20050621fishbowl.jpgFishbowlLA, apparently, was wondering about
trend stories. Or, really, about the trends in the trend
stories. Are they real? Where do they come from? And,
especially, how do Times writers find out about them? Fishbowl,
it seems, was particularly concerned by Zoe Wolff's piece in
last Thursday's Gay Styles section, the front-pager on the
allegedly new trend of pre-marriage couples therapy, based on
"Erica, 30, a screenwriter in Manhattan," and her fianc .
Fishbowl suspected that Wolff was merely writing about what was
going on in her friends' lives.  Let's turn to Friendster, the
craigslist of our generation. Zoe Wolff's Friendster page is
linked to someone named 'Erica'. Now, granted, this Erica claims
to be a 28-year-old Angeleno, and the Erica in the article is
identified as a 30-year-old New Yorker. But what's a couple
years and forty-something flyover states in the scheme of
things?  Fishbowl decided to test the hypothesis that these two
Ericas are one and the same. The results? Very i