Saturday, September 8, 2007

I Still Love L.A.

When we last left our world travelers, their host was drinking beer from an empty miniature Snickers bag.

I have to say, that is the best set up to a blog entry ever.

Our little band of drunken people were now in route to a local bar, just up the street from Mita's house. I took some pictures of the cool houses in he neighborhood.




During our sloshy little caravan, we pasted something so cute, that I risked being arrested as a creepy child predator to get a picture.



I asked her what she called the rabbit and she said "dinner". Just kidding, she didn't speak English.

There was some really fantastic graffiti by the bar.



Question:
This is a group of...

Answers:
A. College Kids.
B. Drunks.
C. Homeless People.
D. The people I was hanging out with.



The bar we went to used to be a bowling alley. It had a big tarp in front of the lanes, here's what was behind the tarp.



We walked in at 5pm and there was a live band playing terrible rock music. The bar had carpet on the ground and it was full of either college age kids or 60 year old people. I felt like I stepped into a time machine and went back to my college days.

As you can see we were all totally having fun.




Next on the agenda was a visit to the L.A. Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. After grabbing a taco at a mobile taco stand, we made our way to the theater. My friend and improv buddy Vanessa, who now lives in the O.C., met us there for the show.

The show we saw was ASSSSSCAT. It's a crazy improv show featuring the best improvisers in town. It's always hosted by at least one of the original four members of the UCB. Since the three guys from UCB now live in L.A., they all hosted. Here's a blurry snapshot of Matt Besser, Matt Welch, and Ian Robberts. Some of the guest improvisers were Owen Burke, Billy Merret, Brian Husky and Chad Carter. It was a ton of fun.



Afterward we grabbed a drink at a crowded bar next door. About 30 minutes later Vanessa and Mita's friends decided to call it a night. Ryan insisted on taking us to this tiki bar called Tiki Ti. It was small and pretty crowded, but it was fun.



This was our last stop of the night. We made our way back to Mita's and decided to just stay the night there. Mita had this air mattress that was unbelievably comfortable, also if there was a flood we would have been safe.

The next morning we all went to this place called Auntie M's for some breakfast. We had to pay for this one, but it was worth it. The food was so good. I had "shit on a shingle", which was toast with gravy slathered all over it. This gravy was like greasy brown liquid orgasm. Oh my God was it tasty. I could eat a bowl of it everyday if I didn't care about whether my heart kept pumping.

On the way back to the car we noticed this.



Next stop was Ryan's apartment. Holy shit was his place great. It was freaking enormous. I didn't want to ask how much he was paying. I swear to God each of his rooms was double the size of each of each our rooms. I was drooling at the space.



Nancy was thinking about divorcing me and marrying Ryan.



Instead of a peep hole in his front door, Ryan had this.



The concept of a door in a door scared me, because that's exactly the sort of thing that opens portals to other worlds.

At some point that morning Ryan started singing "She's like the Wind" by Patrick Swayze. Thus began the "Dirty Dancing" theme that followed us around for the rest of the day. At Ryan's place he found Dirty Dancing on his cable box and watched the first thirty minutes. I had never seen it, and I realize now why. It was gawd-awful. I did notice that the same way I can quote Anchorman or Raising Arizona, Nancy could quote this movie. I've never seen a chic do the whole, "Movie Quoting" thing before. I always thought that was a total dude thing. Turns out they just hide this awful habit better than us.

We past a flea market that Ryan called the Rock'n'Roll flea market for some reason and decided to check it out.



You ladies likah my fabrics?



This dapper little boy kept staring at us.



Best flea market jazz band ever!



I hadn't created any paradox's lately, so I took a pictures of pictures. Up yours MC Escher.



Next on the docket was a quick stop in Middle Earth.



Since New York has yet to figure out how to make good Mexican food, I demanded that our hosts take us to the best Mexican Restaurant in town. On the way Ryan took us by "The House of Davids". It's this crazy dudes house that has tons of David statues on his front lawn. I was hoping they were David Hasselhoff statues, but they weren't.




Then we stop off at The Walt Disney Concert Hall. It was designed by Frank Gehry and was super freaky.





We were all starving at this point, but Ryan insisted on taking us by this crazy cafeteria downtown. Clifton's Cafeteria has been there for years and has an interesting history, none of which I can remember.



We bought some side dishes to hold us over and checked out the nutty Cafeteria's decor. The first and second floors are decorated like a forest. Ryan took us upstairs to this weird hidden tiny room called the chapel. You sit in it and press a button and this recorded message talks about relaxing and God and stuff.




The third floor was closed off, but we went up to look around anyway. There was newspaper clippings, pictures of the Clifton's family and little history write ups framed all over the walls. All I know for sure was, this room had the exact same wallpaper as my website.



We hopped in the car and drove to the Mexican Restaurant. It was very good. I had a flaming Margarita. Unfortunately I burned off my eyebrows.




We dropped Mita off at her place and the three of us headed back out to the Channel 101 screening. I was excited because I wanted to meet Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab. They are the guys who created Channel 101 and wrote the pilot for Heat Vision and Jack. I had reservations for the second screening at 9:30. We watched the pilots and voted for our favorites. Then it was time for me to get up enough nerve to talk to Dan. Unfortunately Rob had already taken off. I finally walked up and introduced myself to Dan. It was cool to talk to him for a second about stuff, I honestly don't remember what we talked about.

Everyone was tired so we went to Ryans place and crashed.

Only one more vacation blog to go kids. Whew, this is turning out to be a lot more work than I ever wanted it to be. Please leave me some comments if you like the blogs, I opened it up so anyone can comment, yes even you Satan.

1 comment:

tom said...

I wanna hear more about this L.A. peephole.