Always carry your camera in LA.

As luck would have it, my final exams all fell on the first two days of finals week, leaving me with nearly two weeks of lovely 70+ degree weather and sunshine and nothing to do but explore LA.

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.

The Hyperion Hotel.

Inspired by Allison's post on her apartment building, I decided to write a post on my apartment building, too. Since my building is a former hotel, I will henceforth refer to it as The Hyperion Hotel.

First off, I ended up with less than a day and a half to find an apartment somewhere in LA. Surprisingly, I did so, and with not a small amount of luck - it was the only building that was both priced as advertised and that didn't have, say, hordes of dead roaches in the kitchen when it was shown to me. I turned in a rental application only for this place, then left, not having the foggiest clue what I'd do if I didn't get accepted. Fortunately, I did, because as one will soon discover, The Hyperion is not very selective about their tenants.

So the Hyperion is old. 1920's old, and every once in a while, if the lighting is just right and you're at the perfect angle, you can almost get a glimpse of how awesome it must have been 80+ years ago. The rest of the time, however, the best way to describe it quite frankly is "falling apart." The first clue I had that it was in such a poor state came less than a week after I moved in, at which point the electricity went out. No big deal, right? It happened again, less than a week later, only this time it was only my apartment so I had to call the LA department of water and power and wait while they sent a repairman out to basically hit the electric meter until I got power back. (Literally. I had to show him where the meters were out back, so I watched him do it.) Not two weeks later, the hot water went out, just as I was about to dye my hair, as a previous blog post details.

Then there was the time a housing authority official had to inspect the apartments to make sure that we had working heat, working cold and hot water, and no overcrowding or other "unsuitable living conditions". Fortunately, my apartment seemed to be overlooked, probably because the management could assure her that it was only me in the apartment and I was mechanically inclined enough to not need a government official to help me determine if everything was in working order. However, the upside of someone having apparently reported our building for "unsuitable living conditions" (because I later discovered it's actually not routine for housing inspectors to randomly inspect apartment buildings) was that everything got fixed, fast. Even if it was only the blinds that had broken, I don't think it ever took more than 24 hours for something to get repaired. The downside is that there is near constant construction noise starting promptly at 8 AM, when quiet hours end, but no discernible improvement to the state of the building.

More recently, I found yellow liquid in the bathtub, and assumed my cat had decided to be either very dumb or very smart and decided to pee in there. Upon going to clean it up, however, I discovered that it was not cat urine, but water, tinted yellow from mold, that had somehow dripped into the bathtub. EW. Since then, I have regularly lysoled my bathroom nearly to death.

The Hyperion also has lots of insects. In fact, when Allison visited, she informed me that one particular species of insect was actually a cockroach. Icky. All this time I had thought they were beetles or Junebugs... fortunately, Orion likes to show off his hunting prowess by diligently stalking and killing upwards of 95% of all scurrying insects that venture into my apartment. Cats are good for more than just rodent control! (and I don't doubt for a second that adventurous rodents might have crawled into this place had they not smelled a cat and thought better of it) However, I've had a recent fruitfly infestation - after spending the last two days inexplicably crowding around my bathroom mirror, they've moved to Orion's food and water dishes. I guess they like shiny things?

Last, but most definitely not least, are the tenants. Some of them are OK, like the quiet middle-aged lady with the even quieter 15-year-old German Shepherd rescue, or "Cloud", who literally looks like he walked straight out of the Final Fantasy video games, or The Hipster Couple that lives upstairs on the other side. Others are not so OK. The tenants upstairs seem to entertain themselves by dropping bricks on the ceiling, which cause some of the lightbulbs in my light fixture to flick on and off. Some other tenants seem to be dealing marijuana. Still others have children whom they allow to play with recorders, vuvuzelas, whistles, kazoos, or other such noisemakers after quiet hours. Another constantly leaves things in the hallway.

Then there are the tenants across the hallway-ish. They're the awful ones. They frequently display a blatant disregard for quiet hours, sometimes by blasting obscene music so loudly I can hear it clearly in my room at 3 AM on a weeknight, and other times by having screaming domestic disputes, which are only not reported to the LAPD because the angry person always gets locked out of the apartment until he, or perhaps she, goes and finds a place to sober up and cool down. On top of all that, they got a pit bull puppy that has pooped all over the lobby, and tends to squeak loudly and pathetically at various times. They leave their trash to rot in the recycle bin in the lobby all week, and in general are some of the most abhorrent, awful people that I have ever had the misfortune of sharing a building with.

The worst experience ever living in this building, and the one that made me decide I had to move when my lease was up, was The Gun Incident. One night, as I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep, I heard another loud argument - apparently upstairs or maybe in the lobby? Fortunately, more distant than the hallway outside my room at any rate - and I was tuning it out as normal, when there was running and someone screaming "He's got it!" Within seconds, two shots rang out (from a .22 handgun if I had to guess) and there was more screaming and running. Someone else was actually alarmed enough to call the police to our building, but when they came to investigate, nobody answered their doors. I slept in the bathtub that night, as there was only a thin wooden door between my head and whatever was going on in the hallways outside, and I didn't trust the walls much more. The police ended up in our building at least once more in the following week, further confirming my decision that this was not a good place to live.

The strangest experience, however, happened just last night. I came home from class to find one of my belts hanging from my doorknob. Now, nobody in my building knows me very well, and I don't know if I've ever worn that belt in public, and I didn't think I'd even brought it to LA, and had definitely never possibly left it in the laundry room or anything like that, so I don't have the slightest clue how it escaped my apartment. Nevertheless, it does indeed appear to be the exact same belt that had come with the black skirt that I had bought to wear to my grandfather's funeral. Maybe there are some supernatural tenants living here, after all...

Oops.

See that part of the "About me" where it says I'm not planning on working in the entertainment industry in any way?

Uh...

...

...

you just can't escape it in this city, can you?

Exploring LA!

So, last week, I decided to take some time to explore the city. I started out by going to Santa Monica beach. I'd never been to the Pacific ocean before, but I was of the impression that it would generally be like the Atlantic Ocean. Actually, I haven't even been in the Atlantic that much, so 90% of my beach experience up to this point involved me frolicking in the warm, shallow waters of the Gulf Coast. So, when I visited the Pacific, I was surprised by a couple things.

First off, the water temperature was COLD! At the moment, the water off Santa Monica beach is a balmy 59 degrees. In addition, you can't walk out 50 feet and still be waist-deep here, but only a few feet from the water line you're knee-deep, and people were shark-fishing off the end of the pier (I didn't see anyone actually catch a shark, but they were using 10-inch-long fish as bait). Plus, there are lovely mountains along the coast.



Tuesday was the second Tuesday of the month, which means it was free admission day at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art! This is a fantastically large museum, consisting of multiple buildings, and it houses an impressive art collection. They also have a "Children's Gallery", which is really for people of all ages, and a room in the Children's gallery contains supplies for the general public to make their own drawing or painting. It was pretty awesome to see an 80-year-old man at one table painstakingly working on something while at another table a dad helped his toddler girl finger-paint. My favorite parts of any art museum, though, are the ancient art exhibitions. The LACMA was no different, as they had ancient art from all kinds of different cultures. My favorite piece was a calendar wheel - if I had to carve one of those, there's no way I would've made it go even as far as 2012!



Later that week, someone recommended that I look around the Echo Park neighborhood. This is an almost painfully trendy little area, but as I came out of a used-book store, I saw this next to it!



Yes, that does say "Echo Park Time Travel Mart". Yes, if you walk inside, it sells everything from medieval helmets to "dinosaur eggs" to posters encouraging proper robot self-maintenance, or would that be robot hygiene? But, things get even cooler: The "Time Travel Mart" is actually a source of funding for a non-profit tutoring center, which runs out of the spacious back part of the building.

Then, on Saturday, I took the bus up to the observatory. Since I've already been there, I decided to take a hike instead, and right off the parking lot was a sign for the Mount Hollywood trail. I walked along it for a little while, saw warning signs about rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and rattlesnakes again, but fortunately didn't encounter any of those animals. From that high, it was painfully obvious that there was a temperature inversion going on, literally blanketing LA in smog. Here's a photo of Griffith Observatory with the smoggy Los Angeles skyline behind it:



Last but not least, as I was waiting at the observatory for the bus back, I noticed a humminbird. Then, another, and another. It turns out that there were at least six of them hanging around the area. It was hard to get a clear shot of them flying, although my camera's ISO 3200 setting came in really handy here, but I got some beautiful shots of them resting on branches.



That's pretty much it. I have a volunteer position at an animal rescue as of now, so I've got something to do other than wander around town and take photos and post them on this blog. On another note, I wound up getting a tiny bit lost in Beverly Hills today, and wound up walking by City Hall and down Rodeo Drive - the amount of wealth on display was mind-boggling. For a second I thought "Hey, lots of stores in a small area, this would be a good place to job-hunt" but then I figured that I'd need to be wearing fancy clothes and heels just for them to give me a job application.

The Library is Not Disappointing.

As you may have noticed if you read the previous post, I had figured out that all the people who patronize my local library branch read about is teenage vampires, teenagers at prep schools, or teenage vampires at prep schools, and decided to go to the downtown library at the next opportunity.

Well, the opportunity came, because I discovered I had to run some errands that would take me in the general direction of downtown, and I decided to stop at the library last so I didn't have to haul my books around all day. Along the way, I ran into not one, but two film crews - both of them filming outdoors, complete with bundles of wires across the sidewalk, big tents and catering trucks set up in parking lots so everyone was trying to parallel-park on nearby streets (including some guys whom I saw attempting to parallel-park a cargo van), and so on. Sadly, since my phone camera sometimes needs an excessively long exposure time, I couldn't get any non-blurry photos. The first set wasn't bad, since it was easy to avoid, so I was mildly amused. However, the second time I had to avoid all kinds of wires and little plastic ramps over the wires on the sidewalk (wires which didn't go to any visible equipment) while carrying books under one arm and navigating to the nearest metro station with my phone, so I was significantly less amused.

However, let me get to the topic of the library. Oh, the library. I've been in the New York Public Library before, and I was impressed, but this still seemed like heaven to me. As I was walking through, I heard a tour guide - yes, people actually sign up for tours of this place, or something - mention that the library system had almost 2.5 million books. I wondered if that wasn't an exaggeration, but as I kept going to more and more levels, and going further and further in, I noticed signs on the shelves that said only about 50% of their books were actually in the stacks, and I started to believe that number.

Then there's the science fiction section. Although as I mentioned, the sci-fi section in the other library was smaller than the sci-fi section in my bedroom, this was not the case here. The science fiction section, which appeared not to include fantasy, had to be at least the size of the cow-town library that I mentioned in my previous post, and that's not even to mention what's called the "popular library". Apparently, in an attempt not to scare off the public by making them walk through miles and miles of shelving, they've dedicated a section on the first level to recent bestsellers, CD's, and DVD's. It's literally a "normal"-sized library within the more massive library, which is just SO COOL!

Anyways, that's it for this blog post, as I have books to read. Hooray!

The Library is Disappointing.

So, it's been a little more than two weeks in Los Angeles, and ever since I got cable TV and internet, I've settled into a routine of eating, sleeping, showering, and killing time online and watching TV. It was at some point during this that I decided that it is good to read books, and as such I decided I would go to the library.

So, I looked up where the nearest library was, and headed out. I finally got there (after experiencing my ever-present difficulty with maps and things being further than they looked) and walked inside. Although the building was at least as big as the public library near my college apartment, and bigger than the one in my hometown of 1000 people and 34890 cows, it seemed to have very few books. Thinking this was odd, I wandered around until I found the sci-fi section. This consisted of four or five shelves of books, about 3 feet wide. The sci-fi section (large closet) in the used bookstore (back room of the historical society) in my aforementioned hometown was larger than this! In fact, if you were to eliminate all the Star Wars expanded universe novels in the library, I have more sci-fi in my BEDROOM!

I wandered around, in vague hope that wasn't all of it. I was somewhat right, because they had shelved authors such as Tolkien, Bradbury, and more in with the regular fiction. However, even that wasn't encouraging, as half the "fiction" was young adult vampire novels (I counted no fewer than five copies of each of the first three books in the Twilight saga), and much of the rest was Nicholas Sparks romance novels or 4 copies of recent easy-to-read bestsellers.

So, if the books are any reflection of supply and demand at this branch, I can assume that the demographics of my neighborhood consist primarily of dumb people who want to keep up with trends and 12-year-old girls with distorted perceptions of relationships.

To make matters worse, when I did finally find something worth checking out, specifically a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I went to get a library card only to discover that I don't have any identification with my current address on it. Now, I've got to obtain a copy of my lease or utility bill or something, and I'm going to go to the main library downtown to see if it's better.

Also, the libraries are closed on mondays because of budget cuts. REALLY? In a city with 9.75% sales tax, and in a state that's essentially legalized marijuana, HOW are they still so broke?

Switchfoot, Tesla Coils, and Rogue Vampire Hunters.

Let's start out by saying that I've been trying to see Switchfoot in concert for years, but on at least 3 separate occasions I've come within hours of going to a show and not being able to swing it at the last minute. At some point it started being less about me liking their music and wanting to see them live (although that still held true) and more about how I simply needed to prove that I *could* make it to one of their shows. Even if that involved hiking a mile into Griffith Park to get the tickets and nearly getting eaten by a mountain lion after the show (OK, that may be a bit of exaggeration).

So, last night, I caught the shuttle bus to the observatory into the park, and persuaded the driver to stop at the Greek Theatre. If you've never been there, let me describe it to you: It's an open-air theater, with the stage shaped like the front of the Parthenon, in a dip on the east side of a mountain, so that the seats are basically going up the slope of the hills and you're shielded from the sunset. There are trees and stuff coming right up to the edges of the seating area, and it's just gorgeous. Here's a photo:

The show starts out with some band who I have never heard of before (and whose name I had already forgotten). They were OK. Then Switchfoot starts their set, and they put on an amazing show. The lead singer, Jon Foreman, has a wireless mic, and he's jumping down from the stage, walking through the crowd, climbing on seats, climbing on railings, climbing on amps, climbing on and jumping off of anything else he can find, while singing. It was a really high-energy show. Afterwards, I get in line and get my copy of "Nothing is Sound" autographed =)

After Switchfoot, the Goo Goo Dolls are on. I'd seen them before at their July 4th show in Buffalo and I figured nothing they could do would top that, and it was getting kind of late, and I needed to catch the last shuttle bus back from the observatory. The only hitch in this plan was that it's getting pretty dark, so I can't find a sign for the shuttle bus stop near the theater, and I'm not sure there is one at all, so the only logical alternative is to walk up to the observatory and catch it from the stop up there. After staying for a couple songs, I take off up the road.

Just past the parking area, I notice some twigs snapping. Startled, I look over, only to see a tiny little deer with two even tinier fawns. Adorable, but it makes me realize that there were animals in this park. I continue to walk up the side of the road. It's quiet, and relatively empty, with a kind of cliff with brush on top on one side (the right side, which I'm on) and a sharp drop-off on the other. As I'm walking, I think I hear a twig snap on the top of the cliff above me. I look up, and don't see anything. Maybe 20 seconds later, I hear some leaves rustle, and again don't see anything, so I continue walking although some kind of primal "You're being stalked!" instinct is starting to set off alarm bells in my head. Then, another 20 to 30 seconds after that, I notice a few small stones sliding down the side of the cliff. It's at exactly this point that I remember that there are mountain lions in California, and they live in mountains, and I'm walking through mountains in the dark.

I panic, and move to the other side of the road faster than I knew was possible, figuring that a mountain lion probably would only want to jump down for its food, not up an embankment and over a guardrail, or all the way across almost 4 lanes of road - although they're animals, they've at least got a basic understanding of gravity. I don't see anything else following me for the rest of the trip, although since it got a bit hilly on both sides of the road I'm now dodging cars because I'm refusing to walk anywhere except the middle of the road. Fortunately, later went online and didn't unearth any evidence of a mountain lion being seen in the park recently, so it likely was a curious deer or coyote or bobcat.

So, I finally make it up to the observatory without becoming a late-night snack for some carnivore. There's a spectacular view of all of Los Angeles (and probably everything for 30 miles) from there. I managed to get a lovely picture of downtown:


I stop on the lawn and look at Jupiter through a random telescope, but it's quite blurry - being on a hilltop on one side of LA, there's naturally an entirely obscene amount of light pollution there, and I can't even see all of the stars in the Big Dipper (although I can see enough to make out that it's there, and since I'm at a different latitude the angle looks really weird). Not at all like the observatory back home where you have to turn off your headlights at the turn-off from the main road, a couple hundred yards from the parking lot, which is maybe another 100 yards from the observatory itself, and there are thousands of stars and the Milky Way is all glittery. Frustrated with this, I go in an wander around, only to find a guy demonstrating a Tesla coil that's inside a Faraday cage.

If you're reading this and don't know anything about Tesla Coils or Faraday cages, let me explain what you need to know: There was a guy named Nikola Tesla, and he was basically the 1900 version of Da Vinci (ie, probably a time-traveling mad scientist if half of what he claimed was true). Anyways, Tesla invented a coil that was super-awesome and makes LOADS of lightning. A Faraday Cage was invented by Micheal Faraday, and it prevents lightning from getting out and radio waves or anything like that from getting in.

Anyways, the Tesla coil produces lightning, but the guy demonstrating it says he can only press the button for a few seconds a couple times an hour to prevent it from overheating. He also says that the setup is so old Tesla himself had seen it. Which is PURE AWESOMENESS!

Then, as I'm waiting for the shuttle bus back, I notice the "Hollywood" sign on a hill nearby. So, I take a couple long exposure shots - this one I'm super proud of because it was a 5-second exposure with NO tripod!


I catch the shuttle back with no problems, but that's still not the end of the entertainment. As I'm waiting for the train, I notice a guy walking through the station. He's wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, black fingerless gloves, black cargo pants, black combat boots, a black backpack, a black beanie, and in addition to all that he's got a black eyepatch over one eye. The only non-black thing he's wearing is a large, shiny, simple cross necklace. Since I've maybe watched a little too much Angel, all I can think is "Whoa, rogue vampire hunter!" Then, at the next stop, I see another man out the window, also dressed all in black. Only, this guy doesn't have an eyepatch or cross - he's got a scarf or something wrapped around his face so that only his eyes are showing, making him literally look like a ninja.

That was how yesterday went. I'm ending up with endless material for this blog, although in the future I will try to avoid becoming a set of toothpicks for a large carnivore.

Another Crazy Day...

Today when I woke up, I thought I'd go get my student reduced-fare card, hunt for some kind of volunteer work, and maybe go to a library or something. This is one of the things that I saw on my walk to the bus stop:



(In case you can't read it, the truck advertises forensic autopsies, private autopsies, medical photography, paternity testing, and TV and film consulting)

Well, I had to go on this epic quest back and forth across LA to gather all the documentation required for my reduced fare card - a quest that took me the better part of the day. While I was in Metro centers and whatnot, I started picking up brochures for various interesting science-y looking places where I might want to volunteer, or possibly just visit.

By the time I got everything turned in, I had no desire to go to a library or volunteer-work-hunting any more. However, I did notice one brochure that mentioned an observatory in Griffith Park. Since I had been thinking of going to see a show at the Greek Theater, which is also in said park, I decided to go up there and check it out. During this expedition, I discovered three things: 1) there are no buses going into, or even up to the entrance of, Griffith Park, 2) maps don't show hills, so what looks like an easy walk can be quite a hike, and 3) even on flat surfaces, distances appear MUCH smaller on Google maps than they do when you're walking them. Naturally, I ended up really tired, so I just took the first bus I found, which conveniently went straight to a subway station.

Now, I don't listen to country music, so at first I thought the two people with kind of Southern accents on the bus next to me were tourists. However, as I heard their conversation, I realized that they were musicians (or a musician and a writer, or two band-mates?). I have no idea how famous they were, but I heard one of them telling the other about how some people had asked to take his picture, and how he was now rich enough to warrant having a place to live in Nashville AND a place to live in LA, and so on. It was weird, then the bus stopped not at the intersection where it said it stopped, but a bit down the street where there were paprazzi on one block and a TV or film crew setting up on another block around the corner.

Last but not least, annoyances since I've moved in less than a week ago:
Film crews: 1
Paparazzi groups: 2
Lost tourists who think I'm a local: At least 8

I'm here at last!

That's right! A couple days ago, I officially moved into my new apartment in LA. It's a bit smaller than I remembered, but the closet is a bit bigger than I remembered, so I guess it evens out?

The upsides are that I LOVE the weather, I like the neighborhood, I got a full-sized mattress for relatively cheap, and it looks like I'll survive.

One of the downsides is how EXPENSIVE it is to buy everything! It's not just that LA is an expensive city, but also that California has 9.75% sales tax. Now, I thought NYS had high tax, with it going up to about 8.5% in some places, but that's ridiculous. Someone tell me HOW this state is still so broke?!?! Also, getting new furniture-like things, cleaning supplies, food, and random household items that I couldn't pack (or didn't own) can add up pretty fast. The related problem I'm having is that I need a job.

But the craziest part? Beverly Hills. Where do I start on this topic?

I guess I should start with the fact that it's not too hard to get a bus out there (really, for everyone who whines about LA's public transportation system, it's not as bad as they make it out to be. Unless by "bad" they really meant "the buses are full of people with different skin colors than I have!") and someone mentioned to me that there was a farmer's market. Now, when I think "farmers market", I think of a bunch of farmers driving cargo vans or small trucks into a parking lot, setting up a canopy thing, and selling out of the back of the truck. That is possibly the furthest possible thing from what I found.

What I found was something that can only be compared to the interior food buildings at the NY State Fair, only it was all open-air with cloth over the walkways, and the little shops were permanent. Also, there were actual names on the shops (not like "Rolling Hills Farm, Nowhere, NY") and bars and souvenir stores and even a Starbucks. This is next to an outdoor mall, which seems to consist exclusively of designer clothing stores, fancy restaurants, and a movie theater.

This brings me to another point - well, actually another mall, which at first I got mixed up with CBS studios (another amusing story for another time). This mall was ridiculously large, where you had to go up something like five escalators just to get to the stores. Unfortunately, this mall also seemed to consist of nothing but designer clothing/jewelry/fragance/etc stores, with the exception of a food court, a Ferrari store (no kidding), and a completely incongrous Claire's.

The last, but perhaps the most fun thing, in Beverly Hills is the secondhand stores. Want a full-length leather trenchcoat? Five identical TV's? A set of brand-new glass tumblers from Ikea? Stuff with the labels still on it? It's a gold-mine of cheaply priced awesome stuff in excellent condition. I got a fully functional 20" CRT TV from there for $25 with the remote, and that's awesome because you can't even buy cheap CRT TV's from Walmart any more.

Oh, Walmart: That is my last topic for this post. Since Walmarts are as common (and sometimes as unwanted) as weeds in upstate NY, and also really cheap, I figured that would be the place to go. So, I found a super-Walmart, and went to it at 7 AM. Only, what did I find out? That this location opened at 8 AM. SERIOUSLY? I haven't seen nor heard of a Walmart that closed on a regular basis, ie, not only before Black Friday, since I was approximately 10 years old. For almost all of my life, you could just go to a Walmart at any hour of day or night, and the only thing that might be closed would be the 1-hour photo department. And, not only did this Walmart CLOSE, but it didn't open at 6 AM or any other time that would enable people to stop in before work or something like that. Ridiculous.

So, Los Angeles is COLD?

As the title implies, I went to LA recently, and was quite surprised at the temperature. Everything I had heard indicated that it would be something like 105 F outside, but it was down to nearly 60 at night, which meant that the heat in my hotel room actually went on to keep it up to 72 all night long!

Getting to LA was not a pleasant experience - the flight was delayed nearly 2 hours because of bad weather, which caused at least half the passengers to realize we'd miss connections. While people were boarding the plane, the flight attendants were giving the people in business class free drinks, and I had to resist complaining that ALL of the (adult) passengers could use some free alcohol at the moment. As it was, I missed my connecting flight, and had to stay the night in Atlanta. I got a hotel online for cheaper than the discount vouchers the airline offered me would've made it, because by then it was 11 PM and I was tired and fed-up and needing a shower and just generally not in a mood to sleep in the airport.

Now, sleeping in the airport wouldn't have been that bad of an idea, since I wouldn't have had to go through security again. If you ever fly out of ATL or LAX, be warned that security takes an obscenely long time, in part because they have no "experienced traveler" or "family" lines - instead of getting in line behind people with flip-flops and no jackets and only one carry-on item, you're also stuck behind the people who are dragging carseats and strollers through to be gate-checked.

So, I got in around noon and took 2 buses and 3 trains to go apartment-hunting. I don't know what everyone's objections to LA's public transportation system are, because the metro was spacious and clean (although it doesn't go to very many places) and the buses were everywhere. OK, maybe the fact that if you don't live near a metro stop you have to take 2 buses just to get to those 3 trains, but that doesn't faze me.

Apartment-hunting was ridiculous. The first place I managed to go claimed to have a studio available for $650/mo, but when I actually got there the lady whined about "forced advertising" and could only offer me an efficiency (bachelor, ie, no kitchen/only a kitchenette) for about $800/mo. Another place had dead, recently exterminated roaches all over the place, and the manager said she was going to exterminate again to make sure there were no survivors and then clean them up, but it was still gross. All in all, I only saw 2 places that were priced as advertised and one of them was a little more expensive and far away from the metro stop for my taste, but when I walked into one unit in another building it was like it almost screamed at me "You're home!" So, naturally, I applied for that one.

Advising wasn't bad, and I finally got to see the campus where I was going to grad school. There wasn't an interview, and I couldn't make it out for a campus visit, but I applied and I was accepted, so I took them up on it, sight unseen. It's not a bad campus, a bit bigger than I'm used to but I think I won't mind the size in the absence of snow.

I made a couple fun discoveries: A friend of mine who works in the entertainment industry took me around Hollywood, and among other things showed me the Amoeba music store, which is absolutely AMAZING! I saw movies and music there that I've never seen in stores before. I was also taking a bus that went along Wilshire Blvd when I noticed a big polluted-looking pond thing with a statue of a dying mammoth in it. Until then, I hadn't made the connection between the La Brea tar pits and the various things named "La Brea" in that section of LA, but I had to get there and check it out. It turned out to be pretty cool, but if you walk in the grass and get water splashed on your legs, you might end up with tiny flecks of tar on your legs, which fortunately weren't too difficult to wash/rub/pull off.

Anyways, fortunately I managed to return from all of this successful at everything I wanted to do, and not really jet-lagged, and without having to deal with flight delays of more than 15 minutes. I think I love this city... only, seriously, 61 degrees is almost intolerably freezing as far as I'm concerned.

Well, here we go...

At the advice of my friend Jocelyn(who has her own blog here), I have taken up blogging, because apparently life in Los Angeles promises to be very exciting.

However, I haven't exactly moved to LA just quite yet. I'm still stuck in the Northeast until sometime around the end of August, and I'm going to make my first trip out to go apartment-hunting in a couple weeks. I'm nervous about that, especially given that my former college roommates and I had a particularly nasty experience with our landlord breaking more than a few laws. Fortunately, however, since it's summer the weather here has been comfortably (for me, at least) in the 90's the entire time.

I'm also stuck at home with my family, but I don't run into my dad much, and my brother and sister have been in and out all summer, although they usually have a friend or two with them when they're home. The one upshot to being home is that a family friend has rescued four horses, two of whom have the most adorable foals EVER!