My father once got lost in an IKEA, though he’d probably vehemently deny it if you asked him. Round and round he went, somehow skipping the stairs down into the Marketplace and looping instead through the restaurant to end up back where he started. You know what I’m talking about – every IKEA is the same. In fact, the IKEA in East Palo Alto is a disturbingly exact replica of the IKEA in Coquitlam, perhaps to prevent the kind of panic attacks that a sealed biosphere populated by particle board furniture and umlauts wreaks on the average male. You need the equivalent of a video game walkthrough guide to escape IKEA intact and financially solvent.
I had a bubble moment of my own last Friday while attending Shrek 2. In the stolen moments (stolen by the movie execs, not me, you can be sure) between the lights dimming and the start of the main feature, something struck me. I realized that every movie being advertised had been produced within the state of California. Pixar had an ad for its new movie – they’re in Emeryville, about an hour away. Disney and a few other Hollywood studios had their latest offerings on display – a mere five-hour drive away.
And, of course, the main feature itself was a cultural ouroboros, with numerous allusions to popular culture, most of which originated in some form or another in either LA or Hollywood. Weird.
Everywhere you look, there’s a reference to California in one form or another – it’s all-encompassing, but until you’re here you don’t really realize the origin of just about everything is Californian in one sense or another. When we first arrived, people asked how I was adjusting to life in the valley – I responded it hadn’t been much of a transition at all. After all, which magazines do I read? Which websites do I monitor regularly? Which inventors had I grown up admiring? A lot of them were located here in Silicon Valley. Not much of a cultural shock, when you think about it.
However, it’s not all 3D-animated ogres and pre-pubescent Internet multi-millionaires. While the importance and creativity of California can not be questioned (especially given it’s the eighth largest economy in the world), there are downsides to being in the Center Of The Universe. For one thing, the TV news is decidedly inward focused – I’d be hard-pressed to remember seeing an international story (beyond Iraq, which doesn’t count) since I arrived. I can’t blame California – when you’re the center of the universe, why do you care about what’s going in the outside world?
Well, I care. And that’s something I need to keep reminding myself about so I don’t get star-struck and forget about the rest of the world.