My trip to Los Angeles
You'll get the significance of this painting if/when you watch the Da Vinci Code spoof on the MTV Movie Awards this Thursday or one of the 23872837 repeats.
I'm not gonna be appearing in any of these pics because I looked haggard the entire time. Friday was icky and gross because I was on a plane ride for 6+ hours (including a stopover in Phoenix). Saturday I was icky and gross after standing around all day in line ups for the MTV Red Carpet audience crowd outside Sony Picture Studios (plus cameras weren't allowed inside and would be confiscacted). Sunday was the plane ride back, another 6ish hours, and we left for LAX early in the morning.
Friday
Got into LAX at around 2:50 pm and took a shuttle van back to our hotel. The Super Shuttle we used kept circling around the airport for what felt like FOREVER to get the max amount of people inside the van, totally wasting valuable shopping time.
Our hotel was a Holiday Inn and it was quite fancy-schmancy inside. Our hotel room had a lot of space.
Rested for a few minutes and then got straight into a cab to go to the Beverly Center. Costed $30 for a taxi ride from downtown L.A. Beverly Center has a LOT of stores (like LeSportsac, Louis Vuitton, Lacoste, my wonderful Forever 21 but in this case called "XXI Forever") and I was overwhelmed... then wracked with indecision. It turns out that you can't use credit cards in many stores, such as Forever 21, without a photo ID. Unfortunately, I forgot my driver's license in the hotel room so I was stuck with just my cash. That made my apprehensiveness and indecisiveness to go crazy in the stores even worse.
After eating in the food court at the Beverly Center, we took public transit on over to The Grove. The Grove is an outdoor mall kinda place, reminicient of Mainstreet USA in Disneyworld.
By the time we got to The Grove, I was SOOO tired. Because of the weird way I sat on the plane ride there (as I have longish legs and a middle seat), my legs were all contorted and muscle-spasmy. I could barely walk normally and could not sit without holding onto something (going to the washroom was a fun time). So I was rather pooped and lost my enthusiasm for shopping by the time we got to The Grove. Boo.
The place is quite spiffy. There's a trolley thing, that may or may not be in service, that goes around the place. If only it was in service when I got there, my legs were pooped out.
And even though I went to the website before going and knew the A&F flagship store was temporarily closed, I was quite sad to see it actually closed there right in front of me. I wept a little bit (I kid).
Afterwards, when we left, we walked towards the bus stop to get ourselves back to the hotel. As we were walking there, we saw the bus we needed drive right by. No big, we thought. Until we looked at the bus pole sign that said that after 9pm, the frequency of the bus goes to every 60 minutes. THAT'S WHEN WE SORTA FREAKED OUT. Especially because there were a few crazy bums in the area who were singing and hobbling around. Eventually the bus came and a crazy bum also came on. He was trying to sell people on the bus merchandise like purses, hats and these fake Louis Vuitton handbags. It was amusing.
Also amusing was this girl that I had asked for directions to The Grove at the bus stop by Beverly Center before and then we saw her again on the bus as we were leaving. So we said hi and whatnot.
I like the way the buses in L.A. have a sign that announces the upcoming intersections, both in text and audio. It made it easier for us tourists to get around. Plus they have LCD televisions on the buses so you can watch the screen for news bulletins, the weather, etc.
Saturday - the day of the awards... the day I realized MTV is comprised of many incompetent workers
Woke up around 8 am and headed over to the IHOP that I knew was around the hotel (did quite a bit of research before the trip... wished that there was an In-N-Out nearby).
Holy crap. How can people eat all that food? I loved the hash browns though, never had hash browns like that before. I ended up doggy bagging majority of the food (which later ended up trashed because it tasted a bit funky by then).
Then it was time to head to the awards in Culver City. Culver City is about 9 miles away from downtown L.A., where we were situated. We had originally planned on taking a fancy taxi to the awards but I suggested we take it back and bus it there (since I didn't want to be stuck waiting for a bus that took at least 60 minutes to come in the dark). Busing it there was rather uneventful, although I did at times feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb for being one of the only 2 non-Latinos on the bus.
I had also signed up for the MTV Red Carpet Audience thing (unrelated to the contest) which required us to be there by 3pm. We actually got there around 1pm, where we met up with these two girls who said they didn't have a print-out for the red carpet thing. All four of us had to trek down, like, two or three blocks to the other entrance of Sony Picture Studios. All us pit audience, red carpet audience and seat fillers were herded into a parking lot where we proceeded to wait for hours and hours for things to start. The two girls who didn't have a print out eventually got through with my print out and another girl's print out... but then they ultimately ditched us. Those smoochers!
The MTV folks freaked us out about the no cameras and cell phone rule. I being the "rebel" I am (namely, I just wanted pictorial evidence of my experience), had my camera with me and Jess had her cell phone with her. The girls we were talking to (including the smoochers) were also worried about their cells and cameras because they heard from an MTV worker that they confiscate and never return the stuff. We went through a metal detector, that I believe was not authentic because it didn't beep once even for those girls who smuggled in their camera/cell in their bras, and we were in. Phew.
After HOURS on end waiting outside stages, in between the lots, in Sony Picture Studios out in the hot Cali sun, we the red carpet audience were eventually led into the bleachers for the red carpet arrivals. Me and Jess were in the stands right above the area where the celebs get let out of their limos and where you can see the line of limos waiting to drop off the celebrity for their grand entrance. We saw everyone, but unfortunately, no pictures were taken because I didn't want security to come after me and take my camera :(
Interesting tidbits from the red (technically blue) carpet and awards:
- Frank Miller (seen below on the right), the graphic novelist guy who did Sin City, was tripping over himself, barely able to stand upright, soon after getting out of his limo. He had to be propped up by the director (the younger guy in the photo) and other Sin City folks as he tried to make himself down the carpet. THEN HE COLLAPSED!! And we thought he died. They called the medic and dragged him off to the side, right in front of us, to resuscitate him. Eventually, he was fine and sat back up. To this day, I have no idea what happened and there are no news stories on it, which makes me think it was a health problem rather than intoxication or OD. Anyway, it was scary as hell to see the dude just drop down there.
- Jessica Alba is so cute! She was all smiley and dancing around (as seen here) all dorkily but adorabley. And during the show itself, she was making conversation with [celebrity] audience members. She also said "Hi Mom and Dad" inbetween breaks. Some of her bits (y'know, the spoofs they do for movies that they show during the thing) were a bit MEH but some, like the Topher Grace/Flava Flav pee-pee-gun and the Da Vinci Code spoof were funny.
- Kate Beckinsale = bitch. Didn't even bother acknowledging the red carpet audience, or at least our section.
- We stood right behind these girls during the red carpet thing. O. M. G. They looked like they could be 40 and they were going CRAZY GO NUTS for people like Justin Timberlake. AND they were talking about all their celebrity stalking escapades. I was thinking, errr... aren't you a bit too old for this sorta thing? I mean I used to do this celebrity stalking thing when I was a teenager but even I grew out of that stuff. Hrmm. These girls/women were wayyyyyyyy enthusiastic, it was rather creepy.
- Lot of the celebrities who went to the show didn't even go down the red carpet... like Jim Carey, Adam Sandler, Jake Gyllenhaal, etc.
- These female celebrities are SKINNY! I thought that I had freakishly skinny arms and boney back but I was mistaken. Lots of these actresses are way skinnier in real life than so it appears. And Christina Aguilera must've gone nutsos with the self-tanner/Mystic Tan/etc.
- Speaking of Aguilera, she is a diva. She must've been like "either I go on first so I can leave or I don't show up at all" because they shot the show out of order, with her performance first. She most likely left right after that.
- Celebrities in general seem to never stick around for the entire show, at least the more A list celebrities. By the time the show was coming to a close, it was almost all seat fillers on the bottom "celebrity-level" floor. In between breaks, they all snuck out.
- It is SO OBVIOUS TO KNOW who wins these awards. Surprise my ass. They move the winners for awards to the aisle seat right before they win their award. At least that was the case for Steve Carell and Spike Lee.
- I was 2 rows or so in front of and on the other side of the aisle from "celebrity blogger" Trent from Pink Is The New Blog. I was strangely quite excited about that.
MTV CREW MEMBERS ARE SO DAMN INCOMPETENT!!
Because I signed up for this extra red carpet thing, I didn't go in through the entrance for ticket holders when doors opened for that. So after the red carpet stuff wrapped up, I mosied myself off the bleachers and tried to get out. There, I was greeted by some bitchy ass slut faced MTV worker in a jean mini skirt who barked to me "GET BACK ON THE BLEACHERS!!!!!!!!" before I even uttered my entire sentence. Okay, whatevs. I get back on the steps and wave to the security guard to ask "where do the people with tickets go?". He took my tickets and took a gander at it. Then he showed it to another incompetent and bitchy MTV worker who then also analyzed it. After a few moments, he gives it back to me and say THIS IS WHAT THE TICKET IS FOR. I am like WTF YOU TURD (though obviously I never said that outloud). I said something to the extent of, "uhhh I won a contest from MTV Canada and you think they'd fly me all the way here to suffer in the heat, waiting for hours to stand on a bleacher alongside everyone here who got spots via signing up on a website? FOR FREE?? And who DON'T HAVE FANCY TICKETS LIKE ME???" So then they analyzed the tickets again between the three of them and they obviously thought it was not authentic (even though the security guard had a print out with all the different colors of tickets they had for the show)... seriously, they must think I have a LOT OF TIME ON MY HANDS to make up such an elaborate story and such fancy tickets.
After making us stand in lines with non-ticket holders (rather, seat fillers) and promising to "take care of us" but completely ignoring us likely because those bitches didn't want us to go in, I finally found what appeared to be a more senior MTV worker. She informed me "oh ya, you can go right on in". Jesus CHRIST! It took us what felt like FOREVER to find someone who even knew what a ticket looked like and let us know we could go in. Oy vey.
Inside
Since cameras weren't allowed, I only had the guts to take SOME pics to remember the experience when the show was wrapping up and everyone had pretty much left. So here are some random crappy pics from inside. I DID eventually get caught by security (though I don't know how since none were around, perhaps cameras on the audience) but he just asked if I was videotaping (no) and to make sure not to use the flash (was already doing that).
Borat announcing Gnarls Barkley (who was dressed up as Darth Vadar in a Star Wars themed performance, weirddddddd).
AFI performance (it was on a revolving stage so it was a bit hard to take pics, let alone "stealthly" take pictures)
These are the paintings from the Da Vinci Code spoof -- it's quite funny, especially the ending. Maybe after the show airs, you can watch it somewhere on the internet.
After the awards were done, we got into a super snazzy SUV, the ride we booked earlier, and went back to our hotel. By our hotel was FULL OF LIMOS AND CARS AND PEOPLE. Turned out that there was a Madonna concert right at the Staples Center across the street. DROVES of people blasting Madonna tunes out of their cars around there.
We were hungry so we stopped by a Denny's nearby, where I discovered the most wonderful food invention ever!! THE ULTIMATE BOWL!!
Sautéed ham and mushrooms, chopped onions, green peppers and tomatoes layered on top of two fluffy scrambled eggs. Served over a mound of country-fried potatoes that are covered in our creamy cheese sauce. Topped with shredded Cheddar cheese.
And so, that ends my rather brief trip to Los Angeles. Our flight left L.A. at 12:50 pm Sunday and we got back into T.O. close to midnight (after a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina).
Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos -- LULZ