New Yorkers may hate us more, but no one tops the British when it comes to binge-dissing L.A. in print. (Who can ever forget Aldous Huxley's travelogue of Angeleno strangeness, in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: “Then suddenly the car plunged into a tunnel and emerged into another world, a vast, untidy, suburban world of filling stations and billboards, of low houses in gardens, of vacant lots and waste paper . . . “)

Today's best comes from the Times of London's man in L.A., Chris Ayres, as he laments  economic bubbles:

But, of course, we're all wiser now, even here in L.A., where gullibility – or “suspension of disbelief,” as Hollywood prefers to call it – is pretty much a requirement for simply getting out of bed in the morning. This is a town where it rains for two and half minutes a year, after all: human life shouldn't be possible — yet here we are, regardless. Which perhaps explains why Angelenos fall for bubbles harder than anyone else, while trying their damnedest to sell the very same hype to the rest of the world.”

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