• by OMMA Magazine Writers , February 22, 2008

L.A. is full of tales of discovery. Some are myth, some are true and some are bittersweet. Charles Bukowski described his discovery of John Fante’s Ask the Dust as “finding gold in the city dump.” With all the trash one can find on the Internet, old Hank might just as well have been talking about trolling the Web today instead of feverishly pulling dog-eared volumes from creaky shelves in the L.A. public library in the ’40s. Fante had tried to get discovered as a writer for years, writing letter after letter to the critic and editor H.L. Mencken, who finally acquiesced and should be credited with originally discovering him. The author published to little acclaim until Bukowski re-discovered him and finally had all Fante’s books reissued in the ’80s after his own long battle to publish. Anyone struggling to get their brand noticed online can probably relate.

One of the great myths of discovery is the story of Lana Turner, who supposedly sat at the counter of Schwab’s in Hollywood day after day hoping that one of the producers who frequented the soda shop would make her a star. On our cover “Obama Girl” Amber Lee Ettinger stands in for Turner — but Ettinger’s thoroughly modern road to revelation, chronicled in this issue, was much different.

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