The day before her T.S. Eliot–, Pablo Neruda– and Federico Garcia-Lorca–inspired presentation, entitled "Only You and I Hear It," Ms. Calter, 35, calmly nursed a large iced decaf near her downtown showroom, wearing gold Capezio-type jazz oxfords, black pinstriped trousers, a black cardigan and an incongruous-seeming black skull around her neck. It turned out there was darkness behind the skirts of the flowery flocks she's been churning out for the past four years: a "way-too-punk-rock, way-too-screwed-up" Philadelphia childhood and a best friend who died of a heroin overdose when they were living in New York City in the early 1990's. Ms. Calter said her own drug use was limited to a little youthful pot and speed.

"I'm not a needle kind of girl, a junkie girl," she said. "I'm happy. I'm really happy. I'm not tragically screwed up."

Her father owned an insurance company; her mother was an interior decorator and used to pull her out of school for furniture-shopping expeditions in Manhattan. Enkindled by her maternal grandfather, an Italian clothier who worked on military uniforms, Corey matriculated at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "It was like, 'Where's the football team? Where are the cheerleaders?'" she said. "But that wasn't really gonna be me anyway, with my pink dreadlocks." (Her hair is now straight and brown, and she has a charming little mole over her lip.) She tended bar at the Spiral, was guest-list girl at the Ritz, sold fabrics at a store on 39th Street ("All we did was play poker, all day long," she said) and toiled for two rag-trade grande dames of Gotham, Norma Kamali and Betsey Johnson, who were not quite the role models she'd hoped for.

"Betsey Johnson was a very unpleasant experience for me," she said. "There were horribly nasty, catty girls that worked there." (An assistant for Ms. Johnson said the older designer "wasn't familiar" with Ms. Calter.)

She had better luck at a costume company whose accounts included the Joffrey Ballet and gaudy musicals like Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express. "I was really interested in that, because I was building things. It wasn't just clothes -more construction and function and form," Ms. Calter said. "Because, frankly, the fashion industry's boring. It's a really boring, very superficial, stupid industry. If all you're about is making dresses, then you're a completely shallow, horrible person, and that's just not what I want."

As the interview progressed, more and more tattoos seemed to emerge on Ms. Calter's person, like crawling vines; she estimated having "11 or 12." After her friend died, she fled to San Francisco to live with her then-boyfriend, a tattoo artist, landing a gig with the San Francisco Opera company.

"Big ol' ladies," she said. "I loved it." Still restless, she started a corset company, Milk Made, out of her kitchen, making them in linen, gingham and embroidered silk instead of vinyl and brocade. Patricia Field sold them.

But San Fran, Ms. Calter said, was "not my town." She moved to an L.A. neighborhood oft-chosen by freshly transplanted New Yorkers: near Cantor's deli on Fairfax, encountering reasonable rents for the first time in her adult life.

"Two thousand square feet for $1,000-I thought it was a mansion!" she said. She met her current boyfriend, a sculptor named Glenn Kaino, who is showing in the Whitney Biennial, at an art opening, and he helped her launch her eponymous brand in his big loft downtown (the two now live in Silver Lake and plan to marry in late August, after two postponements).

"I didn't even have time to pee, it was that bad," Ms. Calter said of her start-up days. Their life now is calm. "I don't even go to the movies ," she said. "I don't care about being the coolest kid in school anymore. I kind of already was. I don't care what any of these people"-meaning fashion-industry hangers-on-"think of me."

Her work has attracted unlikely celebrity bedfellows: indie-film darling Zooey Deschanel, who arrived an hour late for the show in a gamine pink coat, and Newlyweds star Jessica Simpson, who has favored a peppy rainbow-striped strapless dress that has been endlessly knocked off. The dress and its variations are still a huge seller for Corey Lynn Calter. "Those damned stripes," she growled. "Thank God for those stripes."

The line now sells at Fred Segal and Lisa Kline in L.A., Intermix and Cantaloupe in New York, as well as Nordstrom and Macy's.

"It's something that I'm a little freaked out about," Ms. Calter said of the foray into department stores. "There's a whole thing in L.A. where it's like, 'I'm struggling, I am a small designer, blah blah blah, I only want to be this very elitist kind of artist thing.' Which is fine . But you know what? At some point, everybody has to sell to somebody. I have employees. I have employees that have kids . So I sort of started taking accounts that maybe I wouldn't have taken if I hadn't had those responsibilities."

A homeless woman wearing a bright blue knit cap and a Southwestern-printed shawl wandered over to the table and asked for some change. "Not today," Ms. Calter said, and then with perfect sincerity: "See, she knows how to dress. Love her. She always has awesome stuff on."

She also admires the style of Moschino ("intentionally corny in a fantastic way"), Dries Van Noten ("so ethereal and incredible") and the French separates sensation Paul & Joe ("cute!"). She longs for the couturier days of, say, Charles James, when women ordered garments to order.

"It's one and then it's gone-I love that," she said. "Why do we need to have 5,000 T-shirts? Where are they going to be, in some big giant T-shirt landfill somewhere? It's just horrible."

Ms. Loh, a bemused 42, who can be heard in New York City on WNYC doing financial commentary for Marketplace , was reached by phone in Pacific Grove, Calif., in the north country near Monterey-an area one might think is a far more public-radio-ish place than supposedly slickster L.A., but au contraire .

"Los Angeles is a huge market, because everyone is in their cars," said Ms. Loh, a regular chronicler of domestic life in the Valley. Her 2001 book A Year in Van Nuys , published by Crown, was a hilarious spoof of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence , with particularly great pie charts mapping the ideal time married couples spend together versus the actual time-i.e., ideal equals fireplace moments, outdoor adventure, spiritual stuff, keepin' it fresh sexually; actual equals talking about food we shouldn't have eaten, watching two different Blockbuster videos in two different rooms, lying on the phone to get each other out of things. And L.A. is apparently a slightly hysterical market, judging from the heated local response to her sacking-in a town where many people are defensive about being dismissed as uncultured by the rest of the country, public radio is a treasured tool of social stratification.

Ms. Loh traveled north almost a year ago with her toddlers Madeline, 3, and Susannah, 2, to help her brother care for his own three young children after his wife collapsed from cardiac arrest.

"It's been really sucky-sucked the big one," she said of the timing of the KCRW kerfuffle. "It's just been this kind of nightmare. Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare …. If I had something, a shampoo line or clothing line to promote, that would be great, but in fact this is the year I'm taking to just stay home and be mother to my kids. I'm just trying to focus on making their sandwiches."

Ms. Loh was born and raised in L.A., by a German mother and a Chinese father with a penchant for hitchhiking. She got a degree in physics from Caltech-"A degree I have never used," she said-and attended graduate school in literature and writing at the University of Southern California, where one of her teachers was T. Coraghessan Boyle. (It was about that time that she met her future husband, Mike Miller, a studio guitarist who travels a lot.) Her big break was being hired to write a series of columns for the ill-fated Buzz magazine (intended as a Spy or Details for the SoCal set), which were later collected into a book, Depth Takes a Holiday . In one, she sardonically mourned having neglected to spend her 20's in New York, "rushing about in the crisp winter air with flushed cheeks, striking in some sort of full-length black wool coat accessorized with a bright red muffler … in an exciting, exotic hub where Gordon Lish is perpetually dropping by-too often sometimes-as he finds my pesto amusing." These were followed by a memoir, Aliens in America , and a novel, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now .

Ms. Loh said she hadn't checked Amazon to see the effect of the scandal on her backlist. "It's a strange piece of publicity for me," she said. "I'm a very midlist-y author. The kind of work that I do is so semi-autobiographical, and it's pretty amiable, and it's pretty friendly. It's so uncharacteristic, to be suddenly in this little media spotlight. It's a roller-coaster ride that I don't have the stomach to be on-it's just surrealistic -so I try to ignore it."

Although KCRW eventually rescinded its dismissal, Ms. Loh refused to return to the broadcaster, accepting instead an offer from a slightly smaller station, 89.3 KPCC, located in Pasadena. She will earn $175 per week, a slight bump up from the $150 she had been drawing from KCRW (though she had been about to get a $50 raise).

"It's just for the love of it, and that's why you have to feel comfortable in the space," she said. The new gig will begin in about three months, "so I can just get a hiatus and normalize and just have feeling in my fingertips again."

Ms. Loh is also contracted by Crown for another book of humor, which was technically due back in October 2001. "So that's something I should get to," she said. "It was going to be the follow-up to A Year in Van Nuys . Now, who knows what it's going to be?"

"In New York, you can take the subway together, or a taxi," he said. "Here you have to figure out, are you going to take the same car? Or caravan? It politicizes the saying-goodbye thing. It's harder to make a move in the car. You have these seatbelts. Seriously. I feel for the girl, too. If a guy makes some move on them in the car, it's harder to do an evasive thing …. And then again, everyone also has their apartment-and a pretty nice apartment-so inviting people over is less politicized. I've met girls at their houses on the second date, and that wouldn't happen in New York. In New York, that would mean you were going to have sex with them."

Welcome to romance, L.A. style, where the men are passive and the women are shallow; where prospects routinely tell you to "IMDb them" (referring to the Internet Movie Database, which lists people's production credits); and where the perils and payoffs of those increasingly popular online personals are thrown into particularly stark relief.

Expatriates say they miss the chance encounters, the serendipity of Manhattan life. "There are no encounters here, unless they're car accidents," is how one put it.

"In Hollywood, it's so insular; I'm only going to meet people in my business," said a 36-year-old female TV writer who lives in West Hollywood, justifying her foray into Internet dating. "Now I've gotten to meet public-policy lawyers; there's a guy who's doing educational research. They're smart and funny and interesting and their first question isn't, 'Who are you represented by?'"

(She admitted that when she inputted search parameters onto J-Date-popular on L.A.'s West Side; Nerve dominates the East-up popped a picture of the executive she had a pitch meeting with the next day.)

"L.A. forces you to do Internet dating, because everyone's apart from everyone else," said Amy Alkon, 40, a redheaded syndicated columnist who moved to Venice after many years in New York and has tried both Match and Matchmaker.com. "People aren't as guarded in New York. In L.A., if you ask people what they do, they act as if you want to rob their house. Here, everybody acts like they're a movie star, like, 'Why do you want to talk to me?' Like you want something from them. It's a disease."

She's currently going out with a man who does research for the author Elmore Leonard; she met the fellow at an Apple computer store, after a long and flamboyant search that included placing a $2,200 display ad in the L.A. Times. "L.A. men are less troubled-unless they're troubled New York Jews who have just moved to Los Angeles-and that's in the uncomplimentary, uncomplicated sense," she said. "They're not complicated because they haven't had a thought, other than what's on TV, in 20 years."

Guys return the compliment, perhaps even more forcefully.

"I find that you can talk about more things outside of yourself with New York women," said a 35-year-old screenwriter who moved from the Upper West Side to the Miracle Mile. "You can talk about the newspaper. Here, it doesn't seem like anybody reads it. I was at a party one time and I made a comment about something I'd read in the paper, and a woman turned to me and said, 'Did you just move out here?' And I said yes. And she said, 'You won't be reading the paper much longer.' That really shocked me.

"The online profiles I see here don't seem to show much personality," he added miserably. "They're like, 'I like to walk on the beach, I like dinners, I like red wine, my family's really important to me …. '"

"Here's what the women are here," said Tony Optican, 36, vice president of development at the Sci-Fi Channel, who was born in New York, attended Andover and Penn, and now lives in Brentwood. "They're incredibly gorgeous, they're beautiful on a superficial level, and when you dig down deep, it's very much like the city of Los Angeles-it's superficial. There's not a lot of quality and depth to the women that I've met."

Indeed, beauty here is so rife, so ubiquitous, so cheap - one could argue it benefits a woman to be slightly one-off.

A male illustrator "on the cusp of 33" who lives in Echo Park gave a brief taxonomy of the L.A. types he's encountered online. "The aspiring actress, the aspiring writer, the 'my occupation is a mystery,' or 'my occupation is some wry comment on the film industry to act as a fig leaf for, if I do have a position in the film industry, it's rather more mundane,'" he said with some weariness. "Obviously appearance matters everywhere, but the rules of the game are very specific here. It just is a vapid culture that is largely obsessed with the glittering bauble that is our modern entertainment culture. I mean, this is the seat of it. Go to New York and people are equally interested in what happened on Everybody Loves Raymond last night"-insert light skeptical cough here-"but I think there are other things that they're interested in. And here, the other thing they're interested in is Ray Romano's contract negotiation."

Mr. Optican said that he makes a point of dating outside the industry.

"I would never be so bold to say just because someone works in the entertainment business, they can't be a good person," he said. "I mean, I work in the entertainment business. But it's still a red flag for me."

Actresses, especially, need not apply.

"At the age of 30, I made the decision never to date anyone with a head shot ever again," he said. "I've dated actresses who are waitresses, and those whose make $5 million a movie, and there's no difference except one has more disposable income." When it was pointed out to him that most people who use Internet personals have a head shot, he said that he's discovered some of the prettiest girls don't put theirs up, for fear of being stalked. And that you can always tell the actresses because under occupation they write, "Tell you later."

Mr. Optican prefers to take his quarry to hotel bars because the guaranteed presence of celebrities serves as a sort of litmus test. "I unthinkingly went to the Four Seasons two days before the Oscars, to meet a girl," he said. "She seemed like a nice girl, but I swear to God she didn't look at me more than once during the conversation because her head was spinning around like The Exorcist , looking at movie stars."

Eating his retro lunch of Cobb salad washed down with an Arnold Palmer iced-tea-lemonade mix, the Silver Lake TV writer disputed the conventional wisdom that chicks here are shallow.

"A lot of New York women are shallow," he said. "In New York, the media world is full of Condé Nast editors working at magazines I think are worthless, working at that world. Here, people in the entertainment world are at least making culture. They're telling stories-maybe not for the greatest audience, but at least they're involved in the making of some sort of product."

He didn't have so much luck when he went "off- piste " from entertainment channels. "I got an e-mail from a woman whose screen name was Mrs. Dalloway, so I wrote back and said, 'Thank you for taking time off from your busy day of party planning,' and she wrote back saying, 'What are you talking about party planning, I'm a special-education teacher!'" he said. "That should've been a tip to me that this person and I would have nothing in common, but I ended up meeting her at a Starbucks for an hour, and it was fine, we had a perfectly nice chat, but I felt like I had hit some nadir, that I was sitting in a Starbucks in Pasadena talking to this woman who wasn't that bright."

But his outlook was positive.

"Right now, I'm unemployed," he said. "I can talk to a girl in L.A. and they know that TV writers are unemployed sometimes. In New York, that would make me look like a schlub. If I were unemployed in New York for even a short amount of time-part of it is that it's more expensive to live there, but I also feel that I would just be written off. I wouldn't even be able to have a dating experience."

The air smelled of cheese: There was a large communal pot of fondue just inside the entrance. Two Fabio types were strumming Spanish guitars, trying to look soulful. Lovers strolled listlessly through various salons (the "Grand," the "Debussy," the "Chopin"), amassing armfuls of free promotional literature.

The Expo was co-organized by Desiree Hargrave, 25, a loan processor at Premium Finance Company, and her partner Kimberley Sikes, 35, a director of housekeeping and laundry at a hospital, after they saw an episode of the miniseries Gay Weddings on Bravo, in which a pair of lesbians trying to schedule a wedding were rebuffed by a venue manager in Marina Del Rey.

"Here in Los Angeles!" said the heavyset, still-incensed Ms. Hargrave, standing near a tootling flute trio and some freeze-dried floral dioramas. "It was like, 'I don't want to deal with that, because I'm a hothead-I'll kill somebody.'"

A few feet away, pierced representatives from a company called Outvite.com, a spin-off of eInvite.com (not to be confused with the widely loathed Evite.com), were hawking a selection of stationery that included sample "birth" announcements for a hypothetical lesbian couple's pet cat. Joanne Laipson, the director of business development, said demand for Outvites surged after Massachusetts's highest court ruled the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional in November. "Then there was a little bit of backlash and we tapered off a little bit, and then the San Francisco thing happened," she said. "It ebbs and flows."

There seemed to be no part of the traditional wedding experience that had not been sliced, diced and arranged into a fan onto a folding table to entice gay consumers, from the stretch limo ("You certainly don't want to be alone in a car on the happiest day of your life with a homophobic driver," said Faith Landsman of Metro Limousine), to the cake ("We're definitely seeing brighter colors, much more vibrant colors," said Jesus Ornelas of Topozios Cake Artistry), to the music. Several couples rocked out to the beat as Janet Jackson's "All for You" played over the loudspeakers. D.J. Steve Stephens of Sound Masters, a sympathetic straight fellow, had donned a lavender shirt for the occasion.

"I've never actually done a gay-oriented type of wedding," he said. "But sooner or later it's going to become legal, and I think that's probably the way it should go. I've done 'regular' wedding shows, and I have a better vibe from this one."

At 3 p.m., there was a fashion show, best left undescribed.

In the main ballroom, Catherine Burris, 30, a theater student, and Elaine Tse, 38, an actress, were thumbing through a binder full of formal wear by the likes of Oscar de la Renta, including zoot suits and white "intrigue" vests in ivory and buttercup. They said they lived in the Miracle Mile area but were planning a "simple and spiritual" ceremony somewhere in Berkeley, near the redwoods, to celebrate five and a half years together.

"It's not like a fairy tale," Ms. Tse said. " She was more into the wedding. I thought because I was gay, I was denied this kind of opportunity. But then I said, 'Why not?'

"I think I'm going to wear a dress," she added.

"We're going to end up combining a lot of traditions," Ms. Burris said. "We just decided that we're going to jump the broom" (an American custom that was widely practiced in the U.S. during the slave era, when slaves were not permitted to marry).

A couple of tables over, Yolanda Gutierrez-Williams, a part-time police officer from Queens who is married to a man she met on the force, was doing a brisk business in ribbon-festooned brooms. For $130, one could buy the rhinestone-encrusted "Hollywood" model, with twin pink "woman" symbols dangling off the end. "I sensed a marketing opportunity," she said.

Ronaldo and Ociel, both 34 and banquet employees of the Wyndham, were examining "homo"-moon opportunities in Iceland. They seemed to think the whole thing was pretty tacky.

"This is just the beginning of something. It's gotta be an evolution," Ociel said. "I really want the law to change so I can get married. I want the benefits and I want it to be real, not just a little game for men."

"I don't care if it's not legal," Ronaldo said, shaking a blond forelock out of his eyes. "I could have a party on the beach-everybody wearing linen, nice shoes, lots of champagne …. " The two men linked arms.

As 4 o'clock drew near, the mood grew celebratory as certified officiant Deborah Gordon, a.k.a. "Minister Deb," prepared to unite Lelani Nonies, a nonprofit worker, with Bridget Urmacher, a student from Cal State, Dominguez Hills. Ms. Gordon was bouncing on the balls of her toes, bubbly about an impending trip to the Bay Area to cheer on the troops, suggesting that when the political activism up there merged with the crass capitalism here in the Southland, the old statutes were sure to buckle.

"People are going to Beverly Hills and trying to get same-sex wedding licenses and being denied-but how long can they keep that up?" she asked. "Business is booming!"

The night before the ceremony, however, music mogul Clive Davis threw his famous pre-Grammy party, and everything was groovy. There may be no more semiotically charged drive in America than the one westward on the Sunset Strip: 68 degrees, palm trees shimmying in the breeze, full moon hanging portentously in the sky like a big pearl. After passing all those great, faded-neon landmarks of rock 'n' roll (Guitar Center, Duke's Coffee Shop, Whiskey-A-Go-Go), one crosses Doheny Drive into Beverly Hills, whereupon there is an almost audible hush or whoosh: the sound of wealth, as the road turns suddenly satin-smooth, foliage as abruptly thick and dark as money. And there's the Beverly Hills Hotel, pink, green and chiffon-trimmed like some wonderful cake.

O.K., so maybe it would've been better to arrive in a stretch limo rather than a year-old silver Toyota Prius with a shaming new dimple in the back fender … but still!

"The party has changed not a whit," Mr. Davis said, buttonholed as he proceeded down the hotel's red carpet with one of his biggest hitmakers, Alicia Keys. "The show will be dazzling." (Not for Newlyweds Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson, who would walk out in the middle of Johnny Mathis warbling "Maria"-the gall!)

Heiress, socialite and reality-television star Paris Hilton was the first famous person to arrive at Mr. Davis' party, at 6:30 p.m., looking sort of like a baby parakeet in a teal-trimmed purple Tracy Feith frock and aquamarine Hollywould sandals with ribbons up the ankles. She engaged in red-carpet photo play and light badinage and then entered the empty cocktails area solo, performing the current default "I'm alone at a party" maneuver: frantically pecking at her cell phone.

Asked whom she thought most deserved Grammy recognition, Ms. Hilton beamed and through nude glossed lips said: "I love Britney. She's my favorite. Umm … I love the Neptunes. I think they're really talented. Pharrell Williams-that whole album's really good."

A heavy-set, black-clad publicity person swooped down. "You're not going to ask about the sex tape, are you?" she asked anxiously.

"And I love the fashion," Ms. Hilton continued. "J. Lo's outfit-that green one? That's something I'll never forget. You can wear anything at the Grammys, because it's rock 'n' roll people. You can basically get away with anything, and, at other functions, you couldn't wear things like that. It's more fun and more wild."

"I'm going to go find your media escort, because this is bullshit ," hissed the publicist. Ms. Hilton slipped away.

Having a "media escort," a nice woman named April from Sherman Oaks, turned out to be not that bad. She helped identify celebrities and brokered introductions-somewhat more warmly after she was snuck a rum and coke.

The actress Gabrielle Union (you loved her in Bring It On ) was standing around with Tracee Ross, daughter of Diana and star of UPN's Girlfriends . Ms. Ross wore colorful Cavalli, and Ms. Union had on a sleek white shift. "Armani," she said. "I wear whoever sends something, if it's free and they don't expect to get it tomorrow."

Ms. Ross-not to be confused with the blond Tracey Ross, owner of a designer boutique in West Hollywood-was giggling wildly. Who does she think has been most cheated Grammy love?

"Oh my God, Diana Ross! Diana Ross!" she said. "No, no, no, I'm not biased-Diana Ross!"

Plucky April next marshaled American Idol Kelly Clarkson, who was wearing a black suit and major jewel wattage.

"Gucci, Christian Louboutin and Neil Lane," she rattled off. "I wanted a comfortable suit."

Her American idols?

"Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey-I love those girls," Ms. Clarkson said. "Oh my God, that's Martina McBride!" she squealed as the country star twinkled past. "I looove her!" Miss Independent also had kind words for Beyoncé. "She works her butt off, and she's just a beautiful girl and a nice girl on the inside as well. And she's a Texas girl. I gotta root for my Texas girls."

Long-suffering mother and wife Sharon Osbourne arrived in a fetching Dolce and Gabbana pantsuit, aubergine-streaked hair and a veil of Annick Goutal perfume.

"When my husband received his last Grammy, we were seated in the back of the Staples Center for the non-important people," she said. "We weren't in camera range; we were nowhere. I felt so bad. We couldn't even see the bloody stage. And we go back this year and we're like three rows from the front, and it's like-why? Why now? After so many years that my husband has been working, and all the musical contributions that he's done …. "

It is customary for Mr. Davis to showcase a new act every year at his party. This year, the honor went to Maroon 5, a bunch of skinny white guys who live in Los Feliz. They're the kind of band that seems to be increasingly popular: neo-mod and dapper and modest. Seersucker, sneakers, too cool for school. And underwhelmed by the Grammies.

"It's like the Oscars, but worse," one member said. "We just found out today that Jimi Hendrix never won anything, the Beach Boys never won anything, Bob Marley. I mean, that's bullshit! Nick Drake … Nick Cave,a too, man! Put all the Nicks on the list."

He said that his favorite Grammy moment occurred when Soy Bomb leapt onstage and gyrated wildly next to Bob Dylan in 1998. "Anytime the circus is subverted in any kind of sincerely uncomfortable and eye-opening way that makes the entire thing seem funny and maybe not such a big deal, I think it's great."

P ALIGN="JUSTIFY"

The juxtaposition neatly sums up the current state of this bawdy, tawdry but gradually mall-ifying neighborhood, which some wags are calling Hi-Ho because it is now anchored by a large, tourist-prowled shopping plaza at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland.

A fortnight after the museum's opening ceremony-which was attended by the mayor, but no showbiz celebrities-a publicist in tight jeans and a belly chain slid aside the metal gates for a private guided tour of the 6,000-square-foot, two-story structure "erected" (ho, ho) in 1926. (When you're at an erotic museum, the double-entendres fly like fake fur.) She paused in front of a video of the late John Holmes in action. "I was here at 9 a.m., and I was like, 'I need a cup of coffee before I see this,'" she said.

It wasn't all porn, thank God. There were some curious wood carvings on the ceiling ("From Nepal, if I remember correctly," the publicist informed), a smattering of naughty postcards (Bettie Page, sure-but Betty White?!); a Hall of Fame filled with tasteful oil paintings of key figures in erotic history (Mata Hari, Dr. Ruth) and some etchings by Picasso in his late "sex" period, when he apparently took up with a much younger lady friend. "Some things never change, rrrright?" cracked the publicist.

She lingered for a bit by the etchings, trying to explain them: "You really can see stroke by stroke where he started, heh, heh …. "

It all seemed very crisp and well-intentioned, but an unaccountable feeling of melancholy hung in the air. A couple in their 30's, checking out an alleged Marilyn Monroe sex video, said they were from the "outskirts" of L.A.-as if the city had an "inskirt"-and refused to give their names. One couldn't help but wonder if this museum would soon be as untrafficked as its counterpart in New York, the Museum of Sex on Lower Fifth Avenue.

Upstairs, the floors were freshly varnished and the exhibits got more ambitious and interactive: a glass case filled with breast implants that you could reach in and squeeze through rubber gloves ("Great for people that are a little more shy"); naked, life-size dolls (they start at $7,000); and a detailed montage on the history of the women's vibrator, culminating in a model with a camera at the end-very Paris Hilton-and the infamous palpitating Harry Potter broom. Nearby, a gigantic array of dildos in escalating sizes and colors. "I'm so dull to it," the publicist sighed.

She escorted curator Eric Singley out for a chat, a man with an uncanny and perhaps appropriate resemblance to Gene Wilder in the movie version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory .

Mr. Singley said his facility needed about $40,000 worth of improvements. "It looks great, but you have no idea about the dust and humidity," he said. The Erotic Museum was late in opening because of "little hiccups" like a sewage pipe that flowed out to the street. But the location has its advantages: There's something like a live installation every night around 11 p.m., when the still-lingering neighborhood hustlers begin their transactions.

"The hollering starts out there on the sidewalk," said Mr. Singley, who lives in the Valley (epicenter of the adult-film industry, he pointed out). "There are some tortured souls out there. You really hear all the relations playing themselves out in the alleyways all around the neighborhood. I think it's amazing. I'm talking too much about the seedy side here, but … they're keeping it real on Hollywood Boulevard."

Were they having any trouble with security?

Mr. Singley and the publicist both screwed up their faces.

"There was a guy in here recently who was a little off-kilter," the publicist said, "and I was like, ' Borrris !'"

Boris is Boris Smorodinsky, a Russian immigrant in his 50's, the museum's co-founder and chief executive. It turned out that he, too, was lurking behind the second-floor portals, along with his friend and chief financial officer, Mark Volper. The horny pair met on Sept. 1, 1964, during an orientation session of the petrochemicals program at the University of Moscow.

Mr. Volper came to Los Angeles first, in 1981. "Thank you to Ronald Reagan," he said.

But what would Mr. Reagan think of the X-rated display around him?

"Unfortunately, he can't think about it," Mr. Volper said, alluding to the ex-President's Alzheimer's. "I don't know-I don't have answer sometimes. But he was in movie industry, and movie industry was all about sex and entertainment-scandals, and love, and betrayals." And large purple dildos? He chuckled. "Yes!"

Mr. Smorodinsky pitched his museum as an innocent love letter to L.A., his home of 15 years.

"New Yorkers are patriotic about their city," he said. "New York for them is more than just place where they live. Is not exactly the same in Los Angeles. Los Angeles does not have such meaning-I cannot formulate why. But we wanted to do something for the city which is our home. This"-his arm described an arc taking in a large collage depicting Richard Simmons and a banana-"this is physical evidence of my love."

"But we're just a small peephole on a big strip," Mr. Volper said. "We need help from state, obviously, and city, and probably some federal as well. Because this is the face of the whole country!"

Back downstairs in the gift shop, a woman with stiletto boots and witchy, thermostraightened hair was manning a selection of high-concept candles. Murmurs of "I love you … I love you … I love you" were emanating from wall-mounted speakers. The sales clerk said museum staffers had taped random passers-by uttering the words.

Meanwhile, Valentine's Day approacheth! A couple of blocks east of the Erotic Museum, Frederick's of Hollywood-the thinking woman's Victoria's Secret-had an excellent selection of cheap, sexy shoes: the classic marabou pump, $29; a Stuart Weitzman–worthy Cinderella clear plastic, $29.50; a nude calfskin ankle boot, $19.99; and a back-lacing black boot $69 (move over, Manolo). Also at F.O.H.: a permanent exhibit of historical movie-star underwear, including Ava Gardner's eyelet petticoat from Show Boat , Natalie Wood's pink and lilac embroidered bra from Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice and the fembot sheer chemises from Austin Powers . If the Erotic Museum is a sightseeing gang bang, this was more of a gentle caress.

Ms. Deschanel lives in Beverly Hills-she didn't want to get specific about the arrangements; her mom said that she's "still basically living at home"-but it took a bumpy flight to Utah (fat girls in Brigham Young University sweatshirts gnawing on caramel apples, Eternal Marriage textbooks in their laps) and a bleak night in a Motel 6 just to pin her down for 45 minutes.

Sitting in a temporary canteen near the bottom of the Park City chair lift following a photo shoot for Jane magazine, the actress seemed distracted and tense, gnawing on her fingers with slightly crooked teeth, her large blue eyes darting around the room, a pale purple vein thrumming on her forehead.

"I panic about a lot of things," she said. "I guess I'm just a high-strung individual. I have a lot of energy-nervous energy. I bite my nails. If somebody comes up behind me, I jump . I can't help it. It's my nervous system. I don't know how to explain it."

She said she's pretty much rejected Hollywood balms like therapy ("It just makes me more nervous") and yoga. "I like to run but I have weak knees, so I walk a lot," she said. "I walk miles and miles and miles. I try to be really careful about traffic, because people never look both ways before they cross the street. I'm always thinking of the worst-case scenario in my head."

Renowned for her clothing sense (though she claims she's never been to a fashion show), the Type A, 5-foot-6, size-6 Ms. Deschanel was wearing black Ugg boots festooned with rhinestones ("I've worn them for years," she said, scoffing at the brand's recent surge in popularity), black tights, a deconstructed mini-skirt by McGinn, a demure pale blue oxford-cloth shirt from a school-uniform store, and a pearl ring on the middle finger of her right hand. She was carrying a white leather Hogan handbag and a copy of the magazine Hollywood Life with actress-of-the-moment Scarlett Johansson on the cover. Told that some have her pegged as the next Scarlett, Ms. Deschanel gave a brittle little laugh.

"That's so funny," she said, "because Scarlett Johansson is 17 and I'm, like, 24."

A few days later, she would don black Chanel, mod motorcycle boots and a big floppy pink hair bow to host the festival's award ceremony alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, her co-star from The Good Girl (who, like most male attendees, didn't bother to shave for the occasion). Today, however, she was promoting her latest movie, Eulogy , a Royal Tenenbaums –esque comedy about an eccentric family, the second film from director Michael Clancy, with an impressive ensemble cast containing several elder stateswomen: Debra Winger ("I loved Debra," Ms. Deschanel said, and indeed she uncannily recalls the former's younger self at times with her husky voice), Piper Laurie ("So grandmotherly!"), Glenne Headly ("Really sweet!") and John Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston ("A sweetheart!"). Asked whose career she most covets, Ms. Deschanel said, "I don't know. People keep asking me that question. I actually have no idea-I just want to have my own career."

The résumé thus far has gotten her a lot of "one-pagers" in magazines and a bit of a slavering male fan base. Ms. Deschanel debuted in Mumford in 1999, directed by Lawrence Kasdan. ("Always do better work when it's the other actor's close-up, when you're off-camera," he advised, "because it will show that you're generous.") She was the airline-stewardess, sister in Almost Famous , and then appeared in a bunch of or forgotten independent films. Major Sundance lesson: "Indie" film can be as oppressive and wearisome as big-budget Hollywood. Then last December she practically stole Elf as Will Ferrell's shopgirl love interest.

Ms.Deschanel displayed some un -Elf- ish moments during lunch-for example, when a tofu-scramble burrito sans beans that a publicist had pre-ordered for her failed to arrive in a timely manner.

"Gawd," she said, whipping out her cell phone. "Do you mind if I just make a call? Sorry." The tape recorder was turned off while somebody got chewed out.

A few minutes later, the waitress plunked the burrito on the table a bit abruptly and wheeled away.

"What's wrong?" Ms. Deschanel said. "They're so rude. I just really don't understand it. I feel like they hate me, and it hurts my feelings …. Excuse me?"

She resummoned the server, a perky, freckle-nosed mountain-mama type, and said, "I just feel like there's a lot of hostility towards me. Everybody keeps not talking to me, and it really hurts my feelings."

"I'm sorry-there's no hostility!" the waitress said, slipping into self-righteous uptalk. "We're just all … super-super-busy?"

"I just wanted to make sure no one's angry with me," Ms. Deschanel said.

"No one's angry," said the waitress. "We just wanted to make sure that we didn't make your food twice." She took her leave again.

Ms. Deschanel was still stressed out. "I just want to make sure people don't dislike me," she said.

A lifelong loyal Angeleno, she is famously the daughter of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and actress Mary Jo (both of The Right Stuff ), and the younger sister of another actress, Emily, two years her senior, who also had a movie coming out at Sundance this year. "We're really different-she's like tall and blonde-so I don't feel competitive towards her," Zooey said. Apparently, theirs wasn't the glamorously nomadic childhood breathlessly described in the press.

"Yeah, I went on location, but I wasn't hanging around movie stars!" she said. "I think I saw a movie star-once!"

Elementary school was tough ("Everyone was so mean to me," she said. "I was kind of chubby when I was little-a pudgy kid"); high school was a bit of a John Hughes movie, with classmate Kate Hudson in the popular role ("She was a little too cool for me … I felt kind of on the outside of things… I was an A student, never had a boyfriend"); a partial semester at Northwestern was something of a disaster.

"I got there and I was like, 'What is this ?'" Ms. Deschanel said. "I don't like beer. I don't like frats . I don't like dorms. I don't want to socialize with people just because we live in the same building. People would knock on my door and be like, 'Are you coming to the dorm social?' I'm like, 'No. I'll be in my room .'"

She elected not to move to Manhattan-"Too expensive," she said. "New York's, like, astronomical"-constructing instead a quiet L.A. life dominated by her boyfriend, actor Jason Schwartzman ( Rushmore) , whom she first met when they were teenagers, and her cabaret band, If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies.

"I never go out," she said. "Unless I'm forced to. I try to avoid parties as much as I can. I'm literally at home every night. I lose my voice if I go out, and I hate losing my voice. So I go to bed at 11 every night. No one ever sees me anywhere. Except for the movies-I go to the movies sometimes. I have a very simple sort of life. Nobody ever recognizes me."

The charms of Park City's renowned snow (best trail: Glory Hole) appeared to be lost on her.

"I hate skiing," she said. "I don't like ski outfits that much, ha ha. " She craned her neck at an artificially tanned woman teetering at the counter in high-heeled designer hiking boots. "You get into the parties and you're like, 'How did these people get here wearing halter tops?'" she said. "How did they defy gravity?"

Would she ever do a nude scene-something like Ms. Johansson's bare butt through pantyhose in the wildly overrated (except for Bill Murray) Lost in Translation ?

"No … unless it was like I felt it was really necessary," Ms. Deschanel said. "A lot of times, it feels like people do that to, like, prove that they're brave, and I don't think that that necessarily proves that you're brave. I think that there are other ways to prove that you're brave-more subtle ways."

What did she think of fellow indie darling Chloë Sevigny giving a blowjob on camera in Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny ? Ms. Deschanel blanched even whiter than her natural alabaster. " What ?" she said. "I hate to say this, but that's the most disgusting thing I ever heard. I would never, ever go near a movie like that." She paused. "She can do whatever she wants, though, you know? She wants to film it, great!"

Ms. Deschanel has endearingly fuddy-duddy taste in pop culture, like Gene Wilder movies ("I think he's a genius") and old musicals: Meet Me in St. Louis, Bandwagon, My Fair Lady . "Oh-I love this song," she said, as some Elvis Costello came on the loudspeakers.

She'll play a young actress in a downward spiral opposite Will Ferrell and Ed Harris in the forthcoming Winter Passing , a drama by New York playwright Adam Rapp. It's not an easy part. Like Ms. Johansson before her, Ms. Deschanel is making the transition from cute to sexy. "I can be very critical of myself," she said. "When I see myself onscreen I'm like, Oooh-aah … and I'll be like, 'Oh, I hate that angle.'"

Lately, she said, she's been having some weird dreams-"about being on a ladder, and knives." On the eve of the Golden Globes, it wasn't hard to play Dr. Freud with that one.

"I have no ambitions as far as fame goes," Ms. Deschanel said. "I don't really care. Anyone who likes you because you're famous is lame, anyway. Leading lady, yeah. But star … I don't know what a star is. People are always like, 'I knew they were a star!' I'm like, 'I don't know if anyone's a star.' I mean, there are all kinds of people who act like they're stars, and I don't think they should, you know. That's what kind of bothers me about Sundance is that you go to places and they're like, 'Who are you?' And then if they decide you're somebody, then they're nice, and if they decide you're nobody, then they're not, and I really hate that attitude-I really, really, really detest it. It's like a thing that really bothers me on a deep level."

She was sipping Diet Coke through a straw at Le Petit Jardin, a most un- jardin -like restaurant with tan Naugahyde chairs on South Robertson Boulevard, in a shabby Los Angeles neighborhood called Beverlywood that has failed to siphon the slightest bit of hoped-for stardust from nearby Beverly Hills or Brentwood.

Ms. Delbanco, who will turn 30 in May, is the daughter of the well-established if not exactly famous literary eminence Nicholas Delbanco, author of a pile of respected books and director of the writing program at the University of Michigan. Her uncle, Andrew Delbanco, is "a big muckety-muck" at Columbia, a director in the humanities and a literary critic. With the help of-or perhaps in spite of-these "dadvantages," she has produced a charming debut called Ask Me Anything (Norton, $23.95), about a young theater actress who lives in New York, writes an advice column for a teenage magazine with a bitchy boss, and has an affair with her rich friend's father. If you were a sharky suit selling the book in a pitch meeting ("It hasn't gone around yet-I'm dying for it to be," Ms. Delbanco said of her opus' movie prospects), you call it " The Devil Wears Prada meets Blame It on Rio -but smart! "

Ms. Delbanco, who said she'd be pleased to have the career of Diane Johnson or the late Laurie Colwin, expressed fears that her book's subject matter was too prosaic to fire the public imagination.

"The material makes me nervous, because I know there are a lot of young writers doing really, really serious, ambitious 'American-with a capital A' fiction, and I feel a little bit like my first novel is pretty safe," she said. "I don't know. I hope you can be published in prestigious journals and have prestigious places pay attention to you even if you're writing about mere things like people and their love affairs and their apartments and what they cook for dinner-because I think those are very important things!"

You're probably not going to find her vamping it up in a camisole in the pages of Vogue .

"I guess I would ," she said, "but it's so not the Norton way. And thank God. It's one of the reasons I like being there. And yet it's one of the reasons I'm sure I'll be, like, perishing in anonymity. I kind of went door-to-door with all my friends in magazines and had a really hard time."

The book, for which she received a "generous advance, but not some huge fat advance," is apparently picking up steam in England, where it's being marketed under the title Midnight in Manhattan , with a pink cover.

Asked about her relationship with her formidable Pops, the young authoress said: "I don't know-this is a tricky thing to talk about. I get notes from him all the time. He's an amazing editor. And I admire the hell out of my dad's writing, but I don't think we would have a huge overlap in terms of readership. He's an incredible intellectual, and he's so rigorous-very, very highbrow-and I'm kind of on a different plane."

What was it like for her to have Mr. Delbanco "limn" the many sex scenes in the book? Dryly rendered lines such as "I had been taken from behind before, and also pressed up against a wall before (though never at the same time, and never with such a God's-eye view of Central Park, those windows are incredible!)"

"So mortifying," Ms. Delbanco said. "But I've got to say, he's also kind of socked it to me over the years. All of his novels have sex scenes in them. I remember when I was a senior in college, it used to delight my friends to no end."

College was her father's alma mater, Harvard, where she majored in the history and literature of America (thesis topic: Faulkner's Go Down, Moses and the idea of family honor in the Old South) and acted in lots of plays (she bears a passing resemblance to Mary-Louise Parker-refreshing given how many untalented Claire Danes look-alikes these days mysteriously land lucrative first-fiction contracts). A "ferocious" student, she seriously mulled a career in academia.

"But the idea that I could still be in school somewhere finishing up my pre-dissertation outline makes me shiver with fear," she said. "And also, you're paid terribly."

Early writing efforts were " mortifying ," she said, "and I would die if anyone saw them." She took workshops with Jayne Anne Phillips, Jamaica Kincaid and her father's friend, Richard Ford, and later applied to a swath of M.F.A. programs with her then boyfriend, a poet. They both got in everywhere-and then he dumped her, announcing that he was planning to attend Iowa, the Harvard of this insular little M.F.A. world.

"I was so laid flat on my back by this breakup that I was like, 'I don't think I can go to school in a tiny town with this guy,'" Ms. Delbanco said. "I don't know if this is going to make me sound really shallow, but it was mostly hard to turn down because I had a feeling that I would spend the rest of my life saying to people, 'I could've gone to Iowa'-just that horrible, brief name-brand consciousness." She retreated to Michigan and the bosom of her family.

Between college and grad school, Ms. Delbanco spent two and a half years in New York City, a fact which crucially informs her plot but is neatly excised from her flap-jacket biography.

"One day I went to bookstores and looked at the back of everybody's book and was like, 'I kind of want to say less rather than more,'" she said.

She lived on the Upper East Side, in her maternal grandparents' apartment.

"All my friends lived in the East Village and the West Village and crazy little parts of Chinatown," she said. "I was mortified -hated the Upper East Side-but now, in my old age, I think it's 'where it's at,' in a way. All the ladies with their little dogs and huge mink coats … it's a scream." She worked in publicity for Warner Books, leaving after two months ("I'm mortified when I think about that," she said); and then for Seventeen as an editorial assistant and then a staff writer.

"It wasn't like I ever thought I was going to stay there for a long time, but it was neat," she said.

Ask Me Anything is about the contradiction of a 26-year-old protagonist doling out sex advice to teenagers while her own love life is a tangle of obfuscation and lies. Ms. Delbanco, by contrast, seems to enjoy a placid domestic arrangement down the street from Le Petit Jardin with her boyfriend, Nick Stoller, a tall, handsome screenwriter a couple years her junior (they have monogrammed towels, and she drives a Subaru Outback station wagon in sea-mist green). It was he who was responsible for spiriting her away to L.A. nine months ago.

"At the moment, I'm sort of enjoying L.A. more than I thought I would," she said. "I don't know if that's a behind-the-back compliment or whatever the expression is, but I feel like it's far away-in a nice way. It's sort of safely at arm's length. It's a good mix. It's not the crazy frenetic thing, but it's also not so bucolic that it's impossible to get a good meal at an ethnic restaurant."

It went, simply: Brriiiing , brrriiing .

There it was: the sweet peal of our childhood. A grave, familiar sound that harked back to an era before cell phones, before cordless, before speaker, possibly even before touch-tone. A simple, solid ring from a time when phones had heft; when you actually had to be tethered to the instrument during a conversation; when the term "phone appointment" had meaning and import; when you had to answer, you couldn't "let the machine get it"; a time when being an adult meant you could actually handle a "live" phone call, no matter who was calling. At the party, the ring wasn't a tinny Casio simulacrum of a classic ring: It was resonant and startlingly real.

All the guests oohed and aahed and immediately wanted to know how they could get it for themselves.

The phone, an LG-5660 from Sprint PCS, belonged to David Agranov, 28, an actor who has lived in Hancock Park for two years, and the ring, known as "Ring One," is one of the built-in programming options, along with an annoying "bugle" tone and an anonymous cowboy shouting "Whoo- hooo ! Somebody's got a phone call!"

Mr. Agranov had developed a bit of tone envy after taking a freelance job with Interscope executives, who all boasted cutting-edge rings based on their artists' latest recordings. He mulled more florid options-a Spanish woman's voice announcing the incoming call, a song sample from A Tribe Called Quest-but something about Ring One, which he refers to as the "antiquated ring," just spoke to him.

"Nothing else I listened to was that impressive," he said. "I'm not a really big mobile-phone guy, so I like this ring. I think it has a little character. It sounds like when I grew up in D.C.-some phone in my parents' basement."

And the peer response to Ring One has been overwhelmingly positive.

"People laugh," Mr. Agranov said. "They think it's an anachronism. A mobile phone is kind of like this sexy little silver clamshell, and then it sounds like this old, old thing."

On New Year's Eve, he visited Stolichnaya, a Russian bakery on Santa Monica Boulevard, and was balancing his cheesecake, fruit tart and cell phone when he got an incoming call.

"I was paying the cashier-you know, they're all Russians in there-and she goes, 'Oh my God, it sound like old Soviet phone from 1971,'" he said.

But Mr. Agranov has refused to commit 100 percent; he's currently alternating with a snatch from Schubert's Trout Quintet (the favorite piece of a character in a book he's reading, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ). "It goes, 'Da-dum, dum, dum-dah-dum, dum-dum, da-dum, da-dum,'" he said, "and behind it you have like little running-brook songs." Callers known to him are heralded by Ring One, but anyone who phones in as "ID unknown" or "restricted" or "private" gets the Trout .

"It's a little fishy ring," he said.

Though downright democratic now that Old Navy et al. sell them for $19.99, down jackets pose a perennial fashion challenge: It's a slippery slope-quite literally-from cute little hip-hop snow bunny to Kenny from South Park .

The dernier cri in down these day? Shockingly, a jacket designed by J. Lo. What, the singer-actress-dancer Jennifer Lopez? The same.

That's right. Just when you thought Ms. Lo had finally shimmied over the shark, what with her terrible movies and lunkhead fiancé, she (or her licensing minions) have busted out with a "downtown puffer with faux fur trim" that many a smart chick can't wait to get her hands on. At $98, this jacket strikes a nice middle ground between the cheapie Old Navy stuff-which "sheds," according to one disappointed recent buyer-and high-end ski wear from European lines like Bogner, which can reach into the outrageously high three figures.

"The customer's looking for the down jackets by J. Lo a lot," said Nelly Molina, a sales associate in the juniors department at the West Hollywood Macy's. "They want the short style-the one without the belt." (And with good reason; as any savvy dresser knows, if a belt on a puffy jacket doesn't fit just right, you're going to look like a sofa.)

But you need to act fast. J. Lo, that tease, made only one shipment of the cute parkas to Macy's. The white puffers were already out of stock at the WestHo location; a few remain in black and royal blue. (Bonus points if you can track down the elusive pink one that appeared, tantalizingly, as part of a promotion in a recent Us Weekly .) Why the fervent demand?

"Honestly? I have no idea," Ms. Molina said, though she promised they were suitable for skiing. She added that she had an ample supply of the more discreet "uptown" style for $125: "Not long long, but not short short-just below your buttocks."

A smaller selection of jackets is also for sale on the mesmerizingly cheesy Web site, shopjlo.com, on which the tawny, supple pop star is pictured quite literally kicking up her heels, the gleeful smile on her face suggesting that Gigli had never happened.

Ms. Lopez may or may not close the deal with Ben Affleck, but as a sort of multi-culti "Jaclyn Smith for Kmart" of the new millennium, she could have a rich future.

1)Acerbiccomic Richard Belzer amid a large group at Yamashiro, a touristy "Cal-Asian" restaurant in the Hollywood Hills with a panoramic view of the city.

2) Actress Courtney Thorne-Smith, late of Melrose Place and Ally McBeal , wearing an Ann Taylor–esque pale periwinkle shell while eating salad lunches with some other blond ladies at Barney Greengrass atop Barneys Beverly Hills.

3) America's erstwhile sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, dining with some older, familial-looking companions at Cobras and Matadors, a popular, dimly lit tapas joint on Beverly Boulevard.

4) Troubled, talented, tousled actor Robert Downey Jr. horsing around with a child-perhaps his son, Indio-as a dark-windowed limousine idled ominously on the northeast corner of Sunset Plaza Drive in West Hollywood.

5) Fallen American Idol Justin Guarini at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, heading in the general direction of a Designer Shoe Warehouse, his signature halo of brown curls bobbing with every step. (For some reason, people stopped, pointed and gaped at this one as if it were the second coming of Jesus.)

6) Dynasty diva Joan Collins in black pants, black leather jacket and black fedora pulled low, shopping for form-fitting ski parkas at the Sport Chalet–Beverly Connection accompanied by a man several years her junior in high-waisted jeans-not her latest husband, Percy.

And that's it. No Paris Hilton panting on the adjacent Precor at Crunch, no Bennifer at the Ivy, no Justin Timberlake in the elevator of the Glendale Galleria. Where is the love?

The lame tally of fame is enough to inspire a gal to throw down Us Weekly (snuggled in The Atlantic Monthly ), turn off the riveting Celebrities Uncensored (E! Channel, 10 p.m. Monday, with repeats throughout the week) and tune in to celebrity spotting's demure doppelgänger: bird-watching.

Go ahead and laugh. Once the province of rich, eccentric, aging WASP's with too much time and land on their hands, bird-watching just might be the new yoga: one of those low-exertion "exercises" (it sometimes involves a light hike, but may also be accomplished basically standing still) with plenty of space for inward contemplation, going at your own pace, gently raised heart rates, etc. Binoculars are as cheap as sticky mats; you male "gear heads" who are the unwitting target audience for Cargo can splurge on $1,000 ones from Leica. And with the unbeatable built-in natural soundtrack, there's no need for Enya.

"The pressure just falls away," said Sheri Wildhagen, 35, a hatter and avid amateur ornithologist. "It's like meditation."

Ms. Wildhagen, whose Sonja Henie–like headwear-recycled wool in winter, cotton organdy in summer-are sold at Barneys and chic boutiques, was in town from Toronto with her set dresser husband, David Greig, 37, en route to birdwatch on Mulholland Drive. Earlier that day, she had scaled a hill on Point Dume, near Malibu, to get a better gander at a green heron, and then realized to her horror that the rich resident of a nearby house behind a fence might mistake her for a paparazzo.

A low-key couple dressed in sensible knit-cotton layers, they spoke excitedly of cedar waxwings, puffet titmice and prothonotary warblers-the latter apparently the Michelle Pfeiffer of the species.

"It's fairly rare and it's reclusive," said the bearded Mr. Greig, "but it's mind-blowingly gorgeous, golden-like, lit from within. This bird has an inner glow."

Like sex, bird-watching is better in the morning. Recently, one of those smug NPR stations announced a Sunday, 8:30 a.m., expedition in Echo Park, a Hispanic neighborhood near downtown upon which white, trust-funded "hipsters" are rapidly encroaching. Down by the lake, as bemused joggers loped past carrying Heavy Hands, a nice volunteer from the Audubon Society named Judy Raskin was leading a small but determined pack of birders.

"That's a widgeon," said one, peering at the lake, where ducks were clustered like C-list celebrities at Avalon.

"That's not a widgeon."

That was about it for dialogue.

One felt virtuous and happy to pay the (probably deductible) $5 "count fee." Ms. Raskin distributed forms on which to tally bird sightings (brown-headed cowbirds, Western meadowlarks, dark-eyed juncos!), but cautioned that the day would be filled with commoners: doves, blackbirds and starlings.

"Nine times out of 10, it's a starling," said one observer, an actor in his 30's. Bird-watchers tend to be discreet, anonymous types, though there are the inevitable type-A's. "They're looking at birds and there's zero enjoyment; it's all about numbers," Mr. Greig said in disgust. "They could be trainspotting."

"We call them 'bird barons,'" Ms. Wildhagen said.

Thanks to complicated, freeway-like migratory patterns, it's impossible to say definitively which birds will be where when, and thus the pastime's charming mix of cyclic reliability and random serendipity. Every birder's dream is to see the unexpected bird in the unexpected setting, like Woody Allen in L.A. "You want novelty," said a 35-year-old television writer.

All agree, however, that spring is the all-around best season. "Everyone is in their breeding plumage and they're singing like crazy, dressed to the nines," Mr. Greig said.

With its temperate clime and exotic fauna, L.A. seems like the ideal birding spot, but Ms. Wildhagen said that New York City, where she and her husband lived for a stretch in the late 1990's, is just as good. "If you're a bird, you want to be in New York," she said. (Not really, actually-visit www.flap.org, the Web site of the Fatal Light Awareness Program, for gruesome details of the dangers that artificially glowing office buildings pose to flying birds.) Ornithological tensions between the East and West coasts have run high since the 1940's, when traders captured a bunch of "house finches," a pretty red bird native to western North America, and sold them in Manhattan pet stores as "Hollywood finches." Authorities eventually released them, and they have since spread prolifically on both sides of the Rockies.

Recommended inspirational reading: Largely forgotten Belgian writer and 1911 Nobel prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck's exquisite play, The Blue Bird.

P.S.: Ms. Thorne-Smith's former co-star, the icy blond actress Portia de Rossi, was browsing Wildhagen hats recently at Show on North Vermont Avenue in the fashionable neighborhood Los Feliz.

"I love birds," she was overheard to remark.