California girls – The Magnetic Fields
This is probably a sound and maintainable enough prejudice to carry as an outsider (given enough television and tabloid magazines), but a state that at once contains the Cabazon Dinosaurs, the La Brea Tar Pits, Stanford University, Alcatraz, Yosemite National Park, Amboy Crater, Bubblegum Alley, the camera obscura in Cliff House, Jenny Pygmy Forest, the redwood forests, banana, Pez, Charles M. Schulz, women’s heritage, cartoon art, silent film and computer history museums, and any remaining orange groves, can’t be all that bad; its populace not all the MTV-bred stereotype one would expect, and the possibility that there is actually some humanity behind that stereotype.
I guess that’s what this song is about. Still, it’s one heck of a battle cry if this is your battle. I’m just as apprehensive about going anywhere. Some places are made unappealing. From a small town to a city with every ugly preconception of it laid out to you in a neat media and social package, it’s easy to hate things without knowing things.
