The first day was Wednesday. This was the day that my brother had convinced me to download Minecraft, since I had recently needed to replace my laptop and the wonderful person at the Apple store forgot to tell me that Civilization V wouldn't run on their laptops when I bought it, so I needed a game, and Minecraft was only $20...
Let me say, it's some of the best $20 I've ever spent. That game is addicting. You've got a world made out of blocks of various types - ie, wood, dirt, store, various ores, trees, and a few animals - and you can take these blocks and build anything your heart desires. It got even better when I started playing on my brother's server, which had the misfortune of having snow and ice everywhere, and he eventually gave me "op privileges", which means I can give myself anything I want instead of having to go out and spend days collecting it. I didn't get anything spectacular done this first week, but here's one of my recent endeavours:
Yes, that's the TARDIS. I'm not going to bore you with the game details (unless you want them) but yes, it does contain a swimming pool and a library inside. For a sense of scale, a single minecraft "block" is the equivalent of 1 cubic meter in the game world.
The next day, it was St. Patrick's Day, which meant that the Young Dubliners were having a free concert in Pershing Square. I invited my friend Alex and his girlfriend Laura, who were visiting in town, and we sat on a blanket and drank Coke from glass bottles and generally enjoyed ourselves.
Oh, and the stage was made of palm trees.
Afterwards, there was a free exhibition of costumes from the "oustanding filsm of 2010" at FIDM, which was only blocks away. Since we were all movie fans, we headed there, and got to see costumes from films including Clash of the Titans, Alice in Wonderland, Inception, Burlesque, The Young Victoria, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and more. Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed, so I have no amazing photos to illustrate this with.
Then, that weekend, I went to Long Beach to whale watch and visit The Aquarium of the Pacific. Whale-watching was a resounding success, as we saw at least six whales, including a mother and a calf, and a pair that was apparently mating, not to mention hundreds of dolphins, some seals, and a bunch of sea lions, all with adorable babies.
Here are some sea lions sitting on a bouy:
There were many interesting things in the aquarium, which I couldn't all mention here so I will put them on Facebook instead, but among them was a giant fish, the ironically named "BP Sea Otter Habitat", some truly unusual-looking sharks, a tank full of clownfish and blue tang that was being monopolized by some asshole couple who had no idea of the difference between "professional studio for baby pictures" and "public aquarium on a Saturday afternoon", and many tanks full of brightly colored fish. I didn't look at the photos until now, and am quite surprised at how well they came out, given I basically own a glorified point-and-shoot digital camera.
At some point after that, I was just around the corner from my house when I saw some people filming a driving scene. Fortunately, I had my camera in my backpack, so if you've ever wondered about this but were too lazy to watch the DVD extras, here it is:
Later that week, I went to the natural history museum, saw a lama which I photographed for Jocelyn and tried to guess if the bones in the anthropology section were real or replicas before looking at the placards, went to the science center (the air and space part was disappointingly closed down for their not-so-disappointing arrival of the space shuttle Endeavour at some time in the future!), I saw a memorial to Liz Taylor on her star on Hollywood blvd, saw a huge pro-union (mostly, there were also people demonstrating for education reform, immigrant's rights, for both sides of action or inaction in Libya, and even protesting against SB 1070 from Arizona) that included a group of Native Americans dancing at the back - and it was awesome to see how different they were from the Iroquois where I grew up.
Then it was the weekend again. I went looking for showtimes for Sucker Punch on Google, and saw that Star Trek IV, more popularly known as "the one with the whales" or "The one where Spock tries to blend in in the 80's", was playing at a theater in Hollywood, and decided that I'd go since a student ticket was only $9.
Then, as the lights were about to go down, people were talking and it was all "blah blah blah thank this person and that organization and this person and Walter Koenig who will be joining us..." and at that point it was all I could to do not scream "WHAT?!?!" in the theater. Sure enough, Walter Koenig, aka Mr. Pavel Chekov, was there, taking audience questions and telling us funny stories. Things we learned include:
-He's actually got a perfect American accent, and "Nuclear Wessels" was from his father's Russian accent.
-There was supposed to be a scene in that movie where Sulu meets his great-great-grandfather as a child, but the child actor refused to cooperate.
-That he approves of the 2009 reboot.
-The casting directors weren't satisfied with his original, intense serious audition, but loved the more surprised, puzzled/clueless persona he did on his final attempt.
-That Leonard Nimoy does not give good feedback as a director
-On TV and film sets, actors are given a point to look at, so they're all delivering their lines in the same direction, ie, to the viewer (especially in TV). He holds that his best acting moment came when someone had taped a Playboy centerfold there, and his line was "Captain, I have no idea what that is!"
-The character of Chekov was not intended to foster Russian-American unity, but to attract viewers ages 8-14 with the Beatles haircut.
Also, he's really old now. Unfortunately, my photos didn't come out too well, but I had my camera with me at least.
And that was my spring break, and that's also why you should always carry a camera in this town.
