The boys are going surfing and I am going to have a beach run. In
We accidentally stumble upon a live recording of Depeche Mode in a car park, and are gingerly affected by most everything we come across throughout the day. The palpable excitement has quite a lot to do with the fact that we are going to
And that is our introduction to LA! We shall continue our LA adventure after a Mexican jaunt...S
After wasting about an hour in massage chairs at a shopping centre that we had no intention of buying, we head to
We meet friends for dinner at Koi. Coy is not in the vernacular of an LA resident, it is however a hot spot for eating! It is a gorgeous Japanese restaurant across the road from Nobu, but this does not mean it is any less deserving than it solder more established neighbour. The food melts in your mouth and the cocktails are delicious. A few too many water features has m going to the toilet more than I would like to.
Our friends are the hottest gay couple in the world! I still can’t decide who is more fabulous, however the line at the end of the night seals the answer to my thought once and for all ‘I don’t do bills’. And the Sam Award goes to… This is a regular occurrence in my world, the judging of and deciding on various awards, hence the Sam awards. These vary from the Shortest Dress Award, Best Joke Award right through to the Most Over rated Literary Classic Award (in case you are curious, the latter award goes to Wuthering Heights, the predecessor to Mills & Boon, the former awards vary on a nightly basis). I have also been known to be the recipient of my own award, nb. this is much more likely to be for shortest dress than best joke...S
We start the day with some Hugh Jackman viewing as he makes his mark at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. He is introduced by Jay Leno, this time we have clearer photos to prove it. Hugh recognises his fellow Aussies in the audience and allows us to make some noise.
We follow up with lunch at Urth Café for yummy organic goodness! To taunt my inner hippy we get a parking fine when we are literally 1 minute over our allocated time – who has that many quarters at hand anyway!
The highlight of course is attending our first Lakers Game. Game Time is the only time that Dave’s Lakers singlet is permissible in public! So it ventures out with us, it is excited but also on its best behaviour.
I have formerly been known to express a desire to adjust the court or field size of many sports to appease my attention span. So it goes like this, Soccer/Football (for the English) needs to decrease the field size to encourage the scoring of more goals and hence add interest to the sport. Basketball needs bigger Courts to produce less hoops/baskets/goals (this point system is still a mystery to me) and add to the suspense. NB. You do not need to know anything about the rules of a game to establish the aforementioned opinions.
It is here at a Lakers game, in between celebrating Jack Nicholson’s birthday and wondering what Kobe Bryant and Dustin Hoffman are discussing on the bench, that I am given a crash course on the rules of Basketball. Upon reception of such rules I am inclined to retract my previous opinions on Court size, but this does not necessarily make me wrong!
Any doubt about my ability to dictate which rules the sports world should adhere to is jettisoned to the sideline as I try to line up the perfect photo of JT and Jessica Biel. A friend commented to me that it is so nice having proper celebrities in LA rather than Nikki Webster and Shane Warne. I have to admit it is true.
Result – Lakers win and we walk home covered in streamers, using them for impromptu ribbon dancing. Did I mention that I love LA...S
Our drive home (to LA not Sydney!) through the Joshua Tree National Park is breathtaking. The thermometer maxes out at 117 degrees. With scenery like this you barely even notice. I discover a hidden tracker capability that I didn’t know I possessed. If it is alive and in the desert, I will find it! If it is a cactus spine and can lodge itself into your skin, it will find me - Ouch! I guess this is some ironic form of Darwinism.
When looking for Joshua Trees at Joshua Tree National Park, don’t be alarmed if you don’t see any for half of the park, I know it sounds strange… but they only make a suspenseful appearance towards the end, then you will see more than you care to. Climbing the incredible boulder stacks on the other hand is something I would never tire of.
Note to self: Do not go against your instinct of avoiding fast food chains even when experiencing hunger pains. I figure a Subway Chicken Salad is about a safe as you can get. Vomiting all the way home, because of the reheated frozen chicken, not such a good result. Watch this space for my Subway Legal suit...S
Never was there a more fitting mode of transportation than a Hummer in the desert. Our stead serves us well! We watch the Fahrenheit soar as we progress further inland. We stop effortlessly half way to be mesmerized by the juxtaposition of desert sand, vivid flowers, thriving cacti and snow capped mountains. The terrain is other worldly. The view from the top of
So why are we on our way to the desert? It is the weekend of the Coachella Music Festival. We watch the crowd surfing 50 year old rappers from Public Enemy in awe. This is topped by the disturbing make up and stiletto heels on the ageing Cure. Dancing in a cargo box discotheque land is entertaining, particularly while watching a giant metal snake emit flames and Tesla Coils going wild. This is an unusual Festival set to the dramatic backdrop of the Californian desert. This impressive event is followed by an even stranger Comedy of Errors on our return to the Motel.
Three rooms down from us a middle aged nude man is locked out of his room being interviewed by Police, we pass on by only to find that the latch on our door is caught and we are locked out. We spend an hour trying to break into our own room with the Police looking on. Eventually we are given the room next door to sleep in, all e have to wear are our sandy, sweaty festival clothes. We are woken first thing in the morning by profanity uttering, clumsy maintenance men breaking into our original room...S
There is nothing quite like sleeping till midday then starting a road trip to the desert.
First stop Budget to switch up the convertible sans air conditioning, we might need that! We end up with a Hummer thanks to an irate customer ahead of us. The attendant wanted to make a point by being extra helpful, and we are happy to be the recipients of this. It is not exactly enviro friendly (however I would argue that flying from Sydney to LA is considerably worse for the environment than hiring a Hummer for a couple of days), but it is entirely Desert Driving and perfect for the trip!
Not content with sleeping till midday we stop at a beach on the way to Encinitas, our first stop, for another sleep on the beach. The train running through every 15 minutes though is not very conducive to this objective, and we move on.
We meet up with friends at Encinitas for Sunset drinks on the beach, which turns out to be the perfect training wheels for the new G10. Dinner is Mexican; again we are overwhelmed by the choice of Margaritas. The locals help us navigate our way through the list. After dinner we are treated to a pub band made up of Middle aged psychedelic stoners with long hair. Ahhh coastal living.
Enter the never ending, entertainment all hours spectrum of LA life. Like it or not, each invitation sounds scintillating and exciting. A night out is common place, a night in is an anomaly. But keeping up with the Pitt’s, the financially privileged, trust fund recipients, film industry elites and just plain fabulous is a costly exercise.
The House of Blues housed us tonight. A night out with too cute for words identical twin sisters from
The following are some opinions/sentiments of LA I have garnished. Well they are just from one jaded friend, but I shall cover myself against plagiarism, with my legal background I know the X Files were right ‘Trust No one’ and, from my newly acquired knowledge of Basketball, I know the benefits of applying the ‘Kobe Rule’ to get consent in writing.
Opinion 1 - I am not a huge fan of LA... I guess if you can keep your sense of humour about the place then it is OK. But, I mean, come on - my friend's gated community has its own bloody gated VIP area! When people start having VIP areas for housing developments I leave!
Opinion 2 - Have you started wearing velour track pants down to the Jamba Juice and the Coffee Bean while walking your little dog to read your screenplays yet? It is only a matter of time... but don't you just love those amazing half half frapuccinos with extra ice and low fat whip? soooo good! It really gets you focused on finishing that big screenplay you’ve been working on! Are you doing your yogalates boxing class today? God I love LA.
Elements of truth and yes I do love LA!...S
We awaken to our empty motel pool glistening in the sun, from previous trips I am well aware that it almost never rains in LA. Endless consecutive days of sun means that any wet areas on the footpath can pretty much always be attributed to dogs.
Apparently we arrived on a 'transition' day for the weather – you have got to love Americans sensationalizing everything. It has gone from sunny and brisk to sunny and warm; this is clearly a seismological and dramatic change of weather.
I glance curiously at the perhaps symbolic vacuous pool as I navigate a running route for the morning. I know that a certain stigma is attached to those who run or even walk the streets of LA, words such as ludicrous (he is not just a rapper) and clinically insane spring to mind, but I have to admit that I am one of these people. This is a drivers’ town. No one walks in LA. The cars are fabulous or hybrid, which equals fabulous for todays environmentally sound A list.
There are more emblems here than a 4th grade geography class on the States of Australia. These shining, multi tasking, moving houses serenade me as I glide along the perfectly paved, barely trodden sidewalks of LA alone.
A sidewalk juncture and chance meeting have a loud, overt American (is there any other type? You can also apply, is there any other type of Australian than a patriotic one here) complimenting me on being both fit & pretty. I didn’t dare break it to him that this would go through a much more dramatic ‘transition’ than the weather in about half an hour.
By this stage I had only been running for about 50 metres, sorry 164 feet. The leaders of the free world are yet to go metric and don’t get me started on trying to get an Australian voltage hairdryer to work in the
Despite all of its irregularities, vulgar displays of materialism and super size idiosyncrasies – I can’t help but love this place more with every minute that passes… To prove it, I don’t even mind waiting in a government building to put my Social Security Card application in today. In order to have a bank account, be a member of SAG and own a bite size puppy that I can carry in my bag – apparently this elusive card is all that I will require.
Driving in our convertible, we dropped in to Tom Cruise's place (OK we stalked the perimeter), watched the sunset from the
Later we attend a TV show taping for Carson Daly and see 'White Lies' live, unfortunately the aforementioned Carson Daly is strangely absent. We walked into the making of, and almost got cast in, Entourage the movie and we just missed Talking Heads live on Jimmy Kimmel.
Then through friends of friends we ended up at a party at Bar Marmont. In a well timed, moment of coincidence I actually knew the person having the party. The bar is gorgeous, the people are almost as ornate as the ceiling littered with butterflies, the bars are so skinny even a supermodel would have trouble navigating them, let alone regular folk.
Note that taxis are a rare phenomenon in LA with few recorded sightings...S
Our convertible awaits to be ridden off, wait for it, into the sunset, honestly, like a modern day ‘Western’. Into the West we gallop, then canter, easing into a broken trot as we try to master the myriad of freeways separating us from Hollywood, our destination on this momentous 40 hour day, courtesy of crossing the International Date Line, it is still Wednesday.
We top off the longest day ever by collapsing into the nearest gastronomical fixture, anything but plane plain food! With low expectations, El Compadre surprises and tantalizes with a complex list of margaritas we are unable to decipher. We fall into the tried and trusted, reliable, though far less forward thinking, traveler friendly phrase ‘I’ll have what they’re having’.
The portions are as big as the personalities we think we have sighted ‘Isn’t he that singer?’, ‘Wasn’t she in that movie?’, this is LA after all. The advice ‘never eat anything bigger than your head’ comes into its own when you are living amongst burgers bigger than SUV’s and burrito’s you could comfortably seat your entire family upon.
We debate the plausibility of the All American, jumbo upgrade, would you like fries with that, 20% tip and succumb to the culture. The kitsch establishment, with the non assuming quite door and bustling interior, had gently guided our feet onto terra firma and bought our stomachs to rest in this, our new home for a time,
The haze from eating to sleep is dense and I barely notice the conversion...S
Like so many ‘Ossies’ before me I have made the pilgrimage to LA.
That is not a complete statement in itself, because this mystical land, so far removed from reality and normalcy, would make even the Wizard of Oz writhe with curiosity and wonder.
This is not my first time here, but as a million ex patriots will attest, it is a hard, long and expensive trail. Wait a moment though, I am not referring to the Entertainment business, but rather the seemingly implausible, bureaucratic double sided fly paper tape involved in applying for, paying for (by the end of the process you are ready to pay with your first unborn child), receiving and validating a Visa to work in the US.
Step 1 complete, Social Security Card in the post and registered at LA Casting - I am practically a bona fide citizen in a city where there are more pet hotels than human hotels, more fast food outlets per capita than per capita and rhinoplasty is like JT on your ipod – everyone has it.
Despite all of this materialism and excess, or perhaps in the depths of my distant, inaccessible psyche because of it, there is no escaping the fact that I am here - caught up in the buzz. I am yet another one of a plethora of entomological species trying to get as close to the light as possible.
Welcome to the Sam Show...
