An experiment crafted by the team of Industry Nexus.

Ali spent her last semester at the University of Kentucky putting together her Hollywood plan. She never called it the LA plan because LA was a city for all kinds of people – lawyers, secretaries and florists all live in LA. Hollywood was more than a place, it was a state of mind and Ali knew that, more than anything, this was a metaphysical change.

After a semester of both Intro to Buddhism and Philosophy 102, Ali was confident that her newly awakened sense of enlightened entitlement was an omen that she could expect greatness from the universe

In order to free up her karma, Ali broke up with both her hometown boyfriend and her college hookup. In order to free up cash, Ali culled down her wardrobe to the basics, as determined by the latest In Style, through a massive tag sale that resulted in four severely injured sorority sisters. She reluctantly parted with big ticket items through eBay but kept the essentials – iPhone and laptop. Ali mourned the losses of her things only briefly but recognized that these were minor sacrifices for the greater good.

On the last day of the semester, as she was taking her final final (the irony didn’t escape her), Ali glanced out the window at the familiar landscape of half-naked students and assorted faculty. The air was filled with the familiar scents of Lexington in the spring – the combination of freshly cut grass, patchouli and manure – and as Ali made up the answer to #24, she wondered what Hollywood would smell like.

Ali went home to Mount Sterling to say goodbye to her family and make all her friends jealous. There were three going away parties held in her honor and only one of them ended in a brawl. Her last morning in Kentucky, she updated her facebook profile, letting all of her 137 friends that she was Hollywood-bound at last. Seeing it online made it real and Ali was relieved that all the planning was over. It was time to begin. As her parents drove her to the bus depot, her dad repeated the sex ed lesson he gave her when she was 13 but without the diagrams. Her mom cried and tucked three sandwiches and $500 into her fake Louis Vuitton duffel bag. Ali boarded the first of many Greyhounds that would eventually reach Hollywood some 96 hours, 10 burgers, 3 cherry pies, 2 gropey salesmen and 1 narcoleptic bus driver later. All of this didn’t faze Ali at all. Being 20 shares a lot of similarities with being 5 – it’s an age of discovery where every experience is revelatory and life-altering. 96 hours had only increased Ali’s fervor and as the hazy image of palm trees and downtown LA came into focus, Ali cracked open her window to inhale Hollywood.

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