American Airlines flight 25 saw to it, seat 26F - window seat - I gave up the aisle seat in row 13 for it, and woo hoo! - nobody ended up in the middle seat! Hooray! For a gal such as I who loathes flying and it's ridiculously tight confines ...
twas rather like winning the freaking lottery. Somehow the three year old boy directly behind me only kicked my seat a total of one full set of times.
Very, very long and hungry flight, since the bastards didn't even offer food, and I had not a lot of pre-flight time inside the Logan terminal, nor could I find anyplace that sold pre-packaged food for some reason. The Jet Blue terminal has loads of Wolfgang Puck salads and the like, but not the AA terminal. Anyway, on the plane, there was one very brief mention up front of food 'for purchase', (is this phrase somehow less offensive than 'for sale'?), then ... nothing. I had assumed they would come around at some point and ask if people were ready for the food, if they were hungry, offer menus, or perhaps mention what was on offer, yet ... nothing. 6.5 hours of yogurt peanuts and ritz crackers ensued. Finally towards the end, when the guy next to me ordered them, I caved and bought what he was getting - a bag of spiced nuts ...
which I hadn't realized until I was handed the credit card receipt (since airlines laughably do not accept cash) set me back $5.29! To boot, they were not at all spectactular. Something about the sorry brown peppery wannabe glaze stuff just didn't work.
Have to say I guess I simply cannot believe we've arrived at a time when it's acceptable to charge $25 for the storage of one suitcase inside of the cavernous belly of a giant commercial airliner, while at the same time, food is no longer thrown into the mix as a pacifier while you try to make people shoehorned together and hurled through the air a bit less uncomfortable.
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Here is a cool little film I took from the plane. At one point I noticed that adjacent to us was another airplane flying at the same speed and direction, which was kind of cool. There was a long trail of brown smoke billowing behind it, which wasn't cool. Later in the flight as I watched, the plane began to close in ours, closer and closer at high speed until it crossed underneath us. Watch the clip.
Come on. Watch it.
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Here's another film I took - showing the LA mega-sprawl as we approached LAX:
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One observation, possibility about the difference between west and east coast folks, was that, after the plane stopped at the gate, everyone on board did not then immediately move to stand and stake their claim on a spot in the aisle and bring their luggage down from the overhead compartments, as I have seen done on I believe every single flight I've been on in living memory. It was only when the plane door opened and the aisle ahead cleared of people that the folks at the middle and back of the plane where I was sitting finally got up to take down their luggage. Is this perhaps because west coasters are mellower/in less of a hurry vs east coasters? (Which in actual fact has been proven - in speed of walking, talking, giving directions to strangers and ATM transactions - east coast beats west coast every time.)
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While waiting for my luggage at the carousel, Chris began telling me, a bit too loudly despite my shushings, about his recent bout with a weird toxic flu, and the not one, but two shots he had to have in each butt cheek, and the sizeable circumference of the needles, and how much it hurt, and people around us were literally craning their necks like we were perverts. Dang.
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Okay, so I'm here, the weather's been great - it got to 80 the day I landed and I felt very enclosed and east coast-y in my kahkis and Merrill shoes.
I'm a guest of Christopher and his clarinet and saxaphone playing, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab software engineer girlfriend (really), Janet, in their lovely little freshly painted back guest house, featuring my own private deck, shielded from the neighbors and even from Chris' house by a bank of beautiful, seemingly perpetually blooming high flowering bushes (as early as 5:30am on foggy mornings, the flowers are somehow still fully open) ...
My little hut is complete with a full bath and kitchen with Cuisinart Keurig tea maker thing, microwave, stove, big fridge, etc., and a 60 inch tv. (Three times the size of my Sony back home.) The neighborhood is lovely and dead quiet, with lemon trees and steep hills and loads of flowers everywhere and big, dramatic, dry rocky/dusty mountains directly behind us. The type that burn. Also, flood.
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First stop after being picked up at LAX was Eva's Soul Food, which was tasty indeed and featured homemade biscuits and framed photos of a multitude of black icons on it's walls. Naturally I almost immediately managed to get grease on said kahkis - one of only two pairs of pants I have with me for the entire trip. (Dian, didn't you forewarn me I would spill something on them?) Afterwards we headed back to the house, where I attempted to fall down dead of the combination exhaustion/near-migraine, but alas, after two hours, sleep would not come, so up I got for a leisurely neighborhood stroll. Did I mention we're in the foothills and they are a tad steep? No matter, it helped muchly, as walking always does, and we ended the day driving up the steepest, twistiest hills behind us (where one house nearest to the end of the road beyond which they won't allow you to build anymore was literally buffered 3 foot high with sandbags.) I gather that when it rains here, the water, like in Arizona, doesn't get much absorbed by the sandy dry dirt, and hence simply flies down the mountain side, in some cases resulting in those famous mudslides. It certainly is dry here - I find I have to keep blowing my nose for some reason, as it's not used to the weirdly low humidity, I guess. I always forget about California that the trees have no bark on them (don't need any), and that the flowers are literally everywhere.
Even obscuring 'neighborhood watch' signs:
Big, colorful, and for us back east, exotic things such as Cala lillies and the like, grow will nilly out of the cracks of sidewalks and over dumpsters and shit. Crazy. They also have pretty fucked up twisty/gnarly trees. This one is next door to Chris' house:
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During a tour of the house, I noticed the room we were in (their office), had a Wonder Woman switch plate. I recollected to Chris the story about his dad always curiously watching that show alongside young Chris, and same being puzzled, because dad would rag on the rest of his tv watching and call Batman 'Fatman', and such, yet here he was making sure never to miss Lynda Carter in a patriotic corset one piece getup thing. Hmm. This is the conversation that thus ensued:
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Chris: Little did I know about things such as jiggle back then.
Me: Oh for fuck's sake, they didn't jiggle. In men's imaginations, they fucking jiggled. I'm telling you, there is no way in that outfit they could've jiggled.
Chris, logging into youtube: Oh ya ??
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How the hell was I to know there exist literally multiple videos of poor Lynda jogging - in slow-mo - in her Wonder Woman outfit ? Alongside, at times, her sidekick, Wonder Girl - played, bizarrely enough, by a young Debra Winger.
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So we ended the day in Chris fashion, watching 70's dynamos Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy and Jack Cassidy in a 1975 bizzaro flick starring (and directed by) Clint as a combination art teacher/hitman/rock climbing enthusiast - none of what I just said was made up - entitled The Eiger Sanction.
Clint was looking good despite his big clunky, Oscar Goldman-style eyeglasses. George Kennedy, Mr Trashdaster himself, was exactly Joe Patroni from the Airport films, swilling beer and spewing macho one liners ...
Woman Journalist: "Tell me, in your opinion do these men climb rocks to prove their manhood, or is it more a matter of compensating for inferiority feelings?"
George: "Lady, why don't you go get yourself screwed. It would do you a lot of good."
... and, oddly, having his hands all over Clint all the time for some reason.
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The first chick Clint bags of the 72 that he does during the film is a black stewardess named, wait for it ...
Jemimah. Oh, and her last name? Brown. And the seduction scene between these two has Clint making not one, but two rape jokes. 70s attempts at innocent seduction banter, I guess. Okay, here. I went and looked it up. This is from the script:
Jemimah: You climb?
Clint: I used to, but I'm retired now.
J: Maybe you'll climb again someday.
C: I doubt it.
J: You never know. Sometimes people do things they thought they'd never do again.
C: Like rape, for instance. I thought I'd given up rape, but I've changed my mind. You really have beautiful eyes.
Okay???
Amazingly, Clint, whose character, an art teacher with the last name Hemlock, so that's Professor Hemlock, was not the most fucked up character in the film. That title belonged to Jack Cassidy, who played a big, mincing, polyester leisure suit wearing queen carrying around a lapdog actually named "Faggot". Our first introduction to "Faggot", in fact, is him attempting to hump Clint's lower leg. Again, not making this up. Later on, after Clint leaves Jack out in the desert to die of exposure, and the little traitor of a dog hops into Clint's jeep as he speeds away rather than stand by his owner, Clint gives the dog to some waitress, but not before warning her that the dog might try to rape her. (??) This was a true non-stop WTF sort of film pretty much the whole way through.
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Okay, to bed at 10:30pm - which was 1:30am to me, and for some reason wide awake before 6am. No matter. Got up and it was coolish (60) and cloudy, and as I went for the first long walk on my own down big steep Briggs Ave, it was actually a bit cold without my coat.
I went searching for a McDonald's or Wendy's as I was dying for an egg mcmuffin type thing, and Siri could not find one in the immediate vicinity, so after walking several blocks the wrong way, I turned around on Foothills Ave and found a Starbucks and a grocery store.
Chris works from home part of the time, and at 10am knocked on my door inquiring about breakfast, so we headed off to his old rental house down this really cute, private cul de sac at the hidden back end of a street about 10 blocks from here, only to pick up his tall, goodlooking, blue eyed, long blonde haired, reddish-bearded, ie perfect, actor friend, Curtis. Some weeks back, Chris, in response to me asking him to arrange a meeting for me with Ewan McGregor, or a suitable blonde alternative, said he only knew one actor, and sent me Curtis' picture asking if he would do. I guess I assumed it was a joke, but here we were picking the guy up.
So the three of us went to a local haunt, Magpie's Grill, and it was like the most LA breakfast you could imagine, hearing about the inside of the acting/production world, which this guy has been involved in since the 90's, stuff like that communities' opinions of working under people like Ridley Scott and James Cameron (total control freak assholes) vs Clint Eastwood (totally leaves you alone to do your own thing), what you get out of acting itself, coming to LA from Oklahoma and doing commercials and stuff.
Interestingly, Curtis said that a casting agent recently took him aside and strongly suggested that he not shave or cut his hair, because short haired beardless actors are a dime a dozen, and he has a certain look that can be more easily marketed, and in fact, he's had much more acting work since taking her advice. If all men took this same advice, the world would freaking be a better place.
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After dropping Curtis back off at his place, who, for the record, is married, to a fellow actor and school teacher, Chris and I headed off for Glendale and downtown LA. First we stopped at a comic book store featuring the nicest, sweetest owner guy, who knew all of his customers by first name and greeted them as such when they walked in. This guy was just like, super content, seeming, at his lot in life, and it was so cool. How often do you meet people like that? Anyway, while in the store I semi-jokingly asked Chris if there were any gay comics.
Me: So, is there such a thing as gay comic books?
Chris, shrugging, disinterested: Ya, probably.
Me: I mean, like, with hot, gay content, and stuff. No lesbians.
Chris then promptly turned and asked the owner guy, much to my embarrassment, because I was sort of kidding, even though I was sort of serious, who proceeded to earnestly scratch his chin and search around for me, and in fact came up with two hardbound books, one, in color, about a Guantanamo prisoner who falls in love with his prison guard ...
It's kind of sweet, no? And another comic that was in black and white and had too many words for my liking, so I bought the former. Hoo hoo, this will be fun!
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Following our comic store visit, we hit amazing 300 acre Forest Lawn cemetery, where allegedly Lucy Ball was buried, but we were informed that she'd actually been moved "back east at some point". Check out the staggering list of people who are buried here: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Pickford, Merle Oberon, Gracie Allen and George Burns, some of the Andrews sisters and Marx Brothers, Joan Blondell, Clara Bow, Stan Laurel, Lon Chaney, George Cukor, Errol Flynn, Walt Disney, WC Fields, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, David O Selznick, Red Skelton, Michael Jackson, and Elizabeth Taylor. I mean, seriously, is that a mind blowing list, or WHAT?? Mind you, except for stumbling upon Stan Laurel's grave (see below), we didn't find out about any of this until we got back home and looked it up. I guess I'd heard of the place, but had no idea it was this big an old Hollywood deal, I mean, Clara Bow? Also, the cemetary discourages celebrity seekers and the map they provide at the very big, tall, wrought iron gate only shows you the various sections, such as the Garden of Everlasting Peace. They don't tell you that's where Spencer Tracy is.
Oddly (imo), the place contained, at first to my disappointment, no actual headstones. All graves were iron plaques in the grass.
We pulled in and parked at a pretty brick church, which it turns out is a replica, of all things, for fucking Old North Church in Boston - I mean, seriously, what are the odds? - and walked into the what look like fields of grass, and it was breezy and sunny. We were apparently in the Armenian wing of the place, because name after name were in what to me seemed indeciperable Greek lettering, but turned out Armenian. Then there was this amazing, absolutely massive concrete horizontal structure off in the distance, entitled Birth of Liberty ...
That's Chris, in front of the damned thing to give it perspective. If turned on it's side I swear it would approach 15 storeys. At first you think it's a colorful painting depicting various images from American history. The shock is that it turns out to be a fucking mosaic. Literally what had to be millions of tiny chips intricately pieced together. Unimaginable, the amount of genuinely painstaking work and patience that had to have taken. Total rush.
So no Lucy, but as noted, here is Stan Laurel's grave.
At one point, some of the graves began to have not just names, but images of the deceased person embedded in the iron (what a job that would be) and one woman's images were a tad on the surreal and semi-disturbing side ...
... I mean, jesus. Chris, with that clear-the-room cackle of his, began pointing and belly-laughing, and there I am shushing him and pleading with him to shut the fuck up ... only to burst out laughing when I saw the thing myself ... the two of us doubled over in spastic fits in the middle of a placid field of graves, all in plain view of a nearby trio of Forest Lawn landscape workers as well as an elderly couple respectfully planting flowers. Way to offend the locals!
Oh, speaking of which, neglected to mention that the very first thing we did is walk into the Old North Church building, because the front door was open and there was singing and it was really beautiful, and I'm literally reaching into my purse for my Iphone to begin snapping dozens of photos of the interior when Chris stops dead.
Chris: Wait. Isn't that a casket?
Me: Huh?
Chris: Holy creeping shit. This is a funeral.
Sure enough, as I looked in horror, there is an open fucking casket up by the alter. We'd stumbled our stupid tourist asses right smack dab into the middle of a viewing. But how were we to know? There was only about three people there, and no sign outside announcing anything. Damn.
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Next was the long, long, long, what felt like 2 hour journey, because Chris refused to let me check a map or run the navigation system, (and btw this is how Chris drives ...
... a tender one-handed touching of the wheel, vs a gripping of it.)
So we drove into downtown LA, through literally: Koreatown, Little Bangladesh, Filipinotown, and Chinatown - talk about freaking diversity. One of these neighborhoods contained a garment/textile district because suddenly it was block after block of dozens of five foot high spools of colorful material gathered row upon row on the sidewalks, like something you'd expect to see in a market square in Guatemala.
Finally we made it to amazing Union Station, where, I was informed by a certain film fanatic, the opening sequence to Bladerunner was filmed ...
This was such a cool, cool, total Maltese Falcon 30's place. You don't generally equate LA with trains, and yet here the thing has stood all this time. It was interesting to read that when it was built, 50 buildings in what was then Chinatown had to be razed, the place is so massive. Also, this area of the city is the oldest part of Los Angeles.
Stupidly, I at one point attempted inside the station to inquire of a scary looking cop guy in an actual flak jacket if his super, super lovely black lab was friendly (and hence, open to being petted), and was told that they try never to let them be friendly, or something like that. The bastard. I mean, this dog was so ridiculously sweet and docile looking he just screamed for cuddling, and here they've trained him away from such things. Horrid pricks.
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So after we stolled down nearby Olvera Street, a bricked over street which is filled with Mexican cafes and products and doo dads and the like ...
Had some din ...
... then headed back home, but not before trying out the scary, twisty San Gabriel mountain roads. I was driving by this time because Chris had had two frozen Margaritas, and I was too pooped and slightly freaked to handle the edge-of-the-cliff driving.
On my way to finding a safe turn around spot, there, on the side of the road, were two bicyclists; one, a guy, dressed in normal biking gear and helmet, and one a completely naked, helmeted woman.
Me: What the ... what the fuck was that??
Chris: Holy shit.
Sure enough, when we turned around and drove by them again, the chick was indeed absolutely and totally buck, stark, raving fucking nude, in public, in full view of anyone driving by, seeing as there really was barely any shoulder and therefore nowhere to hide. She was standing by her bike and helping her companion with his backpack like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Ahh, California. It was all there. Nudity, mountain biking, helmets.
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