About The Name

Why bLAg?

It was the immediate image that popped into my head when I thought about creating a weblog about LA. And the collage above, complete with freeways and palm trees, was part of that initial vision.

It's just a combination of "blog" and "LA", really.

It is not:

• blahg—Dictionary.com defines "blah" as insipid; dull; uninteresting. LA is certainly none of those things. People in LA are sometimes some of those things, but the town itself is not;


• blague—"blague" is French for "joke". This bLAg is no joke, y' hear? And I am not French. So that settles that.


• blag—it's bLAg, not blag; "blag" is short for "blaggard" which derives from Black Guard: the lowest menials of a royal household who had charge of pots and pans and other kitchen utensils, and rode in the wagons conveying these during journeys from one residence to another: the scullions and kitchen knaves....I most certainly do have charge of the pots and pans and other kitchen utensils; but I'm not much of a wagon-rider (although I do drive an '89 Corolla....more on that in a later post).

Although now that I read further, there are some other definitions of "blag" from the Urban Dictionary that might well occasionally pertain to me or my writings.

To wit:

To gain, usually entrance to a restricted area or club, or some material good, through confidence trickery or cheekiness. Lying is also acceptable. This might describe a lot of my auditions here, except for the lying part.

Convince another person that all the stuff you just made up is in fact true and worthy. Ha! That's what I'll be trying to do in these posts.

a) To get something for nothing or to do no work. b) To get annoyed by something. I will probably spend a fair amount of my time in LA doing no work. I will surely spend a lot of time in LA being annoyed by something. Most likely, traffic.

An expression that decisively and effectively undercuts the statement of another. Essentially means "bullshit." Hmmm. Any connection between "LA" and "bullshit"? Let's meditate on that one a bit.....

What else?

In my graphic design of the logo, I have attempted to tip my hat to the basic geography of Los Angeles: the "L" and "A" are kind of over-sized; they overwhelm and crowd their "b" and "g" neighbors out of the picture. It's an apt metaphor for the way this urban sprawl pushes up from the Los Angeles basin, crowding out both the coastline and the Santa Ana mountain range.

In all fairness, I dig LA quite a bit. As a born-and-bred east-coaster I still have a baseline suspicion of the place—but by and large, it's far better here than I'd imagined. No doubt that sounds like sucking-up, but it's actually quite true.