As long as I can remember I have loved history. I find it both liberating and consoling to realize little has not happened before in some variation or another. It is a filter through which I view not only current events, but often relationships as well. Yet truth be told, one of the major advantages to actually being paid to write about the past is that it provides a fabulous excuse not to deal with the present.

The other day I broke one of my rules of Westside survival: don’t go east of La Cienga during the work week. But I had a good reason, it wasn’t peak traffic time and I was able to catch up on the news by listening to NPR. The first report I heard was Arnold lambasting LAUSD as “horrible.” Now I am no great defender of the district, but he went on to say that if their leaders were in the private sector, they would be fired. Does he not read the business pages, let alone the front pages of almost any newspaper? If a CEO drives a company into the ground, he is handed millions of dollars, often after the business has been subsidized by taxpayers. How has this mystique of a hard nosed private sector survived the last decade? As I am pondering this, I am distracted by Juan Williams reporting on the White House and the Middle East. Ok, so it is supposed to be what the White House is thinking (now there is both an oxymoron and nonsequitur in a single phrase) but not one word of the report differed from what Tony Snow would read off a teleprompter. Only because it is a journalist mouthing the words, it adds the aura of objectivity. I start to give mental kudos to the neocons for attacking NPR programming because it clearly is working when my cell phone rang. My friend is also in her car so I ask if she is hearing what I am hearing.

“Oh no,” she responds without a hint of doubt, “I don’t listen to NPR. They are anti- Israel.”

Oh really.

That was enough of the “real world” for me that day thank you. I happily returned to my desk, put Gershwin’s piano reels on the cd player and ensconce myself in the summer of 1928. Piles of copies of Film Daily, Motion Picture News, cables, memos and letters from various archives combine to illuminate who is doing what to whom. Instead of dealing with current realities, I can write about corporate representatives being added to the Boards of film companies, First National “swinging the axe” as they cut their budget by 30 percent and over at Keith Albee Orpheum “a machine gun squadron has turned its attention to agents and bookers, executing many of each, with more to follow.”

See what I mean. Change the name of the companies and the news could have lifted from today’s newspapers. The only difference is I know how it turns out.

This is author Cari Beauchamp's first post at LA Observed — or on any blog. Click for her bio.