking amazing. And LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton. Moving study of education and current social and economical situation in rural Mississippi due to cotton industry enforced slavery.  

Lots of emails from Muslim fans and friends re one of my last diary postings. Interesting. They are not all .... terrorists, obviously. Too bad the whole world cannot convert to Hinduism. We don't see them running around the world killing people like some other religions we know of. Nod-nod, wink-wink, and I don't necessarily mean the Muslims. Even Buddhism would be good. Of course we would have to change that awful first law that “life is suffering.” Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if we changed one word. Perhaps “life was suffering.”

Saw Andréa Boccelli last night. Not quite Domingo or Pavarotti, but I don't think he aims to be. He has such a signature sound to his voice. It is all his own. so he doesn’t have to be anyone else. He is who he is. First half lots of classic opera and Neapolitan songs. Very romantic, beautiful stirring music. Then a moderate dose of his more contemporary pop-opera, a genre he didn't necessarily create but certainly defined in modern times. He even sang his own version of My Way by Paul Anka. He also played the flute and the piano. Wonderful. Amazing day today.

Spoke with Jennifer today for over an hour. Reconciled, resolved, worked through. We both left the conversation feeling more alive and refreshed. Met with friend of a friend who is a PR girl who offered to help the band get more press and publicity in northeast. Really smart person from new York. Talked for hours about everything from business to politics to modern culture. Refreshing.

Later tonight overheard a man talking about the film Koyaanisqatsi and others. We started talking about music and film. Turns out he is Jeffrey Lew, one of the producers of that film and many others. We had a real synergy. Mad fast-paced wide-eyed half-sentences about everything from film to music to religion to Indians. Spoke about a few upcoming film and music projects. Going crazy without an assistant. More interviews tomorrow. Six weeks now. Perhaps I am already crazy. 

A cat will attack anything that it sees in it's space that is smaller than it is, except maybe for another cat. They will attack and play with until death a mouse, a bird, a lizard, all insects, a frog. Objectively it's really strange instinct they have to just kill anything they see. They have no ethics about this. If it crosses their path, they will hunt it down until it is dead or plays dead or is unable to move. They do not seem to have any goal in doing this. They certainly would never eat any of the things they kill.

From a recent email from a friend:   “But the truth is that some work to become a better person actually negates self, casts doubt within. Accepting and loving who I truly am, flaws and all, helps me more than I could ever have imagined.   "Fishy--- Well, this is so timely .... as I am finding many flaws with myself lately ... primary: I am happy to be me : )"

Yes so where do you draw the fucking line between being at peace with yourself just the way you are and deliberately attempting to become a better person? Well, she's got me there… that's the million dollar question. Breath in. Breath out. 

Working on The Transcendent Manifesto.

Last Movie:  Bedazzled, with the amazing Elizabeth Hurley.

Rehearsal tonight with the band. More news from the big time talent show people. They are asking that all bands sell tickets to the event at a price of $65 per ticket to our friends and fans. Of course the bands will not actually get paid. Funny. Doesn’t this sound familiar? We all had a good laugh and decided to not participate.

Last Movie:  Recently declassified war-time educational movies about America’s atomic bomb tests.

Turns out that North Korea now has at least two nuclear bombs. And several different companies have sheepishly confessed, or announced to the world, that they now have cloned humans on the way in January. So things are really looking up for us in the New Year. 2003 promises to be one hell of a good time indeed, what with the new invasion of Iraq and the slumping economy. .

Had a reading today with a lady who claims to read your soul history from the Akashic Records. Cannot comment yet. Need time to integrate.

Current Spin: Tom Petty new one, The Last DJ. This is a really good album. He is at the top of his game as a songwriter. Not much sonic exploration, but just really good songwriting.

So good to be home again. I got off the plane and wanted to hug Miamians. Why? I don't know. When you get off the plane in Miami, the first things you are immediately struck with is one, the hot and humid weather—it doesn’t matter where someone is from—this is one of the first things they comment on, and two, the sound of Spanish being spoken all around you. They say there is a lot of Spanish in Phoenix and in Los Angeles as well. That just means they’ve never spent any time in Miami. I am sitting out on the back porch now smoking a very strong Cuban cigar and writing. I feel so good to be home. I walked in my home and felt such a sense of relief and comfort. They say home is where the heart is, and I just left my family and a big group of some of my best friends. So why do I feel so good coming back here? Went to the Grove for dinner and was immediately taken by the sheer number of beautiful people we encountered along the way.

Thinking more about the art and music scene here and in New York and in LA. And I feel that we have a pretty good scene after all. It’s very centralized which is a good thing. The music scene in LA seemed so cynical, almost kind of washed up. The kids and musicians I talked to on the street and in the clubs in LA had such a ‘it's impossible’ attitude about it. I don't necessarily think it's any better here in Miami or in New York, but that it just depends on where you are. You make your scene where you are. Now if you happen to be in Iowa, yea maybe you should think about moving. But in any big city USA, you can blossom and grow your thing, whatever that happens to be. There is so much great talent in Miami. It just needs to get out to the people more. The people need to start working together more to get the word out. Miami is ready to bust out nationally. People have been saying it for years. I'm beginning to believe it.

On the beach right now. Sitting in the sand of the Santa Monica beach watching the sunset. A mountain range to my right. The ocean and setting sun in front of me. Endless beach and more mountains to my left. And palm trees as tall as skyscrapers behind me lining a highway that winds on forever up and down the coast. Don't have sunsets on the east coast. Very cold here. Dry and cold. Somehow it feels different. California is very big. Too expansive for words. Just the sprawling beach, the sand between the pacific coast highway and the ocean is longer than a New York City block. In fact, the average California palm tree is a longer than an average Miami block. Everything is big in California. Driving through Santa Monica, sunset strip, west Hollywood, pacific palisades, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, it feels like any minute some guy in a Baseball cap is going to come out from behind a wooden façade with palm trees painted on it and yell “cut!” everything looks like a movie here. We found out tonight that Larry David lives here in this neighborhood a few houses away, and his show curb your enthusiasm is filmed here in this neighborhood where mike and Beth live. You eat at your local Italian restaurant and two days later you see it on TV. That's California.

Also very beautiful. It offers amazing greenery, great beaches, mountain views all around you. And more than that, the people seem real, more real, sincere. A lot less bullshit than on the east coast, which is funny, because everyone I have spoken to here says that you have to watch out for the bullshit or the fake and phony people. Maybe they have just not ever been to Miami or fort Lauderhell. The problem is that there really isn't a city here. there is just little cities all over the place nestled amongst sprawling neighborhoods. Neighborhoods and more neighborhoods that go on forever. But no city really. That is California.