My new job: Ambassador of Odessa

Meet the Ambassador of Beverly Hills
By JOHN ROGERS/AP

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (March 25) - Even amid the overdressed audacity of Rodeo Drive, Gregg Donovan stands out as the only guy on the street in a top hat and tails, silk tie, and a pair of $1,500 shoes that have been glossed to an eye-dazzling shine.

Then there's that booming voice that never seems to grow hoarse as it shouts out a hundred or more times a day, "Welcome to Beverly Hills! You have arrived!" in a baritone that seems to rattle the windows of every store from Chanel to Cartier, Ralph Lauren to Louis Vuitton.

"I love this job!" says Donovan.

No, Donovan isn't the mayor of Beverly Hills, although he says Oprah Winfrey once mistakenly addressed him as such. His title is much loftier: ambassador of Beverly Hills.

"If you said, 'Where would you like to work? The White House? Buckingham Palace?'" he says, "I'd have to say I'd rather work here. Every day it's like 'The Wizard of Oz' and Rodeo Drive is the Yellow Brick Road."

The Kingdom of Beverly Hills didn't always have an ambassador, of course. Once upon a time it was just another small town, albeit one with 35,000 people perched atop nearly 6 square miles of the world's most ridiculously overpriced real estate.

How come I can never find out about easy jobs like these? I could easily be the ambassador in Beverly Hills. It sells itself. Hell I could be the admbassador of Odessa. I could welcome in all the people from Goldsmith and Gardendale who have to come shopping there. But don't expect me to have positive diplomatic relations with the Midlanders. I smell a war brewing.

PS - Above left is the world's largest jack rabbit in the world (Odessa's claim to fame. His name is Jack Ben Sheppard. So Mcintosh shares a name with a rabbit statue.