24 hours in LA
I took off from San Jose around 11am on Thursday, courtesy of an old radar systems company in Van Nuys that had an interesting project they wanted to talk to me about. I landed at Bob Hope International Airport in Burbank 50 minutes later and, blinking in the intense, Brady Bunch sunshine and looking out at quaint Brady Bunch houses, drove south to Santa Monica Beach.
I parked near the Promenade and walked towards the beach, and met up with walkinthewilds who was walking up from the other direction. We got food and started a series of catching-up conversations that meandered like a welshman on tequila all over the next 12 hours or so.
We drove to the La Brea Tar Pits. Where did you find out about the La Brea Tar Pits? Was it some Woody Woodpecker or Yogi Bear cartoon? The Far Side? What bit of American pop culture puts La Brea into our collective consciousness, regardless of coast or (in my case) country of upbringing?
Anyway, it was cool as hell. It's in a park in the middle of a city. It smelled like tar (duh), bubbled menacingly, and if you stood still too long on the grass near one of the digs you started to sink in, which makes me think the Woolly Mammoths took _really_ long smoke breaks to ever get caught in. And the Dire Wolves.
Dude. They had Dire Wolves. Thousands of Dire Wolf skeletons dug up out of the tar when what they were really looking for in the early 1900s was oil. And mammoths and sloths and Big Freaking Sloths and American Lions and American Camels and Big Freaking Mammoths and Saber Toothed Cats and a girl.
One girl. One single female skeleton in her 20s or 30s. Who was this chick? (Maybe this is where Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series is going to end- her protagonist falls off a pair of Dire Wolves while riding them like a valkyrie, trips over a sloth, gets stepped on by a mammoth, and sucked into the tar. But I digress)
On the way to La Brea we passed a massive turkish protest outside a chinese bank. Not sure what that was all about, but there were a ton of them yelling unintelligible things through megaphones.
After the Tar Pits closed we went on a quest for a violet liquor that has eluded me lately, making it hard to mix original aviations. On the way we passed a billboard for Wicked and Steve said, "I've been meaning to see that, it's leaving L.A. soon". I said, "Sounds good to me, call for tickets"
We had 3 hours to drive 6 miles from the liquor store to Hollywood and Vine. We headed up Santa Monica Boulevard through Beverly Hills (at 5pm on a weekday) and (I hear you LA folks chuckling) almost didn't make it. Seriously. It took almost 3 hours to drive 6 miles. Why do people choose to live like that?
Anyway, Wicked was really fun for a girl power musical bearing moderate resemblance to the source material (which in turn bore moderate resemblance to _its_ source material) with cardboard stereotypes as characters, because the songs are really catchy and the actors know they're playing cardboard and camp it up for all it's worth. Especially Glinda the Good Witch, who rocked. I really enjoyed the show, and have to go see if I can get past chapter 4 of the book this time.
After the show we drove to Edison Bar (the steampunk bar) in Downtown for a couple of cocktails in superior atmosphere. The cocktails weren't that good or well-made (maybe they only bring out the real bartenders on weekends?), so I taught the bartender how to make a slightly modified Blood and Sand, rescuing Steve from a disaster of an Apple Buck. (Yes, I am becoming a cocktail snob). Steve and I continued the sort of meandering conversations we used to have back in the day, with periodic pauses for my venting about my job hunting woes.
I got to my hotel near Van Nuys Airport by 2am and slept fitfully for a couple of hours, woke up and interviewed at the aforementioned radar company. It's encouraging when the first 5 people you talk to spend most of their allotted time trying to sell you on the company. The last 2 had a couple of technical questions. I asked a whole bunch of design questions before approaching the coding, and in the end I dug into the problem further than they had thought through when making it up. They spent the rest of the interview talking about what a good thing it will be to have me on the team. I needed that. My ego has taken a beating lately. Too many out of work PhD's who will work more cheaply than I will have snatched up all the jobs I've gone for. I'm not used to hearing no after an interview.
I drove straight to Bob Hope Airport after the interview, and caught a flight that departed 24 hours after I arrived.
-----------------
I know, I've been off the internet for a long time. But you see, that whole description above was just one day. When am I going to find the time to put down my cocktails and tell you how I've been?
I parked near the Promenade and walked towards the beach, and met up with walkinthewilds who was walking up from the other direction. We got food and started a series of catching-up conversations that meandered like a welshman on tequila all over the next 12 hours or so.
We drove to the La Brea Tar Pits. Where did you find out about the La Brea Tar Pits? Was it some Woody Woodpecker or Yogi Bear cartoon? The Far Side? What bit of American pop culture puts La Brea into our collective consciousness, regardless of coast or (in my case) country of upbringing?
Anyway, it was cool as hell. It's in a park in the middle of a city. It smelled like tar (duh), bubbled menacingly, and if you stood still too long on the grass near one of the digs you started to sink in, which makes me think the Woolly Mammoths took _really_ long smoke breaks to ever get caught in. And the Dire Wolves.
Dude. They had Dire Wolves. Thousands of Dire Wolf skeletons dug up out of the tar when what they were really looking for in the early 1900s was oil. And mammoths and sloths and Big Freaking Sloths and American Lions and American Camels and Big Freaking Mammoths and Saber Toothed Cats and a girl.
One girl. One single female skeleton in her 20s or 30s. Who was this chick? (Maybe this is where Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series is going to end- her protagonist falls off a pair of Dire Wolves while riding them like a valkyrie, trips over a sloth, gets stepped on by a mammoth, and sucked into the tar. But I digress)
On the way to La Brea we passed a massive turkish protest outside a chinese bank. Not sure what that was all about, but there were a ton of them yelling unintelligible things through megaphones.
After the Tar Pits closed we went on a quest for a violet liquor that has eluded me lately, making it hard to mix original aviations. On the way we passed a billboard for Wicked and Steve said, "I've been meaning to see that, it's leaving L.A. soon". I said, "Sounds good to me, call for tickets"
We had 3 hours to drive 6 miles from the liquor store to Hollywood and Vine. We headed up Santa Monica Boulevard through Beverly Hills (at 5pm on a weekday) and (I hear you LA folks chuckling) almost didn't make it. Seriously. It took almost 3 hours to drive 6 miles. Why do people choose to live like that?
Anyway, Wicked was really fun for a girl power musical bearing moderate resemblance to the source material (which in turn bore moderate resemblance to _its_ source material) with cardboard stereotypes as characters, because the songs are really catchy and the actors know they're playing cardboard and camp it up for all it's worth. Especially Glinda the Good Witch, who rocked. I really enjoyed the show, and have to go see if I can get past chapter 4 of the book this time.
After the show we drove to Edison Bar (the steampunk bar) in Downtown for a couple of cocktails in superior atmosphere. The cocktails weren't that good or well-made (maybe they only bring out the real bartenders on weekends?), so I taught the bartender how to make a slightly modified Blood and Sand, rescuing Steve from a disaster of an Apple Buck. (Yes, I am becoming a cocktail snob). Steve and I continued the sort of meandering conversations we used to have back in the day, with periodic pauses for my venting about my job hunting woes.
I got to my hotel near Van Nuys Airport by 2am and slept fitfully for a couple of hours, woke up and interviewed at the aforementioned radar company. It's encouraging when the first 5 people you talk to spend most of their allotted time trying to sell you on the company. The last 2 had a couple of technical questions. I asked a whole bunch of design questions before approaching the coding, and in the end I dug into the problem further than they had thought through when making it up. They spent the rest of the interview talking about what a good thing it will be to have me on the team. I needed that. My ego has taken a beating lately. Too many out of work PhD's who will work more cheaply than I will have snatched up all the jobs I've gone for. I'm not used to hearing no after an interview.
I drove straight to Bob Hope Airport after the interview, and caught a flight that departed 24 hours after I arrived.
-----------------
I know, I've been off the internet for a long time. But you see, that whole description above was just one day. When am I going to find the time to put down my cocktails and tell you how I've been?