Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays from Lesser Los Angeles. 1st Edition

A commentator on National Public Radio and a columnist for Buzz magazine provides a series of witty, wry essays on the California lifestyle examines topics ranging from UCLA extension courses to IKEA, Hollywood studios to Baywatch.

"Depth," Tsing Loh proposes, sometimes "deserves a holiday." In this collection of pieces from her "Valley" column for L.A.'s Buzz magazine, she provides one of sorts, weighing in with tongue-in-cheek observations on such ponderous subjects as the Ikea-ization of 20-somethings' taste in home decor, the semiotics of earrings and the pleasures of Baywatch. But for all their frothy charm, her musings on the plight of an overeducated, underemployed generation that measures success in terms of the ability to afford health insurance are often as insightful as they are witty. Even as she gently mocks the pretensions and delusions of her fellow young Angelenos, Tsing Loh succeeds in making Generation X angst far more appealing and sympathetic than usual. Despite L.A.'s role as "the nation's cultural scapegoat," even the "smug, incestuous, cultural imperialist hipsters of Manhattan" will doubtless appreciate-and recognize something of their own experience in-Tsing Loh's sardonic but never mean-spirited take on modern urban life.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

If Oscar Wilde could be brought back to life and persuaded to visit Los Angeles with Hunter Thompson as his guide, one wonders if even he could do satiric justice to the place ... the way Sandra Tsing Loh has ... Even her acknowledgments left me begging for mercy; don't read this book in a place where you are expected to keep quiet.