LA stuff, part deux

In the mornings there is usually a big loud struggle to get my brother up and moving. Four out of five times my brother does not actually make it to school (is that an exaggeration, you ask? I assure you it isn't). So that's the reason I'm awake in the seven o'clock hour, which is a vile, vile hour. I am the opposite of jazzed about it. In other words I am zzajed.

It was annoying me that I had a "part I" for my LA pictures, so here are the rest. I realized it's not much in fact, just some shots of Venice Beach and Angels Knoll, featured in the movie 500 Days of Summer. It's where they play the Penis(!) game and where that iconic bench overlooking downtown LA is.

It was a beautiful day, a beautiful beach, and of course I laughed unapologetically thinking of the tremendous snowfall back home.

Hmm. There is something almost ...annoyingly too perfect about pictures of the beach, you know? It's like you can never really take a bad shot. Or maybe that's just LA. To wit, this statue in Glendale:

Ew, I say.

So Angels Knoll--

Why these people wanted a picture of the front of the bench is beyond me.

Right, but as you can see it's all just as it appears in the film. So I thought this was pretty cool shiyat.

Zoomin' in on the hotel Tom Hansen talks about.

I had my camera with me when I went on a double decker bus tour of Hollywood, Beverly Hills and such but, L oh L, it was the morning and I was utterly exhausted (slash hung over--aren't 23-year-old cousins the best influence?) and did not have it in me to play tourist. I was all oh sweet Jesus, what am I doing on this bus?

But you know what, I don't think it matters that I haven't any pictures for posterity. Because I think Hollywood is a sad place. Sure, there are your success stories. One "noteworthy" location on the bus tour was the Pollo Loco where a not-yet-discovered Brad Pitt was working, dressed as a chicken. But then you'd hear other fun facts like "this is the hotel where so-and-so overdosed and died." Hollywood reeks of desperation and failure... the foolish quest to be "make it", to be an icon, to be immortal. And it just made me laugh, driving through the rich, hoity-toity shopping parts of LA, to hear that "celebrities are often seen here! They love to come here!" because it's not like I did see any celebrities. Hearing them talk about it like that, I might as well have been on a tour of a ghost town. You can talk my ear off about the rich and famous, but when I look out that window all I see is a wandering homeless person.

The one time I saw an actor was in 2007, in some hip store in Little Tokyo. (aside: my cousin's friend, who brought us to Little Tokyo/downtown LA, called it hipster central and went on about the gentrification of the place, and I loved him for it. Isn't it fascinating though, you start out with some rundown undesirable area, then the poor students and artsy young people come--it becomes bohemian paradise--and that is the beginning of the end. Then it's the nice middle-class families...) Anyway, I saw a pre-Sulu John Cho, aka Harold of Harold and Kumar. In the store I just kept pacing around suspiciously, sneaking glances at him, since I was such a fan of the stupid/awesome film. And this was even before the sequel came out.

Well, to conclude, what I learned from this trip was that LA is most certainly not for me. It is just a totally different world over there.

LA stuff I did, part I

I am nocturnal. I don't like it, but it's not something that you can easily break out of when you have no obligations in life. No class, no work. Essentially I'm on winter break until ~March 25 when I leave for Japan. All things considered though, I don't feel that unproductive. I have been keeping myself busy in a few moderately impressive ways (more on that later). For that I give myself a pat on the back since more often than not, if facing an extended stay at home, I will spend days on end in a bath robe and ugg boots, sipping wine coolers and marathoning shows like Lie to Me, or 30 Rock. Don't judge me.

Anyway, I figure I should put my nocturnal energy to good satisfactory use and get some kind of LA post up in this business while I still have the tiniest desire to do so. Well, good thing I didn't take too many pictures?

Pretty sunset @ JFK just because... it's pretty

First time flying Virgin America (I think I've mostly taken US Airways), so it was good fun to find the cabin unnecessarily similar to the inside of a Tokyo nightclub. Especially traveling with my 81-year-old grandparents. I felt so hip.

If you are visiting LA you must visit the Griffith Observatory, overlooking da city. It is free and not disappointing, unlike visiting Hollywood only to realize that it is a friggin shady place, i.e. if Charlie Sheen were a location. This was taken on the walk to the observatory.

Thar's the place

oblig. Hollywood sign pic (this is the closest I've been to it)

(I took a bunch of pictures of the city. Unfortunately I am in a lot of them, thus ruining them.) That quaint little clearing of tall buildings is their downtown, oft used for filming "New York" scenes, since their downtown ordinarily passes for a (creepily devoid of people) NYC.

 
Good stuff, blah blah blah. Before I end this post, how about some things that I ATE (in this case I definitely disappointed myself by not taking more pictures).

1.For the sake of getting out of the apartment, the cousin and I went to some mall, the Glendale Galleria. I perused zero shops, as I was feeling rather uninspired to try on dresses with my male cousin in tow, but the outing was a victory in that I got to try this Korean dish bibimbap for the first time. It makes me sad, but my experience with Korean food is shockingly, inexcusably limited.

Bibimbap jams everything that could be separated into one superdish of meat, vegetables, some pickled things? I think they were pickled, is that seaweed on the top there?--on top of a salad (health!), on top of white rice. And there was spicy sauce on the side. Look, I'm not really sure what I ate, and I'm not a food critic, but it was delicious. Nothing has ever felt so right.

2. Go to a Big Mama's and Papa's Pizzeria and order the 60 slice pie. I DARE YOU.

3. The Farmers Market by The Grove has this Brazilian barbecue (churrasco) place. Another learning experience, and what I learned was that I have never tasted meat so heavenly. I am now depressingly hungry, by the way.

back in NJ, raving about my laptop

Picture aken at Venice Beach. I only half meant it --------->

So I am back in New Jersey, the astonishing reality being that I am actually glad to be back in New Jersey, after what was a minor hiccup in my return (flight cancellation thanks to the sweet winter stormage going on). My little psuedo vacation time/purgatory in LA had serious ups and downs, to be sure, and I'll get around to talking about that for my 2 loyal subscribers, ahahah.

I mean, mostly I'm glad to be back for two highly important reasons, the first being sleeping in actual bed, not a couch, sweet Jesus, and the second, because I am reunited with my dear sweet baby Toshi, i.e. my dearly missed, not-cleverly nicknamed Toshiba laptop. Like really, my baby. When I pulled it out of the box for the first time, there was a tender embrace, and a quiet understanding between us that we'd be traveling the world together.

Ordinarily I'm not gung-ho about new technological things. Because if something is perfectly functioning I just don't see a need to replace it, plus I am extremely picky about what I want. If I'm getting something new, it has to be perfect. I mean, I was the proud owner of an iPod mini years past the point of it being socially acceptable to still have a mini. And let's not get started on the cell phone I've had for the past two and a half years; it only rarely makes any noise and it is very apparent that a piece of it broke off and was lost forever (despite my genius method of taping it back on). So when I finally am psychologically prepared to buy new technological stuff I get really intense and focused about it, going to cnet.com for reviews first and foremost, and then finding peripheral sources.

I was pretty jazzed about finding Toshi. Its battery lasts something like 6 hours, plus it makes my previous laptop, which was already 14'', look like a behemoth. Toshi's screen is just a skosh smaller (13.3), but it's so much more slender and lightweight, at less than 3 pounds. Which is awesome, because I can just move it here and there, one-handed if I desire, effortlessly. So not only is Toshi kind of adorable, it's all sleek and black, which makes you take it seriously... refined but dangerous, like James Bond drinking a martini.

I sound insane right now but I like it. Anyway, I got Toshi a couple months ago, the interesting bit is that after a couple weeks there was a a hilarious but stupid incident involving salad dressing, and I had to send Toshi away to be fixed... aheh... But that's why I pay extra for insurance from Best Buy! To help prevent further damage to my child, I bought this Built laptop sleeve for $20 off of amazon. If there's one thing I love, it's bold, punchy bursts of color, like so.

This post has actually nothing to do with LA, does it.

this is LA

My mom asked me how long I wanted to spend in LA; "like, a week?" she asked. Probably what happened next was I said "sure, sure" as I resumed my own marathon of watching season 3 of The Big Bang Theory. I hadn't put much thought into coming here, or packing here, since why on earth would I leave without my laptop. What was I thinking.

I should have known better. Because, this being my third time here, my schedule is not jam-packed with sightseeing. Like yeah, walk of fame, I've seen you and you're completely uninteresting. And if I went on a bus tour of celebrities homes, I'd probably throw up in my mouth (I tend to strongly dislike celebrities as a whole. I can like them on an individual level, but round them all together on the red carpet or at any awards show, and my eyes start bleeding because it's all artifice and a giant sense of entitlement. How does it feel to have your hair, makeup and wardrobe cost more than a college education, I've always wondered). Anyway, the other issue is that I lack the transportation to get anywhere, and this is a week like any other, after all, so my aunt is working until the evening. So here I am. In this apartment. Hanging out. Well, the truth is, maybe if I were more intrepid I would take some initiative, buy a day pass for public transit and go places. But talk about a challenge. To get around via bus routes is to be a local, I swear, because it is massively confusing. That's why, as extremely easy it was to use the U- and S-bahn in Germany, I steered clear of buses almost entirely.

This is not the glamorous side of LA. This isn't Rodeo Drive or Beverly Hills, but the multi-ethnic beating heart of the city. My aunt, uncle and grandparents live in a small apartment (by the way, thank God it's not summer so I don't see as much of my friend la cucaracha) and I'm 99% sure everyone else in this complex is Mexican. Mexicans and Filipinos... Jaysus Mary and Joseph (or the Filipino variation: 'sus Maria) how packed must the Catholic churches be on sunday morning. Actually that is a spectacle I totally want to see--I should go. Anyway, I'm sure LA has a whole lot more to offer if your family isn't, more or less, broke.

But my 23-year-old cousin from the Philippines floats around from my aunt's place, his mom's, and his friends', and he's been trying to keep me company. So far I've seen the Griffith Observatory (pictures to follow), which gives you a spectacular view of the city, and a good view of the Hollywood sign as well (the fact that that sign is famous cracks me up, because it's just giant letters spelling out where you are. We don't need a real landmark, thi s is Hollywood, bitches). And we walked around some shopping area... Glendale Galleria? Americana? Watched True Grit. Not too bad a film, although, I don't know if it was just me but was the ending was a little anticlimactic?

And last night I watched the cousin's basketball game, feeling slightly out of place in the company of Filipinos, and not knowing the half of what they were saying. Yes, Filipinos playing basketball is kind of as funny as it sounds, in light of the fact that we're possibly the shortest people in the world. I mean, maybe we're fighting the Guatemalans for the title, but still we're top contenders. I just kept thinking of how Filipino basketball might be shown on ESPN 8 "The Ocho" along with other novelty psuedo-sports like midget-tossing. Oh God, am I allowed to say things like that?

The lighting in this apartment is killing me. I'm going to go out for a walk now, to see what I can see. Doesn't matter if I find anything when the weather's this nice, and back home everyone's complaining about schlepping to class in the snow.

la vie L.A. (swears will now put end to posts titled 'la vie __')

I theorize that the universe does not want me to pack in advance for trips. Or be well-rested for plane travel. At any rate, neither of these things have ever happened to me once, so you can't say the theory's unfounded.
Hmm, it's four. Really, I'm not to blame for this one. The fam was over at my cousins', where the grandpuhpah and grandmumah have been staying. Mum was packing their bags for them, which took until three. And all I could do was sit on the couch, unable to take a nap, instead watching Definitely, Maybe.

Which, I don't know if it was the tiredness or what, but it wasn't as bad watching it for the second time. Not that it's a total crap film or anything, but if my memory serves me, I thought it was kind of a downer most of the way through. The dude just makes a lot of poor choices with women (applicable to the real R.R. possibly. Was he actually married to Scarlet Johansson or was that some kind of weird joke played on him/everyone?), and it's just aggravating to watch. Like, stop getting ready to propose to the wrong ladays and go for the cynical but sweet redhead played by the wife of Borat. You can't go wrong with that.

I have a relevant last minute packing account but I’m actually too tired to tell it right. In short though it’s me partying til dawn in Berlin (at the first place in Berlin the group had all gone to, overlooking the water. Sehr nostalgic), being advised by Hady the Berliner not to go to sleep at all lest I miss my flight, passing out, not waking up to the alarm I (possibly) set, panicking, and throwing—just plain throwing—everything I possessed into my suitcases like a madwoman, so that I could make my flight to London. What’s worse, when I was leaving Berlin again, this time for New Jersey, I did more or less the exact same thing. I was up all hours navigating back to a youth hostel, quite possibly ready to fall asleep at any moment. Although, silver lining, you can meet the nicest trilingual Spanish boys at shady S-Bahn stations at four in the morning. Pretty sure though that my hostel roommates were ticked off (they were.....hostile! Pfft!) (I'm sorry) at my traipsing into the room so late and then bailing out, noisily, a few hours later. LUCKILY this time, the alarm did wake me. No small miracle since the stupid-crap-German-brick-phone could set only one alarm at a time, and there was no snooze option. I always had ONE SHOT TO WAKE UP (which is actually why I’ll never really know what happened on the side-trip to Potsdam that first week in Berlin). So yeah, the door slammed outrageously loud as I was leaving. My eyes widened and I sped down the hallway fearing the West German secret police would arrest me for indefensible loudness, or UNENTSCHULTBARE LAUTSTÄRKE.

But hey, things all worked out juuust fine. More than fine! But oh frack. I need to go to bed now.