Reality Stars, They’re Just Like Us!

As a kid visiting L.A. (age 8), I remember taking one of those bus tours to see the stars’ homes. Highlights included the home formerly owned by Lucille Ball. (Yeah, it didn’t take much to get people excited back then). These days, tourists are flocking to L.A. to catch a glimpse of their fave reality star.

And sometimes catching a glimpse isn’t enough. They’re coming to experience the lifestyle — and perhaps befriend their favorite TV personalities. The L.A. Times features one such “The Hills” fan:

In the weeks leading up to her spring break earlier this year, Rachel Haas, then a high school senior, wasn’t concerned with trying on new bikinis or misting herself with a spray tan. Instead, she was obsessively watching MTV’s reality show ” The Hills” and making a long list of every restaurant and nightclub that appeared on-screen that she wanted to visit on her trip to Los Angeles.

Her ideal itinerary began with her and her friends venturing down the Sunset Strip to eat burgers at Ketchup, where they figured they had a shot of catching the cameras from “The Hills.” On the weekend, they’d hit Les Deux, Hollywood’s über-trendy club, with its Euro-themed wallpaper and bottle service.

“My perception of L.A. was that it was a place that felt completely unreal, like a movie set. I had the highest expectations for it — I thought I’d literally be running into famous people everywhere,” said Haas, now an 18-year-old freshman at Washington University in St. Louis.

No happy ending here: Haas didn’t get to meet L.C. afterall.

Fact Checking Sunday Night’s "Entourage"

I’m still enjoying HBO’s “Entourage,” even if critics are a bit more harsh on the show this season. Part of our appreciation for the show comes from “Entourage’s” love letter to Los Angeles.

But sometimes the show makes some sacrifices in the name of plot that only an Angeleno would notice.

For example, in Sunday’s episode:

– When their flight is delayed for three hours at LAX, Eric, Vince and Billy agree to meet Anna Faris — at The Little Door restaurant on 3rd. Yeah, that would provide a bit of a time crunch.

– At LAX, the boys are planning to fly fictional “France Airlines” to Cannes. The international carrier is seen in terminal 2 — even though we all know those types of flights are actually based out of the Tom Bradley International terminal.

See any others?

School Frenzy: What Are We Missing Here?

Around this time every year, the L.A. Times does a big story about the frantic last-minute frenzy among Angeleno parents to get their kid in a proper school; this year, it’s also the basis of a story line on “Entourage.”

An excerpt from the Times story:

By law, every child is ensured a spot in a public school. But for this mass of families, the neighborhood school typically is not the preferred choice.

The Los Angeles school district’s magnet office tries to help. So does its open enrollment office. A call to a school — public or private — can uncover unexpected openings; informal parent networks also accumulate information. Parents often find that the local public school is better than first presumed, or has a special and worthy program within the larger campus that they can settle on.

Then there are parents who lie to get into a school, which can backfire if a school investigates.

“It was really difficult when my daughter didn’t get a sibling permit” for an in-demand Westside school, said Kerry Allen. “Because I know families who used false addresses.”

Other parents have worn out shoe leather, spent evenings poring over test scores and attended lotteries.

Debra, who lives in North Hollywood, visited seven public schools in recent months. Like other parents in limbo, Debra asked that her last name not be used, for fear that publicity could hurt her son’s chances of getting into a school.

She had started at her neighborhood campus, where, she said she was told there was no advanced curriculum for her entering kindergartner, who can read.

So she turned elsewhere. Her son sits more than 100 deep on the waiting list at Sherman Oaks Elementary. At the Community Magnet, just west of the Bel-Air Country Club, he is so far down that “they said there’s not really a chance.”…

Debra’s other favored options, at this point, are two private schools; each would cost about $20,000 a year. She’s not sure she can afford that on her husband’s salary as a stuntman. She once ran a modeling agency but currently works part-time.

There’s also a desperate back-up plan: Rent out the family’s North Hollywood house and move to a Malibu trailer park to qualify for schools there. But the seller wants $400,000 for the trailer, and hookups are at least $2,000 more a month, she said.

What??? Spending $20,000 a year on a kindergarten class? The paper goes on to mention the booming “educational consultant” business, in which parents hire an outsider to investigate what’s going on inside the schools, and whether or not they’ve been blacklisted. (Yup, blacklisting really happens.)

Am I crazy? Am I doing Blogger Toddler a disservice by not getting caught up in all of this craziness? The elementary school close to our house is far from perfect, and is even lower-performing than other schools in the area. But I’m not losing sleep over it. I grew up attending mostly average public schools (ranging from a strong DOD elementary school to a rather weak high school), but managed to make the best of it all and turn out fine. Is too much made in L.A. of demanding the best school, no questions asked?

(Flickr pic by Confuzn.)