The Tree of Numbers

Legacy Player:

Recently, while working his day job, the Urban Man almost set off yet another global financial crisis. Really. All because of cell H33 on page 5 of a spreadsheet I was constructing...

Out Looking for the Spark

Legacy Player:

Last week I got a little depressed. Yes, it happens even to the most dedicated Angeleno. Maybe it was a post-election depression or maybe it was part of the upcoming global depression…in any case, I needed to access The Spark of Life...

Last View of Atlantis

Legacy Player:

Wasn't it a shame that just before Athens fell, nobody snapped any pictures…or okay, made a few sketches? I mean, wouldn't it be great to see how the Acropolis actually looked? The Roman Colosseum? The Colossus of Rhodes?...

The New World

Legacy Player:

Just after the election, I read a quote from a woman in France who said, "I think America is re-becoming a new world." All week long that phrase rang musically in the ear of the Urban Man as he went looking for the new world right here in L.A....

Standing at the Edge, Part II

Legacy Player:

I don't know about you, but tonight the Urban Man feels ten months pregnant. I'm lying here with a strangely distended belly, waiting helplessly for the birth of a new world...

Standing at the Edge

Legacy Player:

I don't know about you, but even though the world is coming to an end, I haven't yet noticed any despair on the streets. The people I run into seem curiously upbeat, in fact unusually free with their smiles. New vitality has entered social gatherings. A strange optimism. Maybe that's because every time one world ends, another begins, and who knows—the next world might be better...

Predicting the Motion of the Sea

Legacy Player:

Once upon a time, anyone could be a prophet. It was so easy. We all knew the future would bring the spread of democracy, the retreat of religion, the surge of prices, the extension of freeways, and the fulfillment of extraordinary ambition. It seemed…inevitable.

Just Say You Believe

Legacy Player:

Life in the Casino

Legacy Player:

Let me assure you that I never wanted to live in a casino. I mean, there's the noise. The smoke. The sleeplessness. The excess of bad food. You can't avoid the constant reports from the tables: sometimes good, mostly bad, but either way…unstoppable...

High Flyers

Legacy Player:

Despite the financial crisis, I know we have not come to the end of the age of the high flyers. We admire them too much. We have invested too much in them. We don't remember how to function without them...

Infinite Expectation at Breakfast

Legacy Player:

Here in L.A., people believe it's possible to create "the perfect moment." The city as a whole may exhibit dust and chaos, but within the limited confines of a living room or a rooftop bar, we think it should be possible to find just the right art, the right clothes, the right food, the right relationship, the right politics...

Heaps of Cities

Legacy Player:

It's a hot day in the Middle East, where The Urban Man finds himself on a kind of archeological safari. Just now, I'm standing above a wide valley in northern Israel, staring at a dusty heap of stones that used to be a city. They call a little hill like this a "tel," which means an artificial mound of many layers where people once loved, argued, enslaved one another, and made a lot of pottery. Cities were small in those days: you can stroll around the average tel in half an hour...

I'm Just Like You

Legacy Player:

My friends—and before this campaign is over, I hope to call all of you friends—as we both know, the media elite do not understand this election. They just don't get it. They think it's about the economy. Or the war. Or icecaps...

Jerusalem Stories

Legacy Player:

This month the Urban Man is taking a summer sabbatical from cheerful L.A. to occupy an apartment just a few blocks from the latest bulldozer attack in Jerusalem. Like every visitor to this Holy City, I try to pretend such stories have nothing to do with me...

The God of Random Things

Legacy Player:

Everyone knows that L.A. is not ruled by the Author of Peace & Plenty, but a local deity known as the god of random things. He’s the genii who builds a Moorish house next to a Cape Cod. Who sews a patch of fake fur on a polyester warm-up jacket. Who chauffeurs six Elvis impersonators to the same event. Who causes you to miss your big break, along with the exit to the Five....