you make me feel like i am home again.
Oh, hi. Yeah, Lost Angles didn't kill me. It might have eaten a bit of my soul, though.
(Possibly this is just because it was a real city. Like, it was just like any city. Hollywood Boulevard is like Granville Street with more souvenir shops and fewer buses. SHRUG.)
friday:
I had the day off work, hurray. The bf and I took my car to the 'rents' so I'd have a ride home on Monday night, then he took me to the airport. I did not die.
I spent way too much money on Starbucks and a fruit salad and some Canadian flag things to put on my stuff.
I set up camp at my gate and read The Great Gatsby for a while (dude, I kind of want a bandom version, except that it's so fucking close to real that it'd just be changing the names around).
ANYWAY. I saw this tall, scruffy guy on the courtesy phone at the flight information monolith and was like, "Huh, he's kind of hot from behind." And it was Jeffrey Dean Morgan. No, seriously, it was. He is much leaner through the face in person. And he was wearing a really beautiful leather jeacket. I wanted to lick it. Um.
So, turns out he was on my flight and I had to walk past him (in Executive Class at the front of the plane) on my way to my seat. He was talking on his cell phone, like, "I love it! I love it!" His voice is better in person. I KNOW IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE but it's true.
Steve Aoki was also on my flight, in Economy (two rows ahead of me!). He had the most awesomest green headphones ever omg. Hopefully somebody out there on the flist will care that I saw him, because everyone IRL has been like, "Who? Tell me about Jeffrey Dean Morgan's ass again." (I DIDN'T LOOK, SHUT UP.)
I arrived in LA and walked approximately fifteen miles to the shuttle bus stop. After the bus picked me up, we drove a stop right beside the door by which I exited the terminal. HAHA on bj. A very large group of very large middle-aged people from some southern state got on the bus at the end of the route. Quelle annoyance, except for their jungle print luggage matching that of the fabulously beautiful transwoman who got on a few stops after me (the shuttle bus stops ninety-eight times along the arrivals side of the terminal).
There was a minor snafu at the hotel, resulting in Panicked Phone Call To kres #1. When I got upstairs, I realised that spikess had already checked in, and also that I was a big loser (unrelatedly).
Registered, using my CareCard for ID because I left my driver's license in my passport folder upstairs. I'm awesome, you know I am. Got awesome con swag. AWESOME. CON. SWAG. Believe me when I say this, for it is true.
Prepped the panel with femmenerd and onelittlesleep, and it was fun. Realised I probably wouldn't have much to add except, "Hai not everyone in fandom is a gurl okay," and, "GENDERSWAP IS THE WRONG NAME."
Ate McDonald's for dinner 'cause I am, as stated, a big loser. Hung out with spikess and kres for a while, then slept. For really not a very long time, oops.
saturday:
Had breakfast, and minor angst over whether the potatoes had bacon in them. Decided not to chance it and had many, many slices of epic French toast instead (Aunt Jemima syrup, omg!). Apparently the tea and coffee tasted exactly the same, which is strange yet believable. I will admit I became somewhat addicted to the superstrong tea the hotel served.
Killed time before the panel at noon, including a twenty-minute conversation with halfway2home that is going to result in my phone bill imploding next month. Yay.
Did the panel at noon. My realisation of the night before was sadly borne out, with added need for shouting, "Con is not for wank!" after I said something about female monsters being obliterated for redemption not being the same as male monsters being obliterated for the hell of it and the audience basically rioting (or something. It was something stupid I said while I was talking about female monsters, anyway). Also put my foot in my mouth by saying everyone watching the panel was female approximately two seconds after saying it's bad to assume everyone in fandom is female. *hands of hypocrisy*
Also, I fail because I didn't see last week's episode, and oh wow was it apparently important to the whole female monsters thing. Whatever!
One person contributed by saying, basically: "I am not attracted to the actresses playing female monsters on the show, therefore female monsters on the show are not sexualised." Wait, what?
OH OH! I got to mention, though it probably went unheard in the melee, how Dean was fucking the shapeshifter in "Nightshifter" as he was stabbing her! I win!
Anyway, femmenerd and onelittlesleep were awesome and rocked really hard. Like, seriously. Really, really hard. A million points to them.
The panel was taped, and if everyone consents, it'll be up on the website. I'll post a link if that happens, and you can watch me fuck up and my co-panelists be awesome.
The rest of Saturday was--the Ethics panel, which was really, really cool. I didn't mind it turning into The John Show, because it covered for the badwrong definitions of "moral" vs. "ethical" given at the top of the panel. And also, there are very, very few people in the world with whom I'm interested in discussing Dean's ethics/morality. (desertport, spikess, and dragojustine are apparently among them. You join estrellada in the celebrated ranks, new people! Rejoice!)
Saturday afternoon was also the vid show recap, sans karaoke. Most of the vids were truly awesome. I think I could watch "Women's Work" every day for a year and not complain (it doesn't hurt that I really, really love the song, ha). And some sort of fic readaloud thing I skipped, and a bandom room party I totally missed, and dinner, which was very yummy.
I'd been lassoed by unperfectwolf into going to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror in Santa Monica with a bunch of people, so I did that. At the door, they did a "weapons check" (they frisked us, let's call a shovel a shovel). For some reason, possibly legitimately legal, possibly not, you never know with America, women could only be frisked by women, and men could only be frisked by men. I got in the line I was comfortable in, and when I got up to the front, I was told to switch to the women's line.
I did it with only a little shouting, because seriously, best case scenario of serious resistance was not being able to see the show and having to sit outside the theatre for three hours. Worst case? Let's not even fucking talk about it.
The head of security kept asking me if I was a man or a woman, trying to get me to admit that I belonged in the line to which he assigned me. Fuck that noise, man. It's none of his fucking business "what" I am (I am a WHO, goddammit, not a WHAT). I ignored him and submitted to being frisked by a little thing in a PVC corset. She took one look at my Harry and the Potters shirt, went, "Oh my god I love them!" and hugged me.
She hugged me. After I had been forced to switch lines over fears of sexual harrassment lawsuits or some such shit. Like, what the fucking fuck.
WHATEVER.
The show was fun and great, but kind of sour for me, because every time the cast said "fuck society," or there was a wonderfully subversive joke, my head was saying, "Yes, until even the queers want to put you in a box, and heaven help you if you don't go into the box they think you should."
So. Yeah. That happened. I lived. It was the first time I've ever been unprivileged. It was weird and I feel kind of gross just thinking about it. I didn't like it. I don't want it to happen again. It probably will.
Anyway. Got back to the hotel at three-thirty, went to sleep right away.
sunday:
Breakfast! Same as the day before, without ambiguous potatoes and Aunt Jemima. The fake syrup had "vanillin" in it. What the fuck is "vanillin"?
Helped with the clothing swap, except not really. There wasn't much to do after I put my stuff out. I picked up a couple of t-shirts and a nice sweater, though.
Hung out with desertport for quite a while, talking about this and that, and we were joined presently by dragojustine, and intermittently by femmenerd. It was a nice morning, once I got myself a cup of tea.
I spoke to coiledsoul for about three minutes, which I think was actually my fair share of her time, considering how many people were there, ha.
Then the con was over omg! kerfect picked me up, and we were followed downtown by kres and her friend. We attempted to go to MOCA at the Pacific Design Center, but they were between exhibits (I missed their new Emory Douglas exhibit by a week. DAMMIT) so I got a chapbook and a wee book of Dada photographs instead.
We walked all around (or, up and down a few blocks of) West Hollywood and had Quizno's for lunch, after one of those weird conversations where everyone's like, "Oh I don't want to make a decision, I don't care, just do what you all like." Oh, hi, trying to go out for dinner with a bunch of bottoms. Whee.
Then we went to Hollywood Boulevard, and it was FUN. kres and her friend went off, and kerfect tolerated me being a big dumb tourist at Grauman's Chinese Theatre (I took about a zillion pictures. I want to put together a book of all the cowboys for my dad's birthday, aw). And then we walked up and down for a bit. The stars on the Walk of Fame do not all point the same way. It drove my OCD absolutely batty, I have to say.
All this time, I was trying to figure out a way to get from the LA Zoo back to the hotel after going up to the Griffith Observatory that night. I remembered that kres had a Metro map, so we had Panicked Phone Call To kres #2 and #3, and met up with her once more to get the map and say goodbye before she headed to the airport to go home.
kerfect and I picked up halfway2home for In-N-Out Burger, and it was SO GOOD. You have no idea. It's made better in my memory by my realisation that we went to the same one Patrick went to when he drove around LA for his stupidawesome HCT promo thing. Anyway. AWESOME BURGERS, okay.
Then we drove up to the zoo to drop me off, foresaking The Guitar Center, Amoeba, and other wonderful things (I'm sorry!). And it turned out there actually is no way to get from the zoo to the hotel by public transit. EXCELLENT. Oh well. The ticket was only seven dollars, and now I obviously have to go back to LA at some point. Of course!
Blahblahblah, kerfect and halfway2home are also awesome, and I'm very glad I finally got to meet them.
When I arrived back in my room (MAGICALLY), I found that spikess had also gone home! Quelle surprise! So I lounged about, had more McDonald's for second dinner, and fell asleep by nine (I'd had probably nine hours of sleep all weekend, and I am OLD and used to sleeping on a real old person's schedule, also).
monday:
Lazed about until ten, had pecan pancakes for breakfast (yummy!), realised every single staff person at the hotel was Hispanic (wtf, America), packed up, watched Grosse Point Blank because I was having a John Cusack moment and High Fidelity was not on TNT, checked out, left the same way I came--on a goddamn shuttle bus.
I did the horrible thing that I hate when other people do it: I bought souvenirs in the airport. OH THE TACKY.
There were no famous people on my flight home--that I noticed. There were silly Americans sitting behind me, however, and they expressed abject confusion every time the flight attendants repeated announcements in French.
When I was finally back in Canadia, I dropped my passport. No, seriously, I lost it. Between the baggage claim and the exit (there are two security points in that span, and you can't go all the way back to baggage, which makes sense). I reported it to Customs, and as the guy was giving me a number to call, the Lost & Found paged me. Some wonderful person had turned in my passport, huzzah. YAY NO GOVERNMENT PAPERWORK.
(Hello, my name is bj, and I am a national security threat. Go me!)
My mom drove me from the airport to the 'rents' place, I distributed presents, and then I got in my own car and drove HOME.
The bf missed me a lot and gave me big hugs when he got home from work.
THE END.
---
Yeah, I'm thinking I'll go back down sometime for a few days. Stay closer to the actual city, rent a car, etc. How I wish I had more than two weeks' vacation. Blah.
Bye.
(Possibly this is just because it was a real city. Like, it was just like any city. Hollywood Boulevard is like Granville Street with more souvenir shops and fewer buses. SHRUG.)
friday:
I had the day off work, hurray. The bf and I took my car to the 'rents' so I'd have a ride home on Monday night, then he took me to the airport. I did not die.
I spent way too much money on Starbucks and a fruit salad and some Canadian flag things to put on my stuff.
I set up camp at my gate and read The Great Gatsby for a while (dude, I kind of want a bandom version, except that it's so fucking close to real that it'd just be changing the names around).
ANYWAY. I saw this tall, scruffy guy on the courtesy phone at the flight information monolith and was like, "Huh, he's kind of hot from behind." And it was Jeffrey Dean Morgan. No, seriously, it was. He is much leaner through the face in person. And he was wearing a really beautiful leather jeacket. I wanted to lick it. Um.
So, turns out he was on my flight and I had to walk past him (in Executive Class at the front of the plane) on my way to my seat. He was talking on his cell phone, like, "I love it! I love it!" His voice is better in person. I KNOW IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE but it's true.
Steve Aoki was also on my flight, in Economy (two rows ahead of me!). He had the most awesomest green headphones ever omg. Hopefully somebody out there on the flist will care that I saw him, because everyone IRL has been like, "Who? Tell me about Jeffrey Dean Morgan's ass again." (I DIDN'T LOOK, SHUT UP.)
I arrived in LA and walked approximately fifteen miles to the shuttle bus stop. After the bus picked me up, we drove a stop right beside the door by which I exited the terminal. HAHA on bj. A very large group of very large middle-aged people from some southern state got on the bus at the end of the route. Quelle annoyance, except for their jungle print luggage matching that of the fabulously beautiful transwoman who got on a few stops after me (the shuttle bus stops ninety-eight times along the arrivals side of the terminal).
There was a minor snafu at the hotel, resulting in Panicked Phone Call To kres #1. When I got upstairs, I realised that spikess had already checked in, and also that I was a big loser (unrelatedly).
Registered, using my CareCard for ID because I left my driver's license in my passport folder upstairs. I'm awesome, you know I am. Got awesome con swag. AWESOME. CON. SWAG. Believe me when I say this, for it is true.
Prepped the panel with femmenerd and onelittlesleep, and it was fun. Realised I probably wouldn't have much to add except, "Hai not everyone in fandom is a gurl okay," and, "GENDERSWAP IS THE WRONG NAME."
Ate McDonald's for dinner 'cause I am, as stated, a big loser. Hung out with spikess and kres for a while, then slept. For really not a very long time, oops.
saturday:
Had breakfast, and minor angst over whether the potatoes had bacon in them. Decided not to chance it and had many, many slices of epic French toast instead (Aunt Jemima syrup, omg!). Apparently the tea and coffee tasted exactly the same, which is strange yet believable. I will admit I became somewhat addicted to the superstrong tea the hotel served.
Killed time before the panel at noon, including a twenty-minute conversation with halfway2home that is going to result in my phone bill imploding next month. Yay.
Did the panel at noon. My realisation of the night before was sadly borne out, with added need for shouting, "Con is not for wank!" after I said something about female monsters being obliterated for redemption not being the same as male monsters being obliterated for the hell of it and the audience basically rioting (or something. It was something stupid I said while I was talking about female monsters, anyway). Also put my foot in my mouth by saying everyone watching the panel was female approximately two seconds after saying it's bad to assume everyone in fandom is female. *hands of hypocrisy*
Also, I fail because I didn't see last week's episode, and oh wow was it apparently important to the whole female monsters thing. Whatever!
One person contributed by saying, basically: "I am not attracted to the actresses playing female monsters on the show, therefore female monsters on the show are not sexualised." Wait, what?
OH OH! I got to mention, though it probably went unheard in the melee, how Dean was fucking the shapeshifter in "Nightshifter" as he was stabbing her! I win!
Anyway, femmenerd and onelittlesleep were awesome and rocked really hard. Like, seriously. Really, really hard. A million points to them.
The panel was taped, and if everyone consents, it'll be up on the website. I'll post a link if that happens, and you can watch me fuck up and my co-panelists be awesome.
The rest of Saturday was--the Ethics panel, which was really, really cool. I didn't mind it turning into The John Show, because it covered for the badwrong definitions of "moral" vs. "ethical" given at the top of the panel. And also, there are very, very few people in the world with whom I'm interested in discussing Dean's ethics/morality. (desertport, spikess, and dragojustine are apparently among them. You join estrellada in the celebrated ranks, new people! Rejoice!)
Saturday afternoon was also the vid show recap, sans karaoke. Most of the vids were truly awesome. I think I could watch "Women's Work" every day for a year and not complain (it doesn't hurt that I really, really love the song, ha). And some sort of fic readaloud thing I skipped, and a bandom room party I totally missed, and dinner, which was very yummy.
I'd been lassoed by unperfectwolf into going to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror in Santa Monica with a bunch of people, so I did that. At the door, they did a "weapons check" (they frisked us, let's call a shovel a shovel). For some reason, possibly legitimately legal, possibly not, you never know with America, women could only be frisked by women, and men could only be frisked by men. I got in the line I was comfortable in, and when I got up to the front, I was told to switch to the women's line.
I did it with only a little shouting, because seriously, best case scenario of serious resistance was not being able to see the show and having to sit outside the theatre for three hours. Worst case? Let's not even fucking talk about it.
The head of security kept asking me if I was a man or a woman, trying to get me to admit that I belonged in the line to which he assigned me. Fuck that noise, man. It's none of his fucking business "what" I am (I am a WHO, goddammit, not a WHAT). I ignored him and submitted to being frisked by a little thing in a PVC corset. She took one look at my Harry and the Potters shirt, went, "Oh my god I love them!" and hugged me.
She hugged me. After I had been forced to switch lines over fears of sexual harrassment lawsuits or some such shit. Like, what the fucking fuck.
WHATEVER.
The show was fun and great, but kind of sour for me, because every time the cast said "fuck society," or there was a wonderfully subversive joke, my head was saying, "Yes, until even the queers want to put you in a box, and heaven help you if you don't go into the box they think you should."
So. Yeah. That happened. I lived. It was the first time I've ever been unprivileged. It was weird and I feel kind of gross just thinking about it. I didn't like it. I don't want it to happen again. It probably will.
Anyway. Got back to the hotel at three-thirty, went to sleep right away.
sunday:
Breakfast! Same as the day before, without ambiguous potatoes and Aunt Jemima. The fake syrup had "vanillin" in it. What the fuck is "vanillin"?
Helped with the clothing swap, except not really. There wasn't much to do after I put my stuff out. I picked up a couple of t-shirts and a nice sweater, though.
Hung out with desertport for quite a while, talking about this and that, and we were joined presently by dragojustine, and intermittently by femmenerd. It was a nice morning, once I got myself a cup of tea.
I spoke to coiledsoul for about three minutes, which I think was actually my fair share of her time, considering how many people were there, ha.
Then the con was over omg! kerfect picked me up, and we were followed downtown by kres and her friend. We attempted to go to MOCA at the Pacific Design Center, but they were between exhibits (I missed their new Emory Douglas exhibit by a week. DAMMIT) so I got a chapbook and a wee book of Dada photographs instead.
We walked all around (or, up and down a few blocks of) West Hollywood and had Quizno's for lunch, after one of those weird conversations where everyone's like, "Oh I don't want to make a decision, I don't care, just do what you all like." Oh, hi, trying to go out for dinner with a bunch of bottoms. Whee.
Then we went to Hollywood Boulevard, and it was FUN. kres and her friend went off, and kerfect tolerated me being a big dumb tourist at Grauman's Chinese Theatre (I took about a zillion pictures. I want to put together a book of all the cowboys for my dad's birthday, aw). And then we walked up and down for a bit. The stars on the Walk of Fame do not all point the same way. It drove my OCD absolutely batty, I have to say.
All this time, I was trying to figure out a way to get from the LA Zoo back to the hotel after going up to the Griffith Observatory that night. I remembered that kres had a Metro map, so we had Panicked Phone Call To kres #2 and #3, and met up with her once more to get the map and say goodbye before she headed to the airport to go home.
kerfect and I picked up halfway2home for In-N-Out Burger, and it was SO GOOD. You have no idea. It's made better in my memory by my realisation that we went to the same one Patrick went to when he drove around LA for his stupidawesome HCT promo thing. Anyway. AWESOME BURGERS, okay.
Then we drove up to the zoo to drop me off, foresaking The Guitar Center, Amoeba, and other wonderful things (I'm sorry!). And it turned out there actually is no way to get from the zoo to the hotel by public transit. EXCELLENT. Oh well. The ticket was only seven dollars, and now I obviously have to go back to LA at some point. Of course!
Blahblahblah, kerfect and halfway2home are also awesome, and I'm very glad I finally got to meet them.
When I arrived back in my room (MAGICALLY), I found that spikess had also gone home! Quelle surprise! So I lounged about, had more McDonald's for second dinner, and fell asleep by nine (I'd had probably nine hours of sleep all weekend, and I am OLD and used to sleeping on a real old person's schedule, also).
monday:
Lazed about until ten, had pecan pancakes for breakfast (yummy!), realised every single staff person at the hotel was Hispanic (wtf, America), packed up, watched Grosse Point Blank because I was having a John Cusack moment and High Fidelity was not on TNT, checked out, left the same way I came--on a goddamn shuttle bus.
I did the horrible thing that I hate when other people do it: I bought souvenirs in the airport. OH THE TACKY.
There were no famous people on my flight home--that I noticed. There were silly Americans sitting behind me, however, and they expressed abject confusion every time the flight attendants repeated announcements in French.
When I was finally back in Canadia, I dropped my passport. No, seriously, I lost it. Between the baggage claim and the exit (there are two security points in that span, and you can't go all the way back to baggage, which makes sense). I reported it to Customs, and as the guy was giving me a number to call, the Lost & Found paged me. Some wonderful person had turned in my passport, huzzah. YAY NO GOVERNMENT PAPERWORK.
(Hello, my name is bj, and I am a national security threat. Go me!)
My mom drove me from the airport to the 'rents' place, I distributed presents, and then I got in my own car and drove HOME.
The bf missed me a lot and gave me big hugs when he got home from work.
THE END.
---
Yeah, I'm thinking I'll go back down sometime for a few days. Stay closer to the actual city, rent a car, etc. How I wish I had more than two weeks' vacation. Blah.
Bye.