Doubleperf

As we enter a very busy month of March, a little catch-up on February before it slips away: it’s awards season, which has meant lots of screenings and some late nights of overtime. We also welcomed Caroline to L.A. from Austin, and enjoyed hanging out with her and Keith for dinner at Street as well as at some screenings. I’m working one of those late nights right now; I’m on hour thirteen as I type, eating as many snacks as I can, watching hour upon hour of Great British Railway Journeys, A History of Scotland, and Wallander. It’s also just three weeks to the marathon, with my two 20-mile runs in the rear view mirror and a few weeks of tapering before the big day. I’m excited about the route; we ran miles 3.5 to 11.5 from downtown to Hollywood a few weeks ago, which was a great taste of what the race will be like.

My parents visited this weekend, giving them a chance to see the house, which we closed on a year ago tomorrow, and gave me a couple of days of my dad’s expertise in installing track lighting in the office. We also watched a lot of Olympics, and enjoyed a pair of fun outings. On Saturday, we enjoyed a concert by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, playing period compositions from the silent film era, both on their own and as accompaniment for shorts by Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

On Friday, we visited the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, an amazing collection of automobiles (plus a train engine and Pullman car) that, like many of our outings, began as something we saw Huell Howser mention, and finally got to check out ourselves.

More Nethercutt photos here.

Most of our time was spent installing track lights in the office, which was a lot more time-consuming than I would have expected, but with much better results than if I had attempted it myself. We only had one explosion of sparks, visited only three different Home Depots for the materials, and managed to finish just as the light was dying and the closing ceremonies were coming on last night.

Speaking of the Olympics, I feel like we’ve watched more Olympics this time around than in any other year. Thanks to TiVo and to lots of great coverage of the cross-country, biathlon, and nordic combined events, I feel like I got a better feel for these games than for any others I can remember. It will be nice, though, to go back to being able to pay attention to the news, now that the fear of Olympic spoilers is gone. By this time next month, the show and the marathon will be over and I’ll be back in New Zealand doing film inspection for a week. It’ll be a whirlwind, I’m sure.

Amidst all of the work in the run-up to the show and my ever-increasing marathon training as the big day (March 21, 38 days from today) approaches, I haven’t had a chance to reflect on the passage of another year — which is probably for the best.

After our weekend in Palm Springs last week, we celebrated my 35th at home, with a few of my favorite things. On Friday night, we watched our new Blu-ray disc of the Criterion Collection’s presentation of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which is not only one of my favorite films of all time, but was directed by a man who is perhaps my favorite of all of my birthday buddies. Add in a little Carvel ice cream cake, and it’s a pretty great night. After a somewhat dreadful twenty mile run in the rain on Saturday morning, we fixed things in a hurry by having lunch at Father’s Office: one of their amazing burgers, a basket of sweet potato fries, and some of their great craft beers on tap. We came back to the same neck of the woods for dinner, at Beacon Café, which was very tasty — especially the ahi pizza — and ended the night at Bigfoot West, which we’d never been to before. It turned out to be fancier than we’d expected, which was actually a pleasant surprise. Many of my lovely gifts were books, which is good, as I’m currently enjoying The Intuitionist, the fourth book I’ve read this year, and hope to keep up the pace. Which reminds me…thank you notes.

The nomination screenings have begun — I’ve seen In the Loop and Un prophete so far — and even though I didn’t think there was a lot I had left to see, we’ve got a bunch of screenings on our list over the next three weeks. We’re also about to start the double shifts at the post house, which means long hours in dark rooms with stocked fridges, which is always fun.

It had been three years since our first trip to Palm Springs, and Aimee had the great idea of making it our destination for a brief little pre-birthday weekend getaway for me. The last time we went, it was August and 115° out, and we didn’t really do much of anything. This time, it was much more pleasant, and we had a great time seeing the town, touring its neighborhoods full of interesting houses, eating at some great restaurants, and riding the tram up into the mountains.

We had an easy drive from L.A., and were sitting down to eat at Cheeky’s before ten a.m. After a very tasty breakfast (I had the benedict, but skipped the Bacon Flight; next time), we walked around town a bit, stopping in first at Ruddy’s General Store, a recreated 1930s general store with thousands of boxes, tins, cans, displays, and other assorted paraphernalia.

We were treated to the surprising vision that is the smoke-belching, bullet-deflecting Screaming Eagle as it passed through the streets of Palm Springs, as well.



After a mis-guided attempt to ride the tram up the mountain in the middle of the day on a Saturday (by the time we got there, the wait time was an hour and a half, with 700 people in line ahead of us), we decided to try again the next day, and drive around town instead. We stopped at the Tramway gas station visitors center and got our “Mid-Century Modern Map,” and began our drive around town. We had tried to see some of the houses for which Palm Springs is known last time we were here, but didn’t know about the map, and couldn’t find anyone in the shops we went in who knew what we were looking for. This time, we had success, with Aimee navigating us through the various neighborhoods and past some really beautiful, sleek, eye-catching homes and civic buildings:

We ended our drive at the Ace Hotel, where we checked in and had some snacks at the hotel’s Amigo Room bar. The place has a great vibe, and even though it’s massive — a former Howard Johnson’s with a former Denny’s for a restaurant — it fit in nicely with the other three Aces across the country, all of which I’ve now visited. We stayed at the Ace in Seattle in the summer of 2007, visited the lobby of the Ace in Portland over Thanksgiving of 2007, and I stopped by the Ace in New York last fall.

Aimee had made reservations for us at Copley’s (in the former Cary Grant estate, though there didn’t seem to be any information on the history of the place), where we had a pretty amazing dinner under the stars. Aimee saw a huge shooting star, and we enjoyed the meal, from the ahi taco appetizer to the chocolate bars and homemade peanut butter ice cream for dessert.

We returned to the Ace, listened to a little music in the Amigo Room, tried out their photobooth, and headed to bed. After an early breakfast at the King’s Highway Restaurant the next morning, we returned to the tram, and enjoyed a crowd-free trip up the mountain.

The tram ride was a great combination: an engineering marvel that also took us from the balmy desert up to an alpine meadow, affording amazing views of the surrounding country, in just a few minutes’ time. And not only was the tram car large and speedy, but it also rotated, as if you needed something else to distract you as you rode up into the clouds. We enjoyed the ride up, and had a great time wandering through the snowy meadow, surrounded by kids sledding, many of whom looked like they’d never seen snow before.



We spent an hour and a half or so up top, learned a little about the history of the tram, and then returned down the mountain, through a thick bank of fog.

From there, we headed on our way back towards Los Angeles. See the entire set of Palm Springs photos here.

As we did the last time we went to Palm Springs, we passed through the outlets again, where I picked up a new wallet, replacing the one I bought about ten years ago at Star Market on Boylston in the Fenway. I’m amazed a grocery store wallet lasted ten years, but it’s really falling apart now, so I’m happy to move on and go a little more square this time.

We decided to hit In-N-Out store number one in Baldwin Park for lunch on the way home; it turns out that the original store number one was torn down for freeway construction, and the one you can see from the freeway, the new old store number one, was built in 1954 and closed a few years ago. The new store number one is just down the block under the freeway, and shares a parking lot with In-N-Out University and the Company Store. I enjoyed my Cheeseburger animal style and fries, while Aimee had a grilled cheese. Their chocolate shake was fine, but was the least noteworthy part of the meal. Finding out where the location was and reading a little about its history spawned an investigation via Wikipedia that lasted the rest of the way home about the history and growth of America’s fast food restaurants. Fascinating stuff, especially the little nuggets like the fact that a dozen Wendy’s stores around country continued to offer breakfast over the last 20 years, even though the national organization had given up on its breakfast experiment.

Our trip to In-N-Out proved to have perfect timing, as Huell Howser visited the very same In-N-Out, a privilege the company hadn’t granted to any other TV crew, on last night’s California’s Gold. So, we watched the show with the taste of their fries still in our minds, and learned a lot about the storied company. I should have stopped there and not watched any part of the dreadful Grammys, but oh well. It’s February, the nominations come out tomorrow, and the marathon is next month. It’s about to get busy around here.

We began exploring Los Angeles through the book Walking L.A.: 36 Walking Tours Exploring Stairways, Streets and Buildings You Never Knew Existed back in late 2006, hoping to tackle all 36 walks over the next year or so. It has taken us a little longer than that; we’ve moved twice, the book has come out in a second edition, and we’ve also spent time trying to conquer all 60 Hikes within 60 Miles, but now, just over three years later, we finally finished.

We spent the morning in Mt. Washington, on the very short walk #36 through Elyria Canyon Park, after driving up some of the narrowest, windiest streets I’ve been on anywhere.



A few more photos from the walk here.

After the brief walk (which was more like a hike, whereas the 60 Hikes Mt. Washington “hike” was much more like a walk – chew on that one….), we headed back downtown for our last walk of the book, around the Financial District. We’d been saving this walk for a day when we could combine it with some time poking around the Central Library and lunch at the Library Bar, but for whatever reason – maybe it’s the fact that the library doesn’t open until 1:00pm on Sundays, and the Library Bar isn’t open at all during the day on Sunday – we never got around to it.

We started outside the Biltmore Hotel, where a skating rink was set up for the winter, filled with people who seemed never to have skated before, hugging the railing and walking cautiously around the perimeter while wearing skates.

We walked around the old Edison building, the YMCA building, and various towering banks and hotels, and ended up back at the Biltmore, where we took in the opulent lobby and tried to figure out how we could spend a night there someday. A room in the hotel, that is, not just the lobby.

Check out the brand-new, bright-white running shoes, which I’m trying to break in before our 20-mile run next Saturday. We did 18 yesterday (which I did in my old shoes), and it was fine, if a little tough over the last two miles.

We finished the morning with lunch at Wurstküche, which was busier than ever and tasty as always. And speaking of tasty, we had dinner at Nook, not too far from our house, last night, and even though we felt out of place with the early birds at 5:30, the food was great, and the strip mall chic setting was great. I saw Crazy Heart at the Aero afterwards, and enjoyed a great Q & A with Jeff Bridges after the film. Too bad it was already 11:00 by the time they were going to start Lebowski; I’ve never seen it in a theater. Another day…

So, it’s time for a new L.A. guidebook to lead us to some more hidden neighborhoods. And we’ve still got those 40 hikes left…

Photos from every Walking L.A. walk here, and previous blog entries about the walks here.

Aimee and I put together our Top 10 (and Bottom 5) Films of the Year lists this past weekend, which reminded me that, as a life-long nostalgist and inveterate list-maker, I have done precious little reflection on the fact that we’ve just completed a decade and moved onto a new one. I haven’t gone back and thought about where I was ten years ago (avoiding Y2K madness on a new year’s ski trip with George in Vermont) or contemplated the “so-called aughts” in any way, so while things are still fresh, I decided to take a closer look at the last ten years. Maybe I would have come to the same conclusion at the end of the nineties, but when I look at the last ten years, almost every year contains a turning point or major event in my life. So, here we go:

• 2000: April, I meet Aimee and over the summer, I move to Boston for a new job.

• 2001: January 2, I get laid off from the job I moved to Boston for, and begin a year in the wilderness of temping, Eastern Europe, general aimlessness, and eventually grad school.

• 2002: February, I begin as an intern at the HFA, which would lead to a job, my first in my now-chosen field.

• 2003: November 8, I start this blog.

• 2004: April 18, I propose to Aimee in San Francisco.

• 2005: July 9, Aimee and I are married in Newport.

• 2006: July 30, we arrive in Los Angeles.

• 2007: To make up for all of the other monumental years, we just have a lot of fun going to movies, concerts, and exploring Los Angeles.

• 2008: The Year of Travel: four trips to Alaska, vacations in Italy, Hawaii, and England, plus shorter trips to San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Savannah, Charlottesville, Denver, Boston, and New York.

• 2009: March 2, we close on our first home.

Bring on the ‘010s.

I don’t think the 14 year-old me would recognize the life the 34 year-old me lives, for many reasons, but one I keep thinking about these days is my current relationship with the weather and the outdoors. I see snow once or twice a year now, if I’m lucky, whereas in the first 20 years of my life, it was a constant from October to March every year. Lots of things are different when you compare Anchorage and L.A., but I fear I’ve gone soft in the last few years, in which time experiencing snow and cold has become an infrequent novelty, like shopping at King Sooper’s when visiting grandparents. But I digress…



We had a terrific, long trip to a quite snowy and cold Boston over Christmas and New Year’s, and returned Saturday night, ready for the new year, mostly. For the most part, all of our logistics worked out as planned, with my parents coming in from Alaska, my brother and his family in from Virginia (with a slight delay), and Aimee and I juggling our time among them, her parents, and her brother and his family.

We had a couple of Christmas mornings, one with Aimee’s family and one a day later when my family assembled in town, and it was great to see everyone in one place. The weather was a little bit all over the place, but it snowed just before we arrived, and most of the snow stuck around for the duration of the trip.

Some of the highlights were a return visit to the Union Oyster House (the oldest restaurant in the country, they’ll have you know), more than 24 years after the last time we were there; a trip to the ICA with our nephew, who enjoyed the exploded view Beetle and other work by Damian Ortega; and our annual batch of gløgg (the spelling I went with this year, as opposed to glögg, as I’ve used in past years), which was pretty successful, and was re-created at Aimee’s house for her family, as well.



I even got in a few runs, along my old path along the Charles – once unseasonably warm, another time face-freezingly cold – as well as on a treadmill, which helped by reminding me how lucky I am to not have to run on a treadmill.

More photos from the trip here.

So, here we are in the future, 2010. Time for the awards season to ramp up, only 75 days until the marathon, and lots of other exciting stuff coming up this year.

So it’s been a week of rain, off and on, here in L.A., which for us has meant constant monitoring of the leak situation in our office. When it was the garage, no one cared that water got in, but now that it’s the office, a leak is not a good thing, so I’ve been trying my best (garbage bag and duct tape, towels and fans, CD spindle tops as stilts to elevate the boxes nearby, and so on) to keep the water under control. We seem to be doing fine, but I’ll need to plug the leak before the next big storm. I’ve been spending the sunny days of the past few weekends in the shed, finishing the walls, cleaning the place up, and figuring out what else I need to do before I call it done. It needs a little electrical work, and a few coats of paint inside, but then it should be much more usable that it was when we bought the house. Now I understand why my dad spent all those afternoons in the garage, working on his projects; it’s a lot of fun, and takes up a lot of time. I’m glad I’m starting on the inside of a building no one else will probably ever see, as my work is, well, improving, let’s say.

The rain had something to do with causing the power to go out at the movie theater where we were watching Invictus on Saturday afternoon, so we didn’t get to see the last two reels. Luckily, it’s a true story, right, so I can just Wikipedia the ending? The power was still out by the time Nine was supposed to start, so we didn’t see that either, but went home and bought a package of Vienna Fingers to honor Carol Reed’s Vienna-set classic The Third Man, one of three Criterion Blu-ray DVDs I bought a few months ago. The film was terrific, of course, and we ate almost all of the cookies. Not good.

I’ve been taking a few days off running to try to kick the month-long cold/bronchitis/whatever I’ve had, which has given me a little time to switch this site and all my other websites off the unreliable and problematic web host I’d been using for the past six years, and onto a much better, cheaper one. Hopefully no one will see any difference, but things are much better on this end.

Last night, we went to see Aimee Mann’s Christmas Show at Largo, a variety show which featured her and her band performing Christmas songs, the comedy of Paul F. Tompkins and Patton Oswalt, and music by Michael Penn, Nellie McKay, and Creed Bratton from The Office and his Brattonettes. Throw in some magic, Aimee performing a nice set of her own songs, and then the topper: a special appearance by Rich Sommer, Harry Crane from Mad Men, as the incoming New Year’s Baby, in a giant diaper and “2010″ sash, singing a duet on “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” with Aimee, until Paul F. Tompkins, as the Hebrew Year 5770, joined in. They ended with everyone on stage singing “Christmas Time Is Here” – perfect. It was a great night, two hours of terrific entertainment.

It’s hard to believe it’s already the last full week before we go away for Christmas vacation. We’ve got a busy week at work here, then our holiday party on Friday, then three days the next week and we’re off to Boston until 2010.

After a slightly disastrous attempt involving our big stand mixer and gingerbread walls that wouldn’t stand up, we went back to the old reliable kit with the troughs for easy construction. The Necco wafers seemed a little paler this year, but we still managed to put some color into things. This, along with our wreath and one strand of Christmas lights, are our only decorations this year, as we leave in a week and a half for nine days in Boston with the families. Should be great.

Having seen UCLA host USC at the Rose Bowl three years ago, it was only fitting that we got a chance to see the two teams play again, this time in USC’s home stadium, the Los Angeles Coliseum. The tickets were thanks once again to Michael’s dad, and we enjoyed the evening very much.

We parked on the street and walked across campus to the stadium, observing all of the crazy tailgating – didn’t it used to just involve eating and drinking, rather than flat-screen TVs with mysteriously-sourced HD cable connections blaring at high volume? – and enjoyed some authentic stadium food before taking our seats in the end zone. The game wasn’t the most exciting, but the pomp was fun to watch, with all of the crazy Trojan fans and the guy driving the sword into the field and Traveler and each school’s massive and talented marching band.

The annual film archivists’ conference took place last week in St. Louis, which means four days of screenings, talks, and hanging out with friends and colleagues. I also took a day after the conference to spend with Tim, my collaborator on Photobooth.net, which was a lot of fun as well.

The day before the conference began, I did what I had managed to miss all the other times I’d been to St. Louis, which is to ride a tiny pod up to the top of the Gateway Arch.

The City Museum was of course a must-see, and a lot of fun at night:

On Sunday morning, after running a ten mile loop to Forest Park and back, I borrowed a bike from the hotel and rode around downtown looking at the magnificent civic architecture, as well as some decaying sites around town:

More photos here.

Now my trip is complete.

I had planned on running along the riverfront path, but apparently it’s flooded. Which explains the street signs in the river.

Technically, I’ve got a view of the arch from my hotel room window. You have to press your face up to the glass to see it, but it’s there. Off to get a closer look this afternoon, and the conference starts tomorrow.

Tuna Melt returned for another run at the Muddy Buddy this year, albeit with a personnel change, as Sean stepped in for Brian, out due to injury this year.

We ran a good race, I think; I know I felt better (or less awful, to be honest) than in previous years, probably because of my increased running training and a little more time on the bike, and also because of more familiarity with the course the third time around.

We saw some great costumes (astronauts, ketchup and mustard, multiple smurfs) and enjoyed the Red Hook Beer Garden at 9:00 in the morning, which sounds bad but worked out just fine. We’ll be back next year, I hope; I wonder if we’ll ever be able to convince more friends to join in the fun.

We had a great 24 hours in Avalon this past weekend, from the ferry ride over, which included some whale-spotting, to our nice little B&B, the tour of the Casino, and dinner on the water.



It was just a half hour to Long Beach, then an hour on the Catalina Express, and we were in the land of golf carts and ice cream shops. We walked the streets, enjoyed the absolutely perfect weather, and watched the scuba divers head into the water near the Casino.

The tour of the Casino in the afternoon was our only real activity, which we followed with some time in the museum, where we learned about the Chicago Cubs’ spring training on the island between the 1920s and the 1950s. The mini golf course across the street from our B&B was one of the best we’ve ever tried, challenging and classic and a lot of fun. We had a nice dinner on the water, and a drink at the Lobster Trap, which was definitely a local scene.

For next time, we made a mental list of the things we’d do: a real swing-dance in the Casino would be great, as would the nighttime flying-fish tour, and a drive through the interior of the island on this bus:

Photos here.