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.
