Return to the City of Angels: Part I

 Los Angeles!

Good people: I used to live in the City of Angels. I know there are angels there (see car accident, guitar rescue, and other stories in previous blog posts). I recently went back to visit the sunshine and the angels. It was beautiful. It was so much the same, and so much different, all at once - so many old familiar feelings and new feelings rushed over me as I drove through my old neighborhoods. It seemed as if I had never left. But I had, and now I was, as Arnold would say, "back."

So I'll give you a picture-log of what happened:

LAX - POINT OF ORIGIN
Flew in. The paper bag wasn't on my knee, but I did forget my ipod. Never again! But better to forget the ipod than the noise reducing headphones, if you have to leave just one, I guess.

Note to self: Airport shuttles are not always optimal modes of transportation.

Dinner, 11pm: Cafe Rio, courtesy of Aunt Marti.
(Pork burrito. Piping hot = 5 stars)

Sighs of relief at being horizontal.  Peace. Warmth. Welcomed.

Literally. In many ways. Seriously, Aunt Marti is the best. And here's why:

•  My room was warm
• There was a lovely gift on the bed
• And a book waiting for me to read with a note on it
• She got me a blind date invitation, and made a
• Large note expressing love.

I don't think it gets better than that. Auntie M has pretty much spoiled me for all other houseguest experiences.

Orange County
Day 2: Woke up. Went to Auntie M's room, where I was regaled with stories of Bandit, the awesome stump-tailed Jack Russell Terrier. (I wrote a whole Bandit post, which I will post later.

Then we went to Mimi's for lunch, where they brought cold chowder for Auntie M along with her club sandwich, and I had a pulled pork sandwich that was standard.

Harley Davidson nail polish flower

Rating: 2.5 stars. Fairly standard stuff.

Company: 5 stars.

Then we went to get pedicures. I'd never gotten a pedicure from a man before. He asked me if I wanted a flower, and I said yes. So he gave me one. It kind of reminds me of a Harley Davidson symbol.

Time for a quick church ball game. I'd never seen so many boys play b-ball in Keds. Also, there were a shocking lack of teenage girls there to cheer them on. I remember going to such basketball games and there were always a million girls there...but not at this game. We had steak for dinner, yummy mashed potatoes. Auntie M put some makeup on me. This is what I looked like. Then I went to Farrell's with TH on a blind date. That was interesting. Farrell's mimics old-timey soda shoppes, only they have a new age cheekiness on their menu. It was loud. Every time there was a birthday, they would play a siren really loud and then proceed to sing almost as loudly a birthday song. They had two or three that I heard just in the hour that I was there. Also, they had this amazingly huge concoction that was the size of a really large mixing bowl that had plastic flamingos and palm trees on it and was apparently full of ice cream. They did an elaborate worship dance where they put it on a litter and then literally ran it around the entire restaurant. I'm amazed they didn't trip. The litter dance was accompanied by siren after siren. I think I need my hearing checked. Anyway, I had a good time with TH. We both had banana splits, which were good, but a tad overpriced.

 Rating:  3.5 stars. Five for novelty; minus one for cheek, minus 1/2 for prices.

I had breakfast potatoes and sausage for breakfast, and then took L to Chuck E Cheese: where a kid can be a brat! (instead of just a kid.) I had never been inside a Chuck E Cheese before, and I'm not even a parent, but I can understand why parents would shudder in horror at the very idea of entering such a place. Ever.

Then we went shopping - my first ever time to Kohls-and I bought some stuff but nothing fit the image that Auntie M had in her head. Oh well. Maybe next trip.

A Twip on a Twain

I took the 609 to Union Station. I'd never ridden Metrolink before. It took a shockingly short time to arrive at my destination. I was amazed how many people were there - but I shouldn't have been, because it was 6:00 on a Friday night.

Famima!!

My first stop in LA was at Famima!! Those of you who have not encountered the awesomeness that is Famima!! are really missing out. Yes, two exclamation points. Not one, not three. Just two. And of course I bought ranch corn nuts there, in honor of K-lo. And RJ. But that's another story for another post.

Rating: 4 stars for this location. They didn't have bananas and whipped cream with chocolate shavings wrapped in a large pancake for sale.

Seeing Stars

Then it was K-time! She came to pick me up and we went to Griffith's Observatory We waited in line to see the nebula beneath Orion's belt from a rather large telescope. And I saw Jupiter. I had seen Jupiter before, with my naked little eye, but I guess I always just thought it was an uber bright star and not actually a planet. Look what an education will do for you. Here are some pictures. Sadly, I posed for a picture with this guy and I don't even know who he is. It was one of those things where I thought I would remember but I don't actually.

<---This is how much I would weigh on Mercury. And Mars. I'd weigh 350 on Jupiter and 5 on Pluto.

--->Saturn's rings are kind of blocking the rest of the planets, but the big metal thing is the background, and then the rest of the hanging things are objects (the planets)  scaled to size and distance away from the sun.

 Look at all those lights!  I used to feel so comforted when I flew into LA and saw all the lights. It was like they were winking blinking me home. And that song, "Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner/sometimes I feel I like my only friend/is the city I live in/the city of Angels/lonely as I am, together we cry that talks about how the city knows him...that song always went through my head right as we were about to touch down. And I do love LA.

This is what I think of when I think of Los Angeles...the view so often given in TV shows - the view (from a different angle) that I saw every day on my way to work. You can see my building in this picture. It's smack in the middle. Then, below, that's where I lived. Seems less glamorous but it was oh so much better than living downtown.

 After our brief educational field trip, K and I went to Father's Office. It was packed, at 10 at night. Who knew. There are no substitutions on the menu. Everything is F.o... Not FO, or F.O. And they get offended if you ask for ketchup with your fries. Rude. All you need to say is, "I'm sorry miss, we don't offer that on the menu." If you wanted a bit of snark, THEN you would say, "I'm sorry miss, we don't allow red sugary goop masquerading as tomato based condiment to come anywhere near our culinary creations." It's a bar, people. Bars should have ketchup. They put gruyere on my burger. I found out I don't like gruyere. :( Especially not on hamburgers. And there was this garlicky mayo-based sauce for the fries. I skipped that part. Which meant I mostly skipped the fries.

Rating: 3.5 stars. Inflexibility on the menu + crowded and no ketchup partially offset the otherwise pretty good burger. Partially my own fault, since I don't like gruyere. 

Then we pretended we were students and went to Diddy Riese - relaxation spot of all UCLA-goers. K and KF both got cookies. I got a cookie sandwich. It was good. We also had to wait in line there. At like 11. I forget that everybody else always stays up later than I do...

Rating: 4.5 stars. Excellent price. Really good ice cream. Cookies were a bit blond for me. 

The next morning, we went to the Griddle Cafe for breakfast. And put makeup on in the car. Typical of us.

And K got hot chocolate. --->
And I got Mother's French Toast. The most popular thing on the menu. I can see why it was popular. Usually I'm not much of a FT buff but this was amazing. I am glad I ordered it instead of a giant plate of pancakes. Seriously, all the pancakes covered the entire plate. I got a side of eggs because I didn't want a sugar crash. K told us a story about how she went to school with the Kardashians and Kim K. pushed my K's friend into the bushes over a dispute over a drama class assignment. It was kind of funny, though I feel sorry for K's friend. And the bush.

Next Stop: HOLLYWOOD

I have officially arrived!

Our first stop was the Chinese Theatre. Also known as Grauman Theatre, after Sid Grauman, the uber rich guy who owned it. Or maybe he wasn't rich...but he was apparently at the top of Who's Who in Hollywood for a really long time. I actually think I saw his burial site when I went to Forest Lawn, but that's coming up later.

Chinese Theater lion, Frank Sinatra, and Julie Andrews

Then we took pictures. Me with a bunch of people's footprints: Tom Hanks, Denzell Washington, Danny Kaye, Arnold, etc. I also got one with the Harry Potter people that looks like it was really for Michael Jackson. K had to take the picture like that because the Twilight people are there, just above the HPs, and I couldn't have them sullying my picture! I also got my picture taken in front of the Chinese lion with Julie Andrews and Frank Sinatra. K also got her picture taken, with Shirley Temple and Marilyn Monroe. I think Shirley was the only one to have bare footprints. Natalie Wood, for example, was wearing stilettos. She had uber tiny feet. Just for the record.
Guys dressed up as Darth Vader, and Superman (he did look like Chris Reeves but older and not with as great of a smile...and fake muscles. I don't dig fake muscles unless they're in cartoons that my friend Jonners wrote me when I was in ninth grade) will let you take your picture with them if you give them a dollar. They do not ever give freebies. K also paid twenty-seven cents for a wannabe rappers CD. He was struck by her beauty and pretty much told her she was gorgeous about ten times. Oh, Hollywood!

Now comes perhaps my favorite shot of the trip: the uber cheesy travel agent postcard pose. My eyes were watering so bad when she took this photo. It was cute, she led me up and around and around and around and told me not to look...and then I looked. And there it was, right there in front of me: the Hollywood sign.



























Then I took a picture pretending to be an elephant..and of El Capitan Theatre...and of Michael Jackson's star on the starwalk. We didn't walk along far enough to see stars of other people...but some of the people I did see on the star walk, I was really surprised that their "contributions" merited a star. I  practically deserve a star by the metrics they were using! (Imho.)

Next, we went to the Grove. I wish I'd looked around more, but things got a bit hectic. It reminded me a bit of Pike Place...without the fish, and more truly outside. We went to Anthropologie and K bought a really cute apron. At first I thought it was a dress, but then I was like, "Wait. This dress has no back. But it's so cute! What is it?" and of course K had to explain what it was. We watched the bubble men and took pictures on the bench while we tried not to freeze. (It was a little chilly out.)

This is us, showing our shopping selves:

I met an old coworker, RJ, for Starbucks. He claimed it was cold. Do you see a jacket on me?!? I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just saying where I come from, we appreciate weather like SoCal's.

Black beans, wet style. Always.

After that, I went south to visit K-Lo. We went out to dinner and I had the most gigantic burrito I ever saw in LA. I'm not sure exactly the name of where we went, but I'll give you a rating anyway:

Rating: 4.0 Really good portion sizes, good sauce, and a lot of bang for your buck. Cons were that there was no place for six people to sit. 

All the tables were different heights and shapes (round vs rectangular) so you couldn't effectively even shove two tables together! Oh well, I enjoyed it anyway. 

Her husband and two kids came along. I had a good time - just like the old days, when we worked together. She's still my sistah, and always will be.

Phew. That's enough for Part I.

Sneak peek for Part II: Venice Beach, more excellent food, and Forest Lawn!