Douglas Coupland brings his anthropological bite to the New Republic of Dec. 19, with a cover story on Los Angeles 90049, the "psychic nexus" of both Marilyn Monroe's death and Nicole Brown Simpson's murder. In a series of well-observed snippets, the "Generation X" author precisely captures the suburb of Brentwood, where "a butterfly should be able to fly through any ** properly kept tree." In Brentwood, outdoor dining is passe "not because of U.V.'s but because one side effect of the new families of antidepressants is photosensitivity." In Brentwood, "investigations simply drag on until amnesia sedates any enthusiasm for a full solution." In Brentwood, "the mood is Noir."
At one moment, Mr. Coupland is seen snooping for poetic detail behind Monroe's old house, where he finds birds-of-paradise clippings in the trash bin. He is funniest in his notes on Brentwood architecture, which includes styles like "Doris-Day's-in-the-house-holding-a- # lobster-claw-and-dish-of-melted-butter-Cape-Cod" and "1941-white-stucco-Pearl-Harbor's-just-been- + o bombed-cocktail-darling?" The Simpson house is "Marcus-Welby-sonorous-Tudor," and another popular style is "San-Fernando-Valley-minimall: a fevered dream of the Mediterranean, a house where Barbie might live." It's all astute and, of course, ironic, trailing an artificial breed of blondish people who seem not to have any history.
Mr. Coupland is a wizard of ellipsis, stacking irrelevant details and ultimately approximating revelation. In his magazine pieces and some of his fiction, he has pioneered this style of peripheral truths that match our crowded, random, electronic reality. His eye, like Robert Altman's, is both sharp and passive, and in "Los Angeles 90049" he waits and watches as America's Brentwood defines itself to him.
Feeding frenzy
Many of the magazine articles about That Case focus on the media as monger. In the New Yorker for Dec. 12, Adam Gopnik examines today's rabid media, which "sounds loud and acts mean," and it's not very pretty on the inside. Interestingly, Mr. Gopnik focuses on the legitimate media, not the tabloids, as he recalls the old days when "the reporter used to gain status by dining with his subjects; now he gains status by dining on them." The media is all aggression for aggression's sake, unattached to any form of morality or justice. The piece is peppered with observations such as: "The right is much better at character assassination, because the right still believes in character."
To get through the slow spots in Mr. Gopnik's long article, you can distract yourself with a decadent Chivas Regal ad included in 300,000 copies of the New Yorker. Press the button on the ad and the night sky lights up with 23 battery-powered diodes in the shape of a big old bottle.
+ Chivas: The 1980s are over.
Love after death
The black-and-white cover of Rolling Stone for Dec. 13 robs Courtney Love of her very sloppy red lips. Yes, Ms. Love has dominated the rock press in 1994, but at least she always justifies her presence with excessive and polarizing comments (and a potent album, "Live Through This").
A mother figure (to baby Frances Bean and the late Kurt Cobain) and an openly grieving widow, Ms. Love is nevertheless stubbornly her own crazy-kooky-edgy self. "There's definitely a narcissism in what he did," she says of Cobain's suicide. "It was very snotty of him." Ms. Love is eager to remember Cobain, but some of her best lines are about herself. "I'm not out to make a public forum of my relationship with my mother," she says. "She didn't have an abortion, and that's what counts." Ms. Love also explains her baby-doll look: "I didn't do the kinder-whore thing because I thought I was so hot. . . . When I started it was a 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?' thing."
Cobain once sang, "What else can I say/Everyone is gay." Out magazine for December/January 1995 investigates that possibility in "Rocking the Queer Nation," about gays and lesbians in the alternative music scene -- in bands and in audiences. Guess what: The Breeders aren't all breeders. And gay people don't listen only to k. d. lang, Melissa Etheridge and Barbra Streisand.
The new KGB
KGB is a new alternative magazine that aims to be something other than this month's over-designed impossible-to-read collection of interviews with Liz Phair or Bob Mould.
Don't get me wrong -- KGB does have that subversive, nonlinear, otherworldly look, like Ray Gun's low-rent cousin. And things cyber and slacker are common. But the subjects are unexpected, curious, sometimes obscure. The November/December issue has an interview with a 14-year-old Nintendo genius, coupled with an interview with Mark Steven Miller, a man who makes the music that accompanies video games. "You have to contribute to the element of the game that is compelling," says Mr. Miller, "and that helps to create the cycle of addiction." It's a creative package.
While KGB can be frustrating -- why an interview with boxing promoter Don King? -- it promises to further define its identity.