Occasionally when I tell people that I grew up in and occasionally adored Southern California I’m greeted by looks of skepticism. I understand why – it’s a weird, weird place. Los Angeles was the first city I learned to love and hate with equal measures of passion. I hated the permanent knot I had in back from having to drive everywhere. I hated the city’s constant remaking and forgetting of what little history there was. I hated Christmas days warm enough to wear shorts. But it was impossible not to love all the flavor that flowed through hilly neighborhoods and under freeways (Chicago I love you, but why on earth can’t you deliver decent Mexican food?).

I always found that the easiest way to explain to naysayers what Los Angeles meant to me was to paraphrase this quote even though I could never remember who it was that said it. Turns out it was Frank Lloyd Wright. Those stupid quote web sites say it goes, “Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” The journalist and historian Carey McWilliams cites a slightly better version of the quote in his 1946 book Southern California: An Island on the Land in a discussion about how everyone in L.A. is a newcomer, “It’s as if you tipped the United States up so all the commonplace people slid down there into Southern California.” See, just slightly better. The way it was told to me and how I share it with others can only really be told in person. It requires holding your hands out, palms in, and then slowly raising your right hand to demonstrate the tipping. And here’s the key – with the left hand now cupped as if holding an invisible ashtray you explain that Southern California is like a drain trap. That if the nation were to be turned up on end, that drain would catch all the crap and scraps that people didn’t want: rootless weirdos and the ill hoping to be cured by the sun; immigrants and religious zealots; people lost and searching for something they can only imagine finding in a sunset overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Somehow all that crapped mixed together makes for a beautiful and vibrant and totally captivating and very strange region. I know this doesn’t make sense. I’ll have to demonstrate in person sometime.

I tell you this because I’m here in L.A. again for a brief period. Here’s the glimpse I had of the Grand Canyon on my way here earlier today.

I’m here because the show Weekend America has invited me out to work with them as a visiting producer for the next month and I am thrilled. I just heard a police helicopter flying over the city. It’s good to be back home.