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.