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Webster's defines "magazine" as—nevermind, we're not going to do research. You all know what a magazine is, right? Some of you can even stop looking at the pictures long enough to read them. So we won't bother trying to describe Richard Rushfield's humor mag LA Innuendo, except to say that he gets persnickety when you call it a 'zine and suggest that he lives in his mother's basement. He, um, doesn't, we swear! In addition to cracking funnies, Rushfield is a "cool-hunter," which unfortunately doesn't mean he's tracking Chloe and Gallo with a blunderbuss, but has something to do with sniffing out trends. After the jump, Rushfield shows he has a sense of humor about dumb questions pertaining to LA's wastelandness and his days working at a home improvement trade magazine.

Age: 35
Occupation: Journalist, seer
Where do you live: Los Angeles


1. La Innuendo: The next Spy? The next Onion? Or just a couple of kids putting out a photocopied 'zine from their mom's basement? Oh wait! I get it now! It's like a real fancy business card for getting real writing gigs!?

How dare you. This interview is OVER. Where's the craft services table in this dump anyway?

Okay, I'm back. Mostly, we are a low-rent Spy for people who love the things that they hate about LA.

2.You write the Intelligence Report for Vanity Fair, own a trend-spotting firm in LA, and were a former field advisor to Bill Clinton. Quite a resume. I picture you in your office dressed like Richard Belzer and firing interns with the glee of Satan. You are all-powerful! Do children run away from you when you enter the room?

That is exactly right on all points except replace the crummy detective's suit with a Chinese silk dressing gown and ascot. And children are not allowed within 30 feet of me.

3. Let's face it, culture lives on the East Coast. We all know the other coast has bleached their brains out beyond use. How bad is the inferiority complex for writers, artists, etc. out there? (Yourself not included, unless you want to be.)

Say... East Coast culture... writers with inferiority complexes... brain bleaching... You know, I think this could be a great film project. If you could just come west for a couple weeks to flesh it out, I know this producer who would option this in a heartbeat!

Just kidding. I don't really know that producer. But be honest with yourself — for a moment there you were seeing yourself floating down Sunset Blvd. in your convertible Hummer, touching up your deep-brownish red tan, surrounded by Olsen twins, drinking caviar-flavored Mai-tai's from Faberge eggs. And THAT, my friends, is the point of Hollywood: in the flash of one throwaway lie from me, you — top of your field, fantastically well educated, internet "Snark Specialists" — were willing to toss it out with last month's Details for a drink from the brass ring. Which, let me assure you, really does taste that good.

On top of which, 100 years from now, grad students will be turning out dissertations titled: "Reflections of Identity: LeBlanc at Mid-career" while the works of your big-shot New York Jarmusches and Benzas are being ground up for robot food.

4. Let's say I'm looking to start a fad. Not something as big as a trend, just something small to begin with. Can you offer any illuminating advice on how to get people to start wearing Quacker Factory outfits to Bungalow 8?

Someone once told a great Confucian aphrorism: Sit by the river long enough and all the fads will swim by. Which was Confucius's slightly messed up way of saying — Trends come, trends go. But what brings life true meaning is positioning yourself so you can say you predicted them.

That said, we know from media history that the exact number of people doing something it takes to confirm a trend is one, provided that person is either at least slightly celebrity or went to Harvard or Brown. Quacker Factory uniforms, in fact, tie into today's (reality show, post-literate, return to youth, neo-colonial, insert your cliche here) zeitgeist in ways that an ambitious style reporter could easily explain in 1500 words. So bribe your closest Ivy League or celebrated essayist buddy to "get quacking" within a thousand yards of the nearest lifestyle journalist and get ready to declare happy duck sweaters are so so so last month.

5. Your assessment of the August '04 is of Paper is quite perceptive. How often do you find yourself looking down on the poor media hacks who have to write these things? I mean, seriously, the mag trade is just publicists swapping spit. Don't they deserve our true pity?

Having done my finest work in the pages of Office Depot Magazine and soared the rhetorical heavens with my treatise, "How to Clean Your Juicer" for the late, much missed, howto.com, my heart bears only love for my hac brethren. I rejoice to Paper's celebration of Vincent Gallo. And I find the descriptive gymnastics journalists perform when forced to turn in 2500 words on their 25 minute coffee with hung-over teenage actors, to be, in a well-chosen phrase, thrilling.

My Five Favorite Alternate Universe Names for Myself (according to reliable internet sources)
Porn Name: Freddy de Cortez
Third Grade Insult Name: Lieutenant Bashful D. Stupid-Butt
Anime Fan Name: Magical Pretty Fish Bishie Penguin-San
Vampire Name: Claudius Choiseul
Rock Star Name: Ron Neil