We don’t get a lot of visitors, so when someone comes down just to see us, we try to make it worth their while. Brent flew down from Seattle on Thursday night to spend a weekend built around seeing Radiohead on Monday, so I knew we didn’t have to do much to make the trip a success, but we did our best anyway. We got a late reservation at Mozza for dinner after he arrived, but seemed to have picked the one day that Pizzeria Mozza was out of pizza dough. We enjoyed our paninis, but it was a little bit of a downer, not being able to order pizza at a pizza place. Oh well.
I went to work on Friday and left Brent to wander around and entertain himself, meeting back up with folks from work for fish tacos, perfect as always. After work, he and Aimee and Brian and I tried out the new Blue Palms on Hollywood for their beer selection, and we were not disappointed. We had some personal attention from the owner and got some great beers to sample and to savor. They’ve got a pretty amazing selection, and I think they’ll do well.
On Saturday morning, Brent and I headed up to Pasadena to do a little hiking in the Angeles National Forest. We followed the signs we thought we were looking for, but quickly ended up somewhere else altogether. I don’t think it was the trail we intended to take (in fact, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t), but we had fun scrambling up hills, doing a little bushwhacking and backtracking, and discovering an abandoned mine shaft thanks to Scooby Doo a guitarist leaning on a rock in the middle of the woods. It was as weird as it sounds. No good adventure in Pasadena ends without a trip to Pie & Burger, so we made our way there for lunch, after walking around Colorado Blvd. a little. Our pie and burgers were great: specifically rhubarb pie (with both ice cream and homemade whipped cream, for a taste test) and a cheeseburger. Not bad, not bad at all.
We relaxed at home in the afternoon and then headed over to a colleague’s house for a barbecue. We hung out there for an hour and a half or so, chatting with friends and taking a tour of their beautiful house, and then came home to get ready to head out to see Sondre Lerche at the Troubadour. As always, he put on a great show, and I was happy to be able to introduce Brent to his music. The screaming teenage girl demographic seems to have discovered him since the last time I saw him, but the show was still enjoyable, with lots of new songs, energetic renditions of his older material, and a stunning cover of Jobim’s “The Waters of March.” I picked up his new EP but have yet to give it a listen.
On Sunday morning, we made breakfast at home and then headed to Santa Monica to get a taste of life outside Hollywood. We wandered Main Street, perused the Farmer’s Market, and walked along the beach between Santa Monica and Venice. We stopped at Father’s Office in Culver City on the way back to Hollywood and split their tasty gruyere burger - I used to be on a one burger a year trend, now I’m doing one a day… - before meeting Aimee and Brian at ArcLight for a matinee of Tropic Thunder. Our plan was to see the new Woody Allen film later that evening, but we wanted to barbecue, as well, so the movie got scratched from our to-do list and we had a relaxing evening barbecuing salmon and pineapple on the back patio.
Having passed by the miraculous-seeming Millions of Milkshakes as we walked to the Troubadour the night before, we wanted to check it out, and decided to run off the milkshake we’d be ordering later, before we ate it. Brent and I ran the 3.5 miles there in the cool evening, and we both enjoyed the pleasant temperature and quick feeling of the run. Aimee met us there with the car and the milkshake money, and we each got to pick our own flavor combination from the millions; I chose Reese’s PB Cup and Heath Bar, and it was a winner.
I went to work on Monday and Brent came for lunch again, this time for a trip to Zankou, another L.A. food must. We re-convened at five and after a brief tour of the office, we walked through Hollywood for the last event of the weekend, Radiohead’s second night at the Hollywood Bowl. The tickets I bought on the first day they were on sale, four months ago, turned out to be fifth-row center of the whole massive place, and are undoubtedly the best tickets I’ll ever have for that venue. We couldn’t get over how close we were, and it was the perfect show to have such great seats for. Radiohead were in top form, and played a lengthy, surprising, varied, and amazingly energetic set. They seemed genuinely happy to be playing, which isn’t necessarily something I associate with them. We got some rarities, a Neil Young cover, and almost all of the songs I’d wanted to hear. It was one of those endless-seeming nights, where the crowd and the band were in sync, and each new song brought more raucous cheers. I’m glad Brent could come down for it, and I think we’ll both remember it as one of the best shows we’ve ever seen. We had a twenty minute conversation about “top five shows of all time” on the walk home; it was a shoo-in on both of our lists.
Tags:Los Angeles · Music · Photos · Running
We had a really great weekend in Anchorage, with lots of good family time, fun with Scott cleaning out the basement (sounds fun, I know), a 5k race, and most importantly, a surprise dinner for my parents’ 40th anniversary that went off without a hitch.
Aimee and I arrived late Thursday night, after a delightful flight on a free first-class upgrade, and set the first part of our surprise plan in motion when we went to pick up Scott at the airport Friday afternoon. Our parents didn’t know he was coming, so his arrival helped make a second surprise seem unlikely. We went out to dinner at Mexico in Alaska on Friday night, something we hadn’t all done together in at least five years (the last time Scott and I were in Anchorage together), where we posed underneath our little 20+ year-old info sheets: our name and photo along with our favorite dish and date of first meal at the restaurant.
On Saturday, Scott and I ventured into the basement and spent a good seven hours down there going through what was essentially the physical record of our childhoods, boxes of junior high algebra work, model airplane parts, pin collections, books, newspaper clippings, Matchbox cars, magazines, geodes, empty Coke cans, and just about anything else we might have accumulated and held onto. Every time I go back I sift through and consolidate a few boxes; this time, Scott and I must have gotten rid of a dozen, which is huge progress for a family of collectors. I had to hold onto some things - boxes of books, letters, and photos - but most everything else went, either to recycling, to be sold at Title Wave, or on eBay (I’m looking at you, Magnum, P.I. scale model of T.C.’s “Island Hoppers” Vanagon). A lot of our time was spent reminiscing about whatever it was that we had found; we had to get some new batteries and fire up the Bambino again:
That evening, Aimee and I went to Orso downtown a little early, met all of my parents’ friends, and assembled them in the banquet room to surprise my parents, who arrived with Scott and the Barnetts, thinking it was going to be a dinner for the six of us. And they were certainly surprised, and happy to see many of their friends there, and we ended up having a great evening, with excellent food and a lot of good conversation and stories. We’d been planning it for a long time, ever since Aimee came up with the idea last year, and it was great to see it all come together.
We headed home tired and happy after the dinner, and got up the next morning for our 5k run downtown, on a nice, flat course with cool weather. I think it ended up being a little longer than 5k, but we all enjoyed ourselves and it was nice to get out and race for the first time in awhile. We’ll all be doing the Long Beach 5k/Half Marathon in October, which it’s time for me to start training for… It was a great trip, but I’m glad to be back in L.A., and home for at least a few weeks without any travel plans.
Tags:Alaska · Nostalgia · Photos · Running · Travel
2008 is going down as the craziest travel year in history for us, and this week is no exception: we left for London last Wednesday night, spent a day there before driving to the Cotswolds, where we spent three days, and then drove back to London. We left for L.A. the next morning and got in two nights ago; I’m posting this quick wrap-up before we head to the airport tonight for Anchorage.
I’ve posted about 300 photos of the trip, and I’ll give a blow-by blow of our schedule here. After an uneventful flight in which I watched three movies and slept, we arrived in London, took the Heathrow Express into Paddington, checked into our hotel, and wandered around. Some sights included the Barkers Building:
And the Albert Memorial:
The next morning, we headed to the Tate Modern for a great photo exhibition and some large-scale murals on the exterior walls:
We also visited the Tintin Shop, of course:
As well as the London Transport Museum:
We picked up our rental car and drove to the country house where we’d be spending the next three nights, stopping only for a flat tire on the last half-mile before the house. We met the tow-truck guy at a local pub, got the car towed to a garage, and picked it up, with its new tire, the next morning.
On Saturday, we looked around Oxford:
And enjoyed lunch at the Bear, with its massive collection of snipped-off ties on the walls and ceiling:
We had dinner for fourteen at the house - no stilettos, that’s a leather floor! - to celebrate Liam’s fortieth birthday:
The next day, Aimee and I took a driving tour of the Cotswolds, beginning with Stow-on-the-Wold:
Our next stop was Moreton-on-Marsh:
And I visited the Wellington Aviation Museum:
We stopped in Chipping Campden, where I had traveled with my family 23 years ago:
And that night, we all had dinner at the Westcote Inn:
On Monday, we returned to London, dropped off the car, and visited the Imperial War Museum:
I got a tour of the Cinema Museum that afternoon, located in the former workhouse where Charlie Chaplin lived as a child:
That evening, we walked to Buckingham Palace:
The next morning, it was back to Heathrow - Terminal Five, to be specific - for our return flight:
Four more movies, decent food, and ten and a half hours later, we were back in L.A. We got caught up on all of our TiVo’ed Olympics coverage, and tonight we’re off to Anchorage.
Tags:Film · Photos · Travel
The house is great, the company is nice, and the weekend should be memorable.
Tags:Travel
…and August will be over in a flash. We got back from a nice trip to Anchorage on Sunday night, which ended with a twenty-minute conversation with Wilco’s guitarist, Nels Cline, as we waited for our delayed flight at the (soon to be renamed?) Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. He was really nice and friendly, and we talked about the show, their trip to Alaska, other projects he’s working on, and other stuff. The week was pretty busy at work but quiet in the evenings, and we had a nice weekend of walking tours and getting together with friends before another whirlwind week of travel begins.
On Saturday morning, we knocked out three more Walking L.A. tours, in Los Feliz, Franklin Hills, and Silverlake. They were each pretty short, but each was interesting, architecturally and historically, and we had a good time getting our exercise going up and down the many staircases we encountered.
We started in Los Feliz, where we walked from Los Feliz Blvd. up to the Ennis House and around the neighborhood before returning down Vermont. Someone was in the house, a contractor or someone involved in the restoration, I hope; I wonder how that is progressing…
More photos from the walk here.
We drove a little ways down Franklin and parked near the Shakespeare Bridge and wandered through Franklin Hills, a beautiful and quiet neighborhood we’d never been to before. It was a very nice walk, and we saw, as usual, lots of fantastic houses, many of them simple and interesting modernist designs.
More from Franklin Hills here.
From there, we headed down to Sunset and into Sunset Junction, where we got a nice spot in front of Intelligentsia (but no coffee, thanks to the line), and headed on the “West Silver Lake” walk. We were doing it a little backwards, starting in the middle and heading to the end and back, but I think we covered everything. More great houses, and we got to see the Music Box Steps going down and coming back up, which we weren’t really expecting.
We ended the walk with a late breakfast at Millie’s, which was very tasty and gave us a great vantage point from with to observe Silver Lake’s native hipster population and, in some cases, their parents, who were luckily not aging hipsters.
More photos here.
I headed into the belly of the beast, the Apple Store at the Grove on a Saturday afternoon, and made the upgrade to the new iPhone. Aimee took my year-old one, so now we’re both the annoying people who let no question go unanswered. Oh well; we don’t get lost as often now, either. We saw Step Brothers that evening, thankfully for free, but it wasn’t even really worth free, so we won’t talk any more about it.
This morning, I rode up to Griffith Observatory again, a little faster this time, ending up a little more tired, but it’s good practice. Aimee and I headed over to Michael and Ali’s for brunch with Maya and the long-lost Janet and Eric, whom we hadn’t seen in more than six months. We all rejoiced in their exciting news, and enjoyed a delicious meal of frittata, french toast casserole, fruit salad (which I’m still eating, we made so much), and finally, at long last, some decent bagels made in L.A. We’ll have to get the address…
Three days of work this week, then off to London. This has been the craziest year of travel, and we’re only in early August, with four or five more trips before the end of 2008.
Tags:Alaska · Los Angeles · Music · Photos · Travel
I never thought I’d see Jeff Tweedy standing on a temporary stage in a parking lot, singing “Misunderstood” while looking wistfully off toward the Sears Mall and the BP tower, but there he was, last night, playing the band’s second ever show in Alaska. It has been raining almost continuously the whole weekend, and last night was no exception, but the rain didn’t seem to dampen people’s excitement, at least not the folks around us near the front of the stage. The band played a great show, more than two hours long, hitting most of the songs we wanted to hear. Nels whipped out an electric whisk at one point and played his guitar with it, and I got to hear John sing “It’s Just That Simple” while Jeff played bass, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
We had good parking karma, and had a late lunch at the restaurant before heading out into the parking lot to hear the Whipsaws play their opening set, followed by Wilco, who went on around 7:15. Jeff made some jokes about the weather, a few cracks at the crowd in Fairbanks the night before, who apparently had some difficulty clapping along, and also assured us that they weren’t there just to “check your state off our list.” Well, at least that wasn’t the only reason, he said.
We’ve had a nice, if a little brief, trip, and we’re heading to the airport in a few hours to get back to L.A. We’ll be back in August, with a little more time, and hopefully the rain will have stopped.
Tags:Alaska · Music · Travel
In between our trips hither and yon, we’ve been trying to make the most of our weekends, so instead of a screening on Friday night, we headed to the new-ish Father’s Office in Culver City, completely packed as usual, for dinner and drinks. We lucked out despite the free-for-all seating policy and managed to nab two seats at the bar, where we had some great beers (I had two excellent I.P.A.s, one whose label on the tap I couldn’t read but which was great, and a Green Flash, also very good) and a burger for dinner. On Saturday morning, we headed to Exposition Park near USC to check out the Rose Garden, the Natural History Museum, and the Los Angeles Coliseum. We walked past the outdoor part of the Air & Space exhibits at the California ScienCenter (yes, that seems to be the official spelling), which we didn’t stop in this time around, but will have to save for another day, and headed to the rose garden. I’m not sure the roses were fully in bloom - some looked a little ragged - and we headed on to the museum under overcast skies.
The Natural History Museum is a bit of a time capsule itself, a beautiful old building with some classic animal habitats, lots of fascinating African animals on one side and many Alaskan wonders represented in the North American wing on the other, but after that, touring the museum is an eclectic affair, with a room featuring a few decades of American history here, and a wing full of gemstones next door. Then there’s the upstairs, where you get to the bird rooms by walking through two cases of shells from the South Pacific. It was interesting, but a little strange.
We walked around the Coliseum as well, and I marveled at the thought that this was actually the setting for all of those names I knew so well when I was nine - Carl Lewis, Roger Moses, Evelyn Ashford - and enjoyed the Art Moderne stylings of the exterior.
More photos from the walk here.
After a very satisfying screening of The Dark Knight on Saturday night, Aimee and Brian and I headed to 3rd Stop for a drink - I think these two places we hit this weekend have the best beer selection in Los Angeles - and had a good time, despite the noise. And yes, we are getting old. I went for another ride up to the Observatory Sunday morning, and Aimee and I enjoyed five Harold Lloyd shorts at the Silent Movie Theater with the live piano and organ accompaniment of the remarkable Bob Mitchell, still nimble on the keys at 90 years old.
Aimee hadn’t been to see MBW’s show yet, so we went for a bit on Sunday afternoon and had a good time looking around. The artist himself was there, rolling around on a little one-leg tricycle on account of what looked like a broken foot. We looked at the catalog but everything was either sold out or out of our price range, or both.
It’s going to be a busy week this week, and we’re off to Alaska on Friday night. Trivia tomorrow ought to be interesting; we won last week, for the first time in awhile, which was great, but the most notable moment had to be when a member of another team (a very familiar team, an unfamiliar member) started yelling “Loser!” at the quizmaster, who was mispronouncing pretty much every word in every clue for this particular round, and when he came over to her to talk about it, she threw the contents of a glass of red wine at him. So, he was covered, as was another guy at the bar, and she stormed out, and shortly thereafter, the rest of the team left as well. I doubt they’ll be back, which is too bad, as they were always friendly. They did have a chip on their collective shoulder about the quizmaster, though, who doesn’t do himself any favors, and you could tell something was going to boil over sooner or later. Our new replacement quizmaster will hopefully be back this week, and we can all relax a little.
Tags:Film · Los Angeles · Photos
After a whole bunch of time out of town (did we really spend four weekends in a row in airports? Yes we did), we got back in the L.A. swing of things this weekend, with a couple of days filled with only-in-L.A. stuff. We started off the weekend with a screening of Wall*E, finally, at the El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s a beautiful theater, the house organist (Theater Organist of the Year, 2005) does a great job, and the digital projection looks great, but it’s all so far over the top that I can only go about once a year. The live stage show, really just an advertisement for Pixar and Disney films, was pretty tiresome, but all was forgotten when we got the main feature, which was, as expected, pretty breathtaking. I’ve never wanted to see a movie again more quickly than I did that film; I know there was so much I missed that I’m looking forward to a second viewing soon.
Saturday morning, we headed down to San Pedro, a far-flung area of the City of Los Angeles that neighbors Long Beach, for an L.A. Conservancy tour. The tour started at the luxurious Warner Grand, where our guide filled us in on the history of the city - explorers, railroads, competing locations for a lucrative port, prosperity even during the Depression, and tense relations with City Hall in downtown L.A., a very long 20+ miles away - and of the theater itself. We left the theater and walked through Vinegar Hill, home of many beautiful homes, including one that we went inside, thanks to the owners, who are in the middle of what will be a decade-long renovation process. We passed through the massive and beautiful post office building, which looks like it’s a good deal larger than it probably needs to be today.
We also spent some time in the City Hall building, a beautiful Beaux Arts structure that was renovated after the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. The Red Cars were out and running, as well, which was nice to see.
Our tour ended at the Maritime Museum, where we took in the model ships, the history of canning in the area, and the variety of Charlie the Tuna paraphernalia. We finished the morning with a beer at the San Pedro Brewing Company, whose pale ale I’d first tasted at the L.A. County Fair last summer.
More photos from our day in San Pedro here.
Saturday night, we returned to Hollywood Boulevard for the second night in a row, and vowed not to do that again for a very long time. It was for a good reason, though: we went to see Ricky Gervais at the Kodak Theater, where we enjoyed a very funny show in seats considerably better than we have at the awards show. It was a blast to see Gervais live, and he had a pleasant, somewhat unassuming stage manner that suited him well. Our favorite jokes involved a critical assessment of the story of Humpty Dumpty, and what few lessons it might hold for kids (”If you’re an egg, don’t sit on a wall? Don’t send a horse to do medical procedures?”).
This morning, I got up early and headed out on my bike for Griffith Park, for the first of what I hope will be many, or at least enough, training rides up the hill to get in a little better shape for this year’s Muddy Buddy, which Brian and I are taking on again, hoping to improve on our 2006 showing. The ride was fun, once I got some air in my tires, and I managed to ride all the way up without a break, which made me feel a little better. Being there also made me wonder why we’re not out in Griffith Park every weekend we’re here.
I was back in by nine or so, and we decided to head up to Pasadena for a hike, as we needed to visit Paper Source up there as well. We walked along the flood control channel that used to be the Arroyo Seco, underneath a few bridges and past an archery range, spotting some geckos and ground squirrels along the way. It was a pleasant hike, if a little hot, and I’m glad to have gotten another one under our belts.
More photos from the trail here.
A few bits of note: we returned to trivia on the eighth for the first time since June 10, four weeks off, and though I’m not sure why we had a bad feeling about things, we were justified: our beloved quiz master had been fired by the owner of the quiz company in the interim. It was apparently over some sort of personal conflict that got a little out of hand; knowing their personalities, it wasn’t hard to imagine our man’s resentment and loathing bubbling over at some point. So, we got to see what life after Luc was like, and Brian, the new guy, seemed to do alright, certainly better than Luc’s boss, who is always greeted with jeers for his poor quizmaster skills when he’s called on to stand in. We placed second, doing our best in the face of a wire-to-wire win from the team next to us. We placed second back on our last go in June, and second the week before that, as well, so we’ll look to bust out this week. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
On another note, I’ve added a Twitter feed on the right hand side of the page, as I’ve finally started using it. It seems halfway between blogging and posting to del.icio.us at this point; I wonder if I’ll start doing less of both?
Tags:Blog · Film · Los Angeles · Photos · Running
I posted a few tidbits from Hawaii over the past week, so this will be a brief catalog of our week, with photos. It was a terrific trip, a once-in-a-lifetime week of comfort zone-expanding activities (surfing, parasailing, snorkeling, ziplining), relaxation (in the pool or the ocean every day), lots of great food and quality time with Aimee’s family.
We arrived on Saturday morning after an uneventful flight from L.A. (though we did lose the “Halfway to Hawaii” guessing game on board), and after getting settled and stocking up on food at Costco, we had a nice barbecue at the house. The next morning, or rather, later that night, Aimee I and got up for the drive to Haleakala, where we saw the sun rise at 5:41 am. I posted about it that day, but it was spectacular enough to warrant another photo, where you can see the sun and moon in the same image, above an amazing band of colors.
I took off after the sunrise for what turned out to be about a three and a half hour run through the erosional valley of Haleakala, through some of the most beautiful and desolate terrain I’ve ever seen. There was not another soul for miles around, and I really relished the experience. I brought a little camera and a water bottle; a couple of videos (here and here) help capture what it looked like down there.
The next day, we took surfing lessons from the extremely helpful Kiva Rivers, who helped Aimee, Mark, Jack, and I get our arms paddling, our rails gripped, and our feet planted until we actually got up and surfed, for a few seconds, at least.
That night, we attended the Old Lahaina Luau, which was a lot of fun: informative and entertaining and with some delicious pork, straight from the Imu.
The next day, we split our day between snorkeling at Black Rock in Kaanapali Beach and a delicious dinner at Humuhumunukunukuapua’a at the Grand Wailea. It was a pretty amazing meal, and the surroundings were certainly luxurious, but at the same time, I was happy we were staying a little away from it all in a house, rather than a resort hotel.
The next morning, Aimee, Katie, and I set our sights on parasailing off the coast of Lahaina. It was a lot more serene than I had imagined, like being out on a deck very, very high above the water and very far from anything and everything else. It was a great experience, and we had a nice boat ride off the coast of Maui for an hour, to boot.
On Thursday, we went to Kapalua for an afternoon on the ziplines, crisscrossing hills and gorges in the 23,000 acres of land north of the road, owned by Maui Land & Pineapple (of which Kapalua is apparently a wholly-owned subsidiary, as we learned). As our guide informed us, getting harnessed and ready for a ride on the zipline “isn’t rocket surgery,” and we concurred: they had the setup down to a…science? Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed the views on the way down.
On Friday, Aimee and I took a drive down the Hana Highway, and went for a little hike to Twin Falls. It was nice to see a little more wild Hawaii to contrast with the resorts and beaches we’d enjoyed earlier in the week.
We ended the day with a barbeque, fireworks from Lahaina, and a dance party with the kids. It was a terrific week, with the only flaws being the abundance of mice and the continued bad car rental karma (incessant beeping and broken trunk latch, we won’t soon forget you…) - a great way to cap off my life-long tour of the fifty states.
See all the photos here.
Tags:Photos · Running · Travel
Tags:Travel · 50states
