For the most part, I would call myself a champion for this city. Despite its endemic fixation on celebrity, a terrible system of traffic lights, the rabid outbreak of valet vampires and dehumanizing billboards, I've still defended its honor. Indeed, I'm a long way from my former home in Northeast Florida. The bright lights and smog could have gone to my head, but I've stuck to my guns about this place being a bit of alright.

Until yesterday.

After watching those brutal 3 hours of 'Into the Wild,' I had the overwhelming urge to go to this delightful little bookstore on Santa Monica Blvd. called Book Soup (which I hear is also shutting down for some reason) and get lost in its vibrant racks of equal parts Faulkner and Palahniuk. So I set off into my 'hood's own version of feeding time we call 6:30 pm rushhour, struggled with a red face in front of the Hustler store to parallel park and high tailed it down the hill for some literature love.

My pace slowed upon an incriminating mass of people outside of my beloved Book Soup. It may as well have been a line to get into Teddy's on a Friday night; these people preened and puffed their chests up in hopes to duck inside for a taste of that smaller, darker, better world. In this case, Tori f****** Spelling was doing a signing for her new book sTori Telling. The place was sealed with security guards. If I was even more sadistic, I would have pressed my nose up against the glass for a look at her enormous jugs, just to say I left with something.

But instead I huffed back to my car as I wrote a string of irate text messages to my friends back home, hoping they'd write back something like, "Who's that? Is she famous? Look, we're about to go muddin.' I'll call ya later. I hope you find that book." In my white hot flash of anger, I looked up from my cell phone screen and realized I'd power walked way passed my car. Something caught my eye on my right, and I saw an advertisement for an album by The Expendables, a group comprised of some of my most beloved reggae fixtures. It came out just the day before!

I skipped back to my car with a newfound sense of faith. With my compass pointing to Amoeba Records, it was clear that the Wizard of L.A. had seen my struggle for literature and wanted to quell it with some good tunes. After sailing through traffic lights I arrived at Amoeba in good spirits. The place was packed for some DJ I'd never heard of blaring House of Pain for the hundred or so people sprinkled through the aisles. I shouted to the lady at the help desk what I needed. They only had one left. She gestured to the "E" section in New Rock and I elbowed people for some space to hunt. Flick flick. Nothing. Down on hands and knees, I flip through the overstocked crap at the bottom. My cd was nowhere to be found. Some uniformed guy told me to get out the aisle while I stood in my stupor. At the end of the fifteen minutes I searched, I was more or less nudged to the exit to make room for the people who were there for the show.

To my shock and horror, I had now been denied my second most singular civil liberty. To get lost in a sea of music in the very same way someone could get lost in a sea of books.

This type of artistic freedom shouldn't be so difficult to quench. The ease with which we have the right to search for good books or music should never, under any circumstance, be compromised.

Shame on you Los Angeles, for denying me that.