Los Angeles January 2009

where do i start?

ok, so we got here, LAX was ass, shnidy’s room had been double booked, and after a few weeks of planning - almost everyone i was going to meet fell through. a good friend of mine basically boiled it down to this: she would do what she could for me, but life in LA between last year’s WGA strike and the looming SAG strike has slowed to a crawl, come out and enjoy it, but don’t move yet. brutal. the arrival was rapidly followed by a headcold, which i chased with some tequila, and by 8pm ended up in bed... um, only to be woken by Shnidy and Enzo to head out to Pasendena.

when the night came to its end, Chris and Enzo left me stumbling through the hotel guards, who eventually were sent by the front desk to watch over me as i slept in the hallway outside my room. eventually they woke Hurl, and i literally crawled past him and to my room and into bed. ‘the gentleman’ slept well, but aggravated his cold, which intensified the hangover.

the only guy to take my planned meeting was Mick at Creative Artists. we made the connection via family, and easily this man has equaled my friend with his words but kind efforts in one conversation. i have to say that while i knew going into the meeting we wouldn’t do any business, he was still a great guy to meet, and his offers to help in the ways he could were nothing short of awesome.

after that meeting, i get back to the hotel to find out that the hotel had given Chris the penthouse suite to make up for their double booking his room the night before. can all the babies say PHAT?

Shnidy (Chris) had come out with Hurl and I so that we could head out to Pasedena and meet some gamer friends we knew on Saturday night. awesome group of guys, and in some ways, not what we expected at all. the personalities in person were even more inviting that we had imagined, great people, and i hope to see them again on my next visit. that night got a touch out of hand, and resulted in my passing out in the car the instant after Chris got in the driver’s seat. luckily, chris used Neverlost and some of his old school instincts to get us back to the hotel. apparently at one point he got completely lost in Beverly Hills in a rented car that took him to the wrong location with me rumored to be dangling out the passenger window. he still got us home, i knew he still had it in him.

again making it past security, this time Chris left me leaning up against the elevators which are disabled after nightfall. ‘the gentleman’ was escorted by his assigned guardians again to his room, and security was kind enough to make sure i had a bottle of water and two glasses on the nightstand in case i woke up and needed refreshment.

seriously, the staff at Chateau Marmont is second to none, especially security.

for our last day we trekked to Malibu for brunch at Geoffry’s overlooking the beach. it was gorgeous... as Chicago and St. Louis froze through a national chill that had left them in the single digits and negative wind-chills, i was in cargo shorts and a loose linen shirt glowing in the mid-day sunny view of the Pacific. i had the seafood paella, which included a scallop the size of a hockey puck.

LAX was even more of a nightmare coming home - for one of the country’s busiest airports, they need to really do something about that single file line nonsense in the American Airlines terminal to get past the security screeners. c’mon people, if we are slowed down like this, the terrorists won.

overall the trip rocked... sure, i didn’t get to meet with most of the people i’d planned on meeting, and actually had to miss some of the people that tried to see me socially - but i’m scheduled to go back at the end of February, see more, do more, and have hopefully as great a time. now... let’s see if we can get that whole ‘entertainment industry slowdown’ issue resolved.

the chateau marmont

thank god for good friends...

Hurl had a business trip, and I’d been harassing him to exploit these many many work-related travels into something he will enjoy and forever remember. for this, he invited me to join him on his next, where he booked a 2 bedroom suite at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset in Los Angeles.

this place is an icon of pop culture in many ways, located right in the center of pop culture’s roots and famous for its past visitors and their murky doings. i’m really trying to take advantage of the trip to see what i can find and who i can talk to about getting more involved out here in LA... but really, things have fallen apart as far as doing that, so I’m enjoying this place as much as i can. and so far, it kinda rocks.

the broken chair

many moons ago, Hurl spent close to $1000 for a desk chair - i really good desk chair, called an Aeron. it was money well spent for anyone who sits at his desk a lot... or just has a lot of free money to blow on chairs. then the chair broke.

he decided it had run its course, hauled it outside meaning to take it to the curb one day to be removed by the garbage man, but laziness got the better of him - thank god. and instead he gifted the old & busted to me.

with a few moments of effort and some help from the local snootchy office chair people, i got this glorious piece of office couture repaired and it now sits gloriously under my heavenly rump. i hope to be so rich some day that i can buy chairs like this and not think twice about it... but never lose the base thinking that reminds me that often you can just get things fixed.

c’mon baby new year!

ok, lets face it, as lucky as we all are - 2008 had a hitch at every corner. but, lets face it - 20 years ago we were all a bunch of fools who had no idea what we were doing, and what a problem was. our parents paid our bills, we followed the plan... school... etc. now we have careers and ideas, and situations that impact or are impacted by other people.

when you factor all that in, and realize that doing things can cost you in time or money you don’t have, and that time and money are actually important factors, and then the people - problems.

i did the math, and so far in my commuting to Chicago, i spent a solid month on a train - a MONTH of my life roughly in 2008 inside a big shiny metal penis traveling at 80mph through the back-country of Illinois. while this was going on, life was happening for people who’d planned sooner, etc. and in the end, we faced the end of another year...

progress wasn’t huge for 2008, in fact, as a country we stepped backwards a bit economically and fiscally, in a way which could have drastic impacts on 2009. but for now, we all took a break, met at Hurl’s, had a few drinks, some of us spent some time in the hottub (ok, just me), and we all rang in the new year.

there will be a day when all the things we’re worrying about won’t matter. on that day, i hope to remember only times like this.