Features by Rebecca Schoenkopf

2010-08-25 California Dreaming: Looking for Pretty People at the Dodger Game
It was my little brother Cakeyboy’s idea: hey, let’s play “who’s attractive in the crowd”! Every five minutes or so, we’d get excited and start to point one out …
2010-08-13 California Dreaming: Bus Stop
I kept telling people I was going to grad school, but didn’t exactly offer where. Once they inevitably asked, I’d make my embarrassed face and positively mumble: “USC.”
2010-08-06 California Dreaming: Fight or Flight
“Just keep pouring your milk!” the girl instructed me. This would be a perfectly acceptable thing for someone to tell you if you were in a cooking class, maybe.
2010-07-30 California Dreaming: Working
I worked on one project only, over and over again: proofreading 38 minutely differing versions of the same insurance company brochure, broken up into regions …
2010-07-23 California Dreaming: Some More, Please
I listen to the Mel Gibson tapes, and the lawyers’ takes on their admissibility. I am the reason the Huffington Post overpromises so gloriously in its hyperventilating headlines.
2010-07-16 California Dreaming: Amway Calling!
Some nice young people graciously allowed me to take a seat at their table on the patio, and they were so friendly! So outgoing and conversatey! And what did I do for work?
2010-07-09 California Dreaming: I’m Sorry
But back to Hud! It was black-and-white and boringcakes, except for the confounding, even crazymaking, resemblance of Hud to one Mr. George W. Bush.
2010-07-02 California Dreaming: Outlaws
The little girl who won this year was a perfect little girl. You could see it in her straight little back and the big, sober eyes in her serious face.
2010-06-25 California Dreaming: Les Enfants Horrible
I bitched, about everything and everything, about the man who would not drive to the middle of the intersection when turning left—even though I was not behind him.
2010-06-11 California Dreaming: I, The Jury
If I could wear my “I Voted” sticker all year long without looking like a homeless who doesn’t change her clothes, I would.
2010-06-04 California Dreaming: Assembly Required
I will be bragging about the fact that I am what I like to call a “high-information voter.” I can name you seven Supreme Court justices off the top of my head.
2010-05-21 California Dreaming: Mockus!
Bogota is one of those places I do not want to visit, as it is in Colombia, where shit just got real. And yet, being a good NPR-listening, architecture-gazing …
2010-05-14 California Dreaming: The Hard Sell
Yes, we would love to attend a timeshare presentation at Kona Resort in exchange for $150 cash and lunch. I mean it. Love.
2010-05-07 California Dreaming: The Party
We couldn’t possibly bring beer to the party. We had to walk a mile down a road with an average 25 percent grade—and that maxes out at 45 percent.
2010-04-30 Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
I had only my mother’s whispering in my ear, as long as I could remember, viva Fidel, and while I appreciated the sentiment, I also needed some actual facts.
2010-04-16 La Ciudad Mi Corazón
It is foreign, and we are on a very fancy bus, 13 or 17 of us or so, FourStory writers and our lovers and a few nice neighbors who thumbed a ride with us to Havana, Cuba.
2010-04-09 California Dreaming: Pie-Hole
Oh, Pie. Every time I’m stuck for a column, there you are, gums a-flappin’, just begging for one right to the kisser. Don’t get me wrong: my brother-in-law is terrific.
2010-03-12 California Dreaming: This Is Exactly What Happened
My little brother Cakeyboy has cut off my roulette habit of chasing good money after bad for my 33 that never hit, which was very bad for my self-esteem of thinking I’m magic.
2010-03-05 California Dreaming: Who’s Our Imaginary Boyfriend Now?
“To family,” Peter Krause said, or maybe it was “It’s all about family,” who cares? I assume he said either of the foregoing while raising his glass. I’ve sort of blocked it out.
2010-02-26 California Dreaming: Our Family Dreading
When I lived ghetto-style in the LBC, our block was a delightful mélange of black, Latino, Gypsy, and the young white crack mom across the street.
2010-02-19 California Dreaming: McWorld
I am supposed to go to Nik and Jaymee’s Garlic Poetry Festival Saturday night but my son’s sister Amanda is in town to meet us for the very first time.
2010-02-12 California Dreaming: Killing Me Softly
We were walking to the glass store on Pico where we’ve been too many times already—my son had broken his window with a nicely testosteroned 15-year-old’s injudicious slam.
2010-02-05 California Dreaming: I Like Blight
Anne Bray is a lovely woman, tall and blonde and well-put-together. She is an artist, often focusing on remaking the urban landscape. The landscape she wants is pristine.
2010-01-29 California Dreaming: Bare Naked Ladies
So here is what you do: get a job interview in Vegas, and while you’re there, put $10 on 33. You will win $350! Then, lose a hundred of that trying to do it again.
2010-01-15 California Dreaming: Conversations With Other Women (About Homeless Men)
And just like that, he goes, “I’ll take two bottles of water, orange juice no pulp, and Ruffles sour cream potato chips.”
2010-01-08 California Dreaming: Growing Museum Audiences in a Shitty Economy
It must have been the stupidest thing to come out of the panel’s collective mouth, on par with the time a lady panelist said she got a job in this economy.
2010-01-01 California Dreaming: All Is Quiet
Ten years ago, I was scared to death of Y2K and its incipient lawlessness and anarchy, and so I went to San Felipe with Greg the Fireman and Annie his Special Lady.
2009-12-25 California Dreaming: My Favorite Things
Oh, the decade started out well: Y2K did not result in riots and shootouts in the lawless streets. Why? Because we identified the problem ahead of time …
2009-12-18 California Dreaming: Now With More Ranty Goodness!
Get or build a building in Long Beach, and make it veterans housing, with a pleasant and calming garden on top and medical marijuana outlets on the bottom.
2009-12-11 California Dreaming: On the Road
Suparna is in the hospital, oh no! They do not know what is wrong with her, but she has had a hundred-and-three-degree fever for a week.
2009-12-04 California Dreaming: Michael Chiarello, Worth His Salt
It was a dark day in the Schoenkopf household when Michael Chiarello won Top Chef Masters. It was not as dark a day as when Hosea won, but it was dark enough.
2009-11-27 California Dreaming: The Family
Jimmy is by far the youngest of many children from many marriages. He’s 15, and the next in line above him is 26, while the oldest several are deep into their 40s.
2009-11-21 California Dreaming: Friends With Money
We already had Friday night plans—BollWeevil at Mr. T’s Bowl, for the eminently affordable price of $5? “Attending”!—when Nathan Walpow called me, on my phone!
2009-11-13 California Dreaming: Going All Bibley
I am listening to a friend discuss the finer distinctions of gayness with my son. Right now, for instance, they are discussing whether or not Jimmy is gay for liking crushed ice.
2009-11-07 California Dreaming: Accidental Boyfriend
A year ago this morning, I floated to work smiling at everyone I met, and everyone I met smiled back. I knew the feeling wouldn’t last.
2009-10-23 California Dreaming: I Have a Friend!
I had been having an awfully terrible week, where I burst into tears at the very nice West L.A. farmers market and couldn’t stop crying, in public, and I was ashamed.
2009-10-16 California Dreaming: Newsom and Then Some
Would I vote for him for governor? Yes. Would I vote for him for lieutenant governor? Yes. Will I vote for him on a boat, and with a goat, and however else he likes it? Yes, I will.
2009-10-09 California Dreaming: Hey, Isn’t That a Mamas & the Papas Song?
There was a trio of Estonians maybe in front of me, taking a long time as they chose their dinner from 7-Eleven’s revolving meats, and a guy behind me with two Bud tallboys and a banana for strength.
2009-10-02 California Dreaming: Jesus Jumped My Hotrod
I was jealous of the hot tub Christian-and-lioness fun, but I was certainly glad the hands I’d left my boy in had turned out to be such capable ones.
2009-09-25 California Dreaming: U, Robot
We’ll see who’s right when mid-November rolls around—or doesn’t!—this year, after the LHC finally goes operational or not oh God I hope it doesn’t.
2009-09-18 California Dreaming: Walk Hard
Last week, I had a job interview! “Break a leg,” Gary Phillips told me, and I totally did! I broke my leg falling down the stairs on the way into my interviewer’s office.
2009-09-04 California Dreaming: Sarah Smile: Oh, Memories!
Would Palin have fake-birthed her grandson eight-and-a-half months after her own son?
2009-08-28 California Dreaming: Springtime for Hitler ... It’s No Time for Tolerance
You know what murdering 1.5 million Jewish children is not the same as? Broadening access to health insurance. I promise, it’s not the same thing at all!
2009-08-21 California Dreaming: Murder Was the Case
I wanted to see how murderers act when they’re trying to bag a hotty on reality TV.
2009-08-14 California Dreaming: Bad Valet
This was all before the Town Hell zombies started looking for human brains. It was before Sarah Palin compared being offered hospice care to facing Pol Pot.
2009-07-31 California Dreaming: Girl Fight!
The Salvadorean bartender leaned over. “Miami Cubans are bullshit!” he said tenderly. And then he bought me a strawberry daiquiri.
2009-07-24 California Dreaming: Nightmare on Dream Street
Jesus and Jesus (one goes by Chuy and speaks only Spanish while one goes by Jesse and is teased for not speaking any) build a wall to block the unappetizing view of the neighboring trailer park.
2009-07-17 California Dreaming: Feeling Good and Guilty on the Eco-Home Tour
No worries, Julia, you are 73 and ride only a bike or public transportation. I am 36, and today I drove a car (with internal combustion) seven-tenths of a mile and back. I promise you, you win.
2009-07-10 California Dreaming: How’m I Driving?
I said, “Well, I’m a Communist too, so that works out great!” And then he said, all nasty and mean, “Why don’t you go back to Germany!”
2009-07-03 California Dreaming: Team Aline!
On the heiresses of yesteryear, and why Frank Lloyd Wright was always called an asshole.
2009-06-26 California Dreaming: Boyfriend, Boyfriend, Yes I Had Your Boyfriend
I was attempting a World’s Sadness Record, and if you leave out all the times when actual bad things have happened to actual people, I could have been a contender.
2009-06-19 California Dreaming: Days of Our Lives
Rebecca Schoenkopf invites the unemployed to live the high life.
2009-06-12 California Dreaming: Conversations With Other Women
Is she bluffing so her amazingly hot Tijuana mayor/secret kingpin boyfriend won’t kill her?
2009-06-05 California Dreaming: Valentine
He guffaws and gasps in his confounded hilarity.
2009-05-22 California Dreaming: Family First
When I hear people talk so piously about “family,” I assume their responsibility ends there.
2009-05-15 California Dreaming: Baby, Stay in the Corner
“Ah, Schmutzige Tanzen!” my dad said happily.
2009-05-08 California Dreaming: A Few Good Republican Men
Some guy thinks he’s losing the ability to see Rebecca’s sarcasm.
2009-05-01 California Dreaming: Big Pile of Sad
You are a union propagandist, and don’t you forget it!
2009-04-24 California Dreaming: Louie Louie
“Look in the mirror,” one plump and lovely agent tells us. “What do you see?”
2009-04-17 California Dreaming: I Feel Really Sorry for Those Dead Pirates
Somalia! Sprawling land of starvation and brutish misery!
2009-04-10 California Dreaming: View of a Loft
Good lord, that’s a graceless pile of slop!
2009-04-03 California Dreaming: We Won’t Play Tent City
X
2009-03-27 California Dreaming: I Want to Go There
I would like a wildflower! Picked just for me!
2009-03-20 Neighborhoods: Hollywood 90028
It was all set up for bottle service at $425 a bottle, and so we were afraid to sit.
2009-03-13 Neighborhoods: Downtown L.A. 90013
The barkeep gives a small tour of his recommended pours.
2009-03-05 California Dreaming: But Is It Art?
Of course it is. Everything is art.
2009-02-20 California Dreaming: Cocooned
It’s just too cold in Rebecca’s place to take off her clothes so she can get dressed.
2009-02-13 California Dreaming: Parents Just Don’t Understand
Read a book, read a book, read a motherfuckin’ book.
2009-02-06 California Dreaming: American Pie
She is scaring herself with this Suzy Homemaker bullshit
2008-04-07 California Dreaming: My City Was Gone
Populated exclusively with 21-and-a-half-year-olds listening to the foulest hip-hop.
2008-03-31 California Dreaming: I Love You, You Pay My Rent
I do not have rent control. You do not have rent control. I am totally okay with that.
2008-03-24 California Dreaming: Cranks
Mostly, anti-tax cranks. A few religious cranks. All of them old, white, and crotchety.
2008-03-17 California Dreaming: There Goes the Neighborhood
Four men, two dogs, and a cat who jumps over her Dad’s sleeping German shepherd.
2008-03-10 California Dreaming: Vodka Wishes, Caviar Dreams
It gets tiresome writing about the poors and the poor, pitiful middle class.
2008-03-03 California Dreaming: No. 1 With a Bulleit
I don’t drink Jack Daniel’s because it makes me fight and then cry.
2008-02-25 California Dreaming: Happy Boo-hoo Birthday to Me
She would cross the dead-end street and pick mustard flower bouquets for her mom.
2008-02-18 California Dreaming: I Have a Crush on Ed Rollins
There’s all kinds of Republicans I have not very secret things for.
2008-02-11 California Dreaming: You Can Tell by Looking at Her
I care for my aged father! I even vote in off years! [With video!]
2008-02-04 California Dreaming: Escape From L.A.
All this and Snake Plissken, too!
2008-01-28 Neighborhoods: Costa Mesa 92626
92626 isn’t a bad zip code at all. It’s got the Orange County Fairgrounds.
2008-01-21 California Dreaming: Watching Scarface With My Son
Christmas came around, and I decided to lower our personal NC-14 to NC-13-and-a-half.
2008-01-14 Neighborhoods: UC Irvine 92697
The poli sci chair is totally in love with her, as men in their 50s are wont to be.
2008-01-07 California Dreaming: I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out!
There’s mildew in the bathtub and pine needles on the wall and a 17-week abortion.
2007-12-31 California Dreaming: Rich Dad, Poor Dad
His roommate was a swarthy pocho dude with muttonchops and bloodshot eyes.
2007-12-24 Neighborhoods: Long Beach 90803
The real Naples doesn’t have canals, you pretentious yet oddly ignorant twits!
2007-12-10 Neighborhoods: Anaheim 92805
Kind of a bummer, but pretty cool too, and no Starbucks on Anaheim Boulevard.
2007-12-03 California Dreaming: A Brief History of My Roommates
Featuring vacuum and carpet cleaners, and all sorts of illegal substances.
2007-11-27 Neighborhoods: Orange 92867
The hot 12-year-olds were out in force, with nothing between them and their Calvins.
2007-11-22 California Dreaming: The End of the American Empire
Did you know air is supposed to be invisible? No, I swear, it’s true.
2007-11-15 California Dreaming: Wednesday Night, Friday Morning
Oh, those alcoholics will say anything!
2007-11-05 California Dreaming: All My Indicted Friends
Just how are the amenities in Club Fed, anyway?
2007-10-29 California Dreaming: Malibu Is Burning
No, this is the final insult to a 68-year-old body.
2007-10-15 California Dreaming: Daddy’s Home
The final insult to a 68-year-old body.
2007-10-08 California Dreaming: Not a Bad Place, Actually
A peaceful place of healthy boringness.
2007-10-01 California Dreaming: Your Universe at Work
For $40 a night, you got a room in a shared apartment, and breakfast!
2007-09-24 California Dreaming: Bush Destroyed Your Life—Again!
And balloons used to be such fun.
2007-09-03 Neighborhoods: Fullerton 92832
I really love zip code 92832.
2007-08-27 California Dreaming: Please Pass the Porn
Kicking off our special House Porn Week.
2007-07-29 California Dreaming: The Ballad of Casey Serin
Fooling many of the people a good deal of the time.