California? Yes!
Wow, how time flies. It seems that just yesterday the spring semester of school had ended. But alas, that was nearly two months ago! In that time I have managed to work more, lose a friend, and go to Los Angeles. I must admit that the latter of the three has been the most exciting. Wait, did I say exciting? That really isn’t an adjective that should be used to describe anything that pertains to me. Anyone who really knows me knows that I am rather boring… so this trip to L.A. wasn’t too eventful but was just right in my humble, little, anti-social way. I think I will describe the entire trip in mind-numbing detail.
The trip started out with me being a huge baby-head about flying. Of course, Hannah took this as an opportunity to make fun of me… singing classic songs by Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline. How nice of her, right? No. Both of those musicians died in plane crashes. Hannah is such a slut. I had only flown once in my life, and technically, this trip to L.A. was nothing compared to that so I really had nothing to worry about. Even so, I pulled out a Jesus coloring book given to me by Hannah’s mom and calmed my nerves by coloring a picture of Noah falling off his ark. Poor guy fell into some nasty, bug infested, green water. I’m glad he survived to help all those animals mate. We (Hannah, Lauren, and I) arrived to L.A. around 4pm on Saturday, May 19th. We were escorted to the Budget rental place and hopped into our incredibly awesome Pontiac Vibe. Now this car was no Cady or Rolls Royce but it was definitely better than the Hyundai Accent that I was told we would be given. Thus began our adventure on the insane, twisting, suicide journey known as the California freeways. I had printed out tons of mapquest directions before-hand, so we made it to our hotel just fine. And speaking of hotel… I must admit that this was an insanely nice hotel, and thanks to Hannah’s uncle, we got 4 nights for FREE (excluding the cost of parking the car, of course) which saved us about $1000 or so. This place was so fancy that I didn’t quite know how to act. Valet parking, concierge service, impressive architecture, house-keeping… I knew nothing better than to act my normal, trashy, Missourian self. That’s right. No tips from this cheap bastard! We decided to spend the night checking out the shops and restaurants inside the hotel and the downtown area surrounding the hotel.
Sunday proved to be a half-way interesting day. We woke up bright and early and walked a few blocks to the LAMOCA (Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art). To put it simply, this place was ridiculous. Stacks of paper on the floor. Tubes of lipstick standing on end. Oh, oh! My favorite was the wire hanging on a blank wall! I understood the artist’s intentions… he was telling us that society has been pulled and pushed to its limit and is hanging in anticipation, waiting for suicide bombers to destroy all our public parks and steal our babies. I saw that clearly in the single wire dangling there. Eh. Lauren enjoyed the place so I guess it wasn’t a total waste. After being bored to an unearthly extent, we went back to the hotel, grabbed the car, and headed out to the Santa Monica pier. This was really my favorite part of the entire trip. It was fun to see all the shops, tourists forking out way too much money to have Mexicans carve their faces in a lump of clay, the beach, and of course all the homeless people trying to make a few bucks. One man in particular put on an impressive performance. He was standing near the edge of the pier, fully clothed on a brightly sun-shining day, with all his belongings piled beside him. He had a quite dated boombox sitting on a chair blasting popular rap songs from the early 90’s. He was hunched over holding an old marionette, bouncing it up and down to the offbeats of the music… just as serious as could be. Poor guy was working his talent and not many people were giving him their money! Oh and I can’t forget about the incredible woman singing classic tunes such as “Over the Rainbow” while stopping passersby to ask silly tourist questions. She was a bad mix of a lounge act and a cheesy Vegas performer. She was working it like a champ. We hung out there for a bit and then headed off to the Third Street Promenade. This is an entire street, about 3 blocks, full of stores and various kiosk type booths sitting on the sidewalks. There were people in the middle of the street singing, dancing, and doing various performances. There was even an organ grinder monkey doing his little ditty! We began getting bored driving around on Ocean Ave. so we headed back to the hotel. We decided on IHOP for dinner but couldn’t find our way there. We had seen it the night before when we were wandering around but had forgotten exactly how to get there again. Luckily, a homeless man gave us directions. I was totally going to rip him off and just walk away with the newly obtained knowledge of the location of IHOP, but Lauren felt it necessary to give him a few bucks for his help. Pffft. We made a neat sculpture out of trash. I wanted to sell it to the contemporary art museum.
The next day was the trek to Hollywood. We were cruising down Sunset Boulevard, passing by Beverly Hills, Bel-Air (where is the fresh prince, I asked), and UCLA. We stopped in and walked around the school’s maze-like campus a bit just to say we had done so. This was Hannah’s day to drive so I was sitting in the back seat taking in the sites. Just as we were getting into Hollywood I got a phonecall from my mom. We were chatting a bit until I saw a big ol’ poster advertising Marilyn Manson’s new CD plastered on the side of a building. “HOLY FUCK,” I yelled as I pointed and shouted for Hannah and Lauren to check it out. I got a picture with the poster, of course, but not until after my mom became confused of the commotion and listening to the dirty language. We saw the great sites such as the Whiskey, Mann’s Chinese Theater, and the Virgin Record store. We drove around for about 30 minutes looking for a place to park but had to end up parking at the In-N-Out Burger parking lot where there was a 30 minute parking minimum with a tow warning. We didn’t want to risk getting our super awesome rental car towed away, so we rushed around about 3 blocks of Hollywood Blvd. We saw the stars, the Hollywood sign, the handprints at the Chinese theater, and a very impressive Elvis impersonator that wanted to feel Hannah’s boobies after asking if she was my wife, girlfriend, or sister. After our 30 minute limit was up, we ate at the In-N-Out Burger joint that we had parked at. Now, this place is quite known for having amazing hamburgers – and that it did! It took about 15 to 20 minutes to get our food but it was quite worth it in the end. We hopped into the Cali-mobile and drove around a bit until we came upon a gift from God. Amoeba Music. Hannah and I had desperately hoped to find this store seeing as we are obsessed with music. I walked into this store and was completely awe-stricken after I had a dry orgasm. It’s a two-level building taking up about 1/4th of the block it was situated on and had vinyl records, CDs, and DVDS. I only walked out of there with vinyls of Pink Floyd’s “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” “A Saucerful of Secrets,” and a Sex Pistols demo album. I could have spent the entire day scouring that store from top to bottom. I wanted to spend the day being a stalker and trying to find Marilyn Manson’s house, but eh, Amoeba Music was good enough.
Tuesday was the day of the Price is Right filming. What a numbing experience that was. We arrived to the CBS studios around 5am and got in the very lengthy line of die-hard Bob Barker fans. We were in line next to a couple who lived in the area but were originally from Iowa and had been to Kansas City numerous times for concerts. They seemed fairly normal compared to the rest of the loonies who camped out in line just to see a lame game show. After waiting for about an hour, we were given numbers and told to come back at 7am. We walked around, got some coffee, then came back and were allowed into the gated area outside of the studio. There we waited another hour and were then told to get in order of the numbers we were given. After doing so we were given ANOTHER number and told to come back at 10am. We wasted time in an extremely fancy shopping area that had workers all over the place cleaning doors, signs, benches, painting, blah blah blah. Everything was closed so all we could do was look. We came back at 10 and waited around for nearly five hours. I was about ready to hurt someone unless they started letting us into the studio. Finally, they brought all 400 people to the side of the building to be interviewed for the possibility of being a contestant on the show and we were finally let into the actual studio. Filming promptly began and a good time was had as we watched orange Bob strut his pimp-ness on stage. Now was it worth waiting nearly 10 hours for? No, but it was a cool thing to experience just before Bob’s retirement.
Wednesday was our last day. We slept in until it was time to head to the airport. We felt bad for leaving no tips for the valet drivers and concierge, so we left some cash money for the nice little house keepers. With that hefty tip included, we only had to spend about $300 each for the entire trip. Not bad, eh? After some close calls and yelling on the psychotic highway, we made it to the airport and got home safe and sound. A fairly uneventful trip for three 20-something year olds but hey, I had a blast and that’s all that matters… I was even on TV too!
