How to create your porn screen name

I was talking to my friend, who on Monday was able to get me onto the Fox Studios lot, where I sat in on part of the taping of a Simpsons episode, seeing the faces of Marge and Homer and Bart and Lisa, and hearing them do multiple takes of the same scene, before lapsing into between-takes conversations about home life and pregnant wives and babies, and anyhow, this friend of mine told me that I could not identify her, because she has a pretty high profile job and it would just be better if she stayed out of it.

“What should your pseudonym be then?” I asked.

“Don’t they say it has to be something like the name of your first dog and the first street you lived on for, like, your porn name?” she asked. “So I’d be Snoopy Horseshoe.”

Which is what we’re going to call her.

I hung out with Snoopy Horseshoe for a few days and it just so happened that I was there at a good time, because in addition to Monday’s taping, I also got to attend a picnic for which she had tickets and thus got to see the Hollywood Bowl, which I am sure I never would have done otherwise. It was hosted in part by Venice magazine and there was an open bar and all sorts of food to sample from area restaurants, and after a few hours of lounging around and eating and drinking in a little grassy park, we wandered up the hill to the stunning amphitheater, where we listened to Tchaikovsky, performed by the Los Angeles Orchestra.

The next day, Snoopy Horseshoe was in charge of showing a group of international visitors around as part of the sister city program that Burbank does with Solna, Sweden; Ota, Japan; Incheon, Korea and Gaborone, Botswana, and because Snoopy Horseshoe is so proud of where she lives, she had enthusiastically planned a full day of activities, loading us onto a city bus and taking us inside the gates of the Los Angeles Equestrian Center that was built for the 1984 Olympic Games, then up to Starlight Bowl, where you can look out over Burbank and see how big the city of 100,000 people really is, then down again to eat at Porto’s cuban restaurant and bakery, where they took us in the back and showed us how to make cakes as pretty as theirs, and then over to the Autry National Center, where a museum on Western heritage educates the public on the founding of the West and the long and complicated relationship between the U.S. government, the cowboys and the Native Americans.

Burbank got its start in 1911, meaning it just turned 100 this year. It started around a bunch of orange groves, followed by the start of an industry manufacturing airplanes that boomed during World War II, finally coming to an end in 1992. These days, it’s full of studios: Disney, Warner Bros, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, to name a few. And it has a chill vibe to it that feels completely separate from the rest of Los Angeles County. One college kid I talked to is from there and said that there is a saying, something to the effect of “Born in Burbank, always in Burbank.” I am not sure about that but I could understand the draw; it’s shady and surrounded by mountains, while still being central to the rest of the city.

I had to bow out for the last part of Snoopy Horseshoe’s tour, which went inside the new water and power plant of Burbank, and it seemed an unfortunate thing to miss but I was trying to get out of there before rush hour started. In the end, it didn’t matter, because I merged onto the expressway right at 5 o’ clock and thus endured my first-ever real life Los Angeles traffic jam. It took a little more than an hour to go 20 miles, which I suppose is not bad, by LA standards. I mean, I am sure it could have been worse but I don’t really need to know, to be honest.