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THE URBAN MAN FOR KCRW, NOV. 20, 2006

Glory Days

By Marc Porter Zasada

IT'S LATE AFTERNOON on the Music Center Plaza, and the Urban Man has gone for a stroll before a matinée. Suddenly the sun cuts through all that towering, if dated architecture to pick out the face of a yet-famous actor/director, a film icon of the Seventies. It illuminates his still-loud clothing but now loose-jawed face. It lights his watery eyes. And me, I say something stupid to my wife.

I say, “Remember how that guy looked in his glory days?”

Immediately, I regret my words. After all, maybe these are his glory days. Maybe in his mind, the Seventies were just a prelude. And hey, maybe, even in L.A., our lives don’t actually take the form of a parabolic curve, you know: up and then down.

Long ago, way before L.A. existed, I’m told that people looked at life not as a parabola, but as a sort of circle. You know: generations coming and going, seasons spinning—like in the title song of The Lion King, when the giraffes step out of the sunrise to get gobbled up by the cheetahs?

Anyway…besides the Circle Theory, I’ve also heard about the Bumpy Road Theory of Life, the Long and Winding Road Theory, the Roller Coaster Theory, and of course, the Stairway to Heaven hypothesis.

But lately, we all seem to be haunted by the Celebrity Parabola, a simple mathematical model developed by People magazine in cooperation with the leading philosophers of our time, and now widely accepted by the society at large.

In this view, we all spend our early years slowly working toward some remarkable peak, some “best game” afternoon worthy of our finest headline and biggest smile. After that, comes the inevitable decline—be it fast or slow, graceful or ungraceful, deserved or undeserved, golden or silver—a decline finally capped by one nostalgic “Whatever Happened To So And So” kind of article on page 46.

The Parabola Theory is not all about wealth and fame. It does grudgingly acknowledge that the top of your curve may come on the graduation day of your fourth child or while waiting in line at Pink’s Hot Dogs. And if you’re really lucky, yes, your life may include an exciting second or even third act.

Still, each week you should ask, “Is this it? Are these my glory days?”

Like most citizens of L.A., the Urban Man thinks a lot about parabolic curves, and I’m always trying to decide if I’m currently occupying my own glory days. I mean, who knows: maybe they came and went unnoticed. There was that decade in high tech. The springtime flush of marriage. Unlike Bruce Springsteen, I’m pretty sure my glory days did not occur in high school. I mean, not that I recall.

Once, a successful foreign correspondent approached me at a party, and told me that a newspaper article I wrote about China 20 years ago actually inspired his career. He smiled and shook my hand, but instead of giving me a glow of satisfaction, the compliment just depressed me. I mean, what if that old piece represented the peak of the Urban Man?

Back on the plaza, the yet-famous auteur has stopped for a drink with a friend at the outdoor café, and me, I go sit shamelessly at a nearby table. I’m not starstruck. No, I’m hoping I can erase the simplicity of the Celebrity Parabola from my mind. I’m hoping I’ll overhear him discuss some important contract, argue some crucial deal, or fight for some artistic principle. I want to discover that even now, this star is still navigating the winding road, riding the roller coaster, or climbing up the good side of some complex and indefinable curve.