By now, your Facebook feed is swelling with posts with posts from brand-new hockey fans, folks saying "Go 'Yotes" when they didn't give the slightest damn two weeks ago. But that's an awful cynical way to look at it, isn't it? On Tuesday night, the Phoenix Coyotes beat the Predators and advanced to the Western finals, where they will face a new challenge, the Los Angeles Kings.
L.A. may have a bunch of theme parks, good weather, a thriving and diverse music scene, art, food, culture, and a high concentration of beautiful people, but we're willing to overlook all that and say the city sucks. Everything's overpriced, the people are mean, there's pollution everywhere, and the city planners apparently never have heard of turn lanes.
Bandwagon-hopping or not, we're here for you, Coyotes fans. Here are six songs that bash the city of Los Angeles.
Randy Newman, "I Love L.A."
"From the South Bay to the Valley From the West Side to the East Side Everybody's very happy."
This seems like a happy song -- but listen close. It gets played at Lakers' games all the time, but it's laced with satire. A drive down Santa Monica Boulevard from the west side to the east side reveals all the faces of L.A., from swanky high rises by the beach to the rundown areas of Koreatown and East Hollywood, and not everyone's happy.
Death Cab for Cutie, "Why You'd Want to Live Here"
"It's a lovely summer's day and I can almost see a skyline through a thickening shroud of egos."
Has anyone ever seen the San Gabriel Mountains from downtown L.A.? I'm not talking about a silhouette way off in the distance, but an actual clear visual of the mountains. No? I didn't think so.
Goldfinger, "The City With Two Faces"
"I've had more motorcycles stolen here than Nirvana has songs about heroin / You can't ever surf unless you want to get hepatitis."
This song is also known as "Fuck L.A." because Los Angeles is gross and full of people that don't know who Keith Morris is.
Bad Religion, "Los Angeles Is Burning"
"More a question than a curse / How could Hell be any worse?"
Yeah, it's an ode to Bad Religion's first album, but we'd like to think that the media obsession with L.A. fires makes Greg Graffin hate the City of Angels even more (and he lives there, so he'd be an authority on the subject).
Neko Case, "In California"
"Another suicide on the 405 / The Black Dahlia she's smiles and smiles / It's the same old town that bled her dry"
L.A. can drive people mad. A sad Neko Case is a bummer . . . hopefully, a rainy day in Koreatown can cheer her up, unless she goes crazy from hearing incessant car alarms.
X, "Los Angeles"
"She had to leave Los Angeles."
It's a time-honored tradition for Los Angeles bands to pen screeds about the city, but no one does it better than X. "She" began to hate a bunch of minorities, homosexuals, and rich people, and eventually got fed up with L.A. (Which is interesting because Exene Cervenka eventually left the city, too.)
Contrary to this post, L.A. isn't thatbad -- after all, the most romantic of relationships can be the "love/hate" kind. On that note, go 'Yotes!
