• ''L.A.'s a weird place. In New York, culture pursues you. You can't walk more than three feet without seeing an ad for the new Broadway play or running smack into a gallery. Here you really have to pursue it. If I want to go see a museum exhibit, I think, I gotta park, I gotta drive, it's hot, and they're only open until five. They don't make it easy to learn here. Like, the Hollywood library is nice, but I see more homeless people there than people who just want to get books. But the homeless people are reading, so I don't know if that's good or bad.'' -- Minnesota raised RACHAEL LEIGH COOK, who's starring in ''Get Carter'' and ''Texas Rangers'' (due next year), on Hollywood's culture free zone
from Entertainment Weekly.

Do you know what issue that quote came from, Jake?

Rach.... Uhhh, I mean TR would probably know!

That was an Associated Press thing. That quote ran in a bunch of papers all over the country. I have seen it online here and there also. I guess it is about a year old.

-TR

I've found this quote on EW.com.

I was in New York City for a week back in 1984. The subway tunnels were lined with posters for upcoming movies. It seemed like every fourth poster was for the same film. The movie that I remember the most being promoted was Tank, starring James Garner as an army drill sergeant who arrived at work every day driving a Sherman tank.

Walking through Times Square, all one could see were advertisements for Coca-Cola, Minolta, Fuji film, and more posters for Broadway plays or musicals. I don't believe I ever saw any promotionals for events at the botanical gardens in the Bronx or other museums in any of the five borroughs.

Ft. Worth locales promote everything. The zoo, the Museum of Science with it's IMAX theatre, and the Kimball Museum, Amon Carter Museum and the Museum of the Modern have signs posted on the buses for special art exhibits. Even the Van Cliburne competition gets heavy coverage.

Of course, publications like the Ft. Worth Weekly, Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer and Dallas Morning News feature complete listings of every eatery, every museum, every movie, local stage and concert event coming to the D-FW metroplex.

I find it hard to believe that Hollywood would lack so much. Surely the people there do more than make movies, write scripts, invent new special effects technology, etc. Television is supposed to be a vast cultural wasteland, not real life, real time Hollywood USA.