Our Anywhere Tour event in Los Angeles took place yesterday at the tony W Hotel in Westwood, also the site the same evening of an HBO party. Looking down from my room onto the garden area HBO was using, Lindsay Lohan and her alcohol-monitoring anklet were nowhere to be seen. But I did notice an only-in-LA (or maybe Vegas) sight: an elaborate ring of fire set up in the hotel pool, shooting flames several feet in the air.

How appropriate. Boyd Peterson, Linda Barrabee, Mike Goodman and I had been meeting with movie studios and TV networks this week, talking about their challenges in the collision of their businesses with the burgeoning appetite of network providers to provide entertainment. Most of the conversations touched on the North American walled garden for mobile content: the barrier the wireless providers hope to maintain to protect their centrality in the provision of services to the Anywhere Consumer.

History’s destined to repeat itself, I believe: It all reminded me of the arguments I had in 1996 with AOL’s Steve Case and Ted Leonsis. While they continued to add subscribers to AOL’s walled garden at a rate far outstripping the admittedly incorrect predictions I was making for their subscriber base growth, they also convinced themselves that subscribers would stay with their protected, controlled environment in the face of exponentially increasing options outside those walls. Ultimately, of course, the open network won the war.

How long before ‘the deck breaks’, as Google’s wireless strategist Rich Miner says? I think the answer lies in the speed with which the off-deck content offerings, paired with the ability of handheld devices to share them, get better than they are today. We’re looking hard at the question — send me your thoughts on the obstacles and the catalysts for dousing the ring of fire.