Chicken and Waffles...

The Hollywood sign!

What I've eaten since arriving:
2 x tacos
1 x rice and veggies
1 x oatmeal
1 x In-n-Out burger, fries, root beer
1 x Bud Lite
1 x Dodger dog

Aside from the hippie shit, it seems all this country offers are burgers and dogs. I'm sure that's not the case, but having only been here 2 days, that's what's sticking out. There are fast food places ... everywhere. And not just Maccas and KFC and Burger King - oh, no. In fact, I've only seen one or two of each. There is all KINDS of shit - drive-thru Chinese, drive-thru donuts, one thousand burger places, drive-thru tacos, drive-thru chicken, it's all here.

Last night, on the way home from the baseball (more on that in a minute), we passed a big place called Popeye's, offering 'Chicken and Biscuits!'. I laughed, of course, because what the fuck? Chicken and biscuits? Who thought that those two things went together well? The girls asked what I was laughing at and I told them and they were all a little confused. "Yeah, dogg, after some chicken you just want a nice biscuit, with a little butter on it". What? Obviously I kept probing ... American biscuits turn out to be, like, bread. Or something. Flaky, buttery bread. Which makes more sense with chicken, I guess. But then Alyssa informed me that, although in that instance the Chicken-and-Biscuits combination did make sense, there was a place that sold 'Chicken and Waffles!' Chicken being chicken, and waffles being waffles. No translation necessary.



So yesterday was checking out LA - didn't get to Hollywood Blvd (that's tomorrow), but did see a whole bunch of other cool shit. We went to the Getty Museum, which is built up in the hills, and you have to park at the bottom and get a tram up. They had an exhibition of Californian video installation artists, which was interesting.

Me and Allison on the tram up to the Getty.

Then we had lunch at In-n-Out, which was kinda hilarious. The only things they have on the menu are: cheeseburger, hamburger, soda, shakes, fries. That's it. It's totally old-skool, and everything's made fresh on site. The potatoes are cut up every morning and not frozen. The fries come in a little tray. And the burgers taste 'fresh'. It actually wasn't too bad, for burgers - I wanted to giggle every time I ate my chips (fries) and dipped them in my little cup of ketchup, and took a sip of my root beer ... you can't help but feel like it's a movie. I know that sounds so dumb, but it's true!

After lunch we hit Griffith Park and the observatory on top of it, and from there you can see over all of LA. The observatory is the place in Rebel Without a Cause where James Dean's character gets stabbed ... there's a big (ugly) statue of his head and a little plaque. Because it's all built on top of a hill, you've got a 360degree view, which is really stunning - you can even see up to the Hollywood sign! The smog was really shitty yesterday, though, so the pictures aren't great. The whole city just kinda has this grey smoke hovering over its head at all times. It tends to lift toward the end of the day, but the heat's been trapped in all day and it's kinda yuck.

Last night was the Dodger's match, out at Dodger Stadium. Just because I'm on the other side of the world doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy sport any more than I do at home. Having said that, it was fascinating. I was in this weird state of excitement at seeing and experiencing something new, but it also felt really familiar. That's partly to do with the 'vibe' you get at a big stadium match, of any sort I guess - there are people and kids and yelling and sometimes its boring so no-one's watching. The game moves really slowly, though, or at least it did last night. Foul balls here and stupid pitches there, and then once something interesting happens, everyone runs off and has a break. I honestly believe the game was designed so that the spectator can consume as much food and beer as possible. Food is a massive component to the whole experience. I guess it's the equivalent to our pie-and-Coke at the footy - but here there's so much more on offer! You get beer in big cups, and then Dodger dogs (hot dogs), and nachos in big plastic containers (with the grossest melted cheese you've ever seen and tasted ever in the history of forever), and big helmets full of popcorn so you can wear the helmet after you've eaten, and cotton candy, and BUCKETS OF ICE CREAM. Seriously, little buckets. Just smaller than Sara-Lee sized. People sit there and eat the whole thing. It's amazing.



The girls are at work this morning, so I'm here at Portfolio again, having my coffee and writing all this up. It's good, quite comfortable, and nice for someone who is alone, because you can feel like you're part of some little community, even though no-one's interacting with each other. The girls' friend, Kate, who I met the other night, is coming by in a little bit and we're going to have lunch together. Then I'm meeting Allison and Alyssa and their friend Bill, and we're driving out to Salvation Mountain. It's a few hours out of town, and in the desert, so I'm not really sure what to expect. Very exciting, though. I've been looking forward to this for ages! I'm starting to form some ideas about this place, from what little I've seen and experienced. There's a lot of poverty, a lot of shitty and gross areas, and I guess that's the same with every city, but I don't think many cities offer the same kind of 'hope' that LA does, few other places have the kind of weight that LA does - when I think of LA I think of Hollywood, and the OC, and summer, and beaches. That's the myth, I guess, the image it tries to project. Then you see the smog and the gangs and the graffiti and the Mexicans and the poverty. Alyssa told me this great story, which I think maybe starts to sum the whole place up, if you can do that. At the beginning of the 20th Century, whoever was in charge of LA at the time wanted people to start moving here, so they planted a whole lot of palm trees to give the illusion of it being a tropical destination, by the beach. The place was, in fact, a fucking desert, with lots of hills and sand. You see the remains of that on the outskirts, like out near the Hollywood sign, in Hollywoodland (the name of the housing development on the hill where the sign is) and even at the Getty, there's a big cactus garden. The palm trees are still here, though.

Ok. Lunch, the mountain, and then tomorrow the Blvd, with all the Hollywood stars and the Kodak theatre and all that shit. I fly out of here Friday morning, land in New York on Friday evening, about 5.30pm my time. New York is only 14 hours behind Melbourne, compared to LA's 17.

So good to read all your comments ... xd

PS. I don't know if the video below will work ... it's me filming the LA streets out of Alyssa's car window. Let me know if it shows up. I'll take more video, proper ones. x

Long Beach and Soy Lattes...

So I'm here!

Currently staying in Long Beach, California, with Alyssa and Allison, who I met whilst in Europe in 2006. They have this cute little place, a one-bedroom apartment - they sleep in a bunk! - and I've got a 'cot' in there with them.

The flight over was fine, the usual amount of uncomfortable. I was at the back of the plane, where it starts to curve in, so where I was sitting there were 2 seats where there usually should have been 3, so I had a bit of extra room on the window side to stick my legs out. You don't realise how good it is to stretch your legs out fully until you can't do it for fourteen hours! I watched some movies - '27 Dresses' was pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life, as it involved no commitment on my behalf. I tried to watch a few others that were a little too cerebral and I just fell asleep. But then I watched 'Summer Heights High' and 'Frontline' and something with Jamie Oliver - that was all fine, really good short snippets, and when you watch 5 episodes, all of a sudden you've killed 2.5 hours!

The queue (they call it a 'line', here - I kept talking about queues and the girls had no idea what I was on about) at LAX to go through customs was crazy, probably about an hours wait just to get passports checked and be quizzed about your intentions. What do you do at home? How long are you staying? Who are you staying with? On and on and on. The only saving grace was that Delta - THE Delta Goodrem - was in line behind me. She was on the flight from Sydney that came in after ours, and she must have been first off, because I was last off my flight, so we connected in the queue/line. I looked up and saw this bitch in fancy clothes and kinda went "Whatever, who wears that on a plane?" I still had crumbs and omelette on me from breakfast, mind you. Then I did a double take and realised who it was. She was standing and talking in a very public way, her eyes not connecting with any of the plebs, but her head up and shoulders back so we could allll see who she was. Nice.

Speaking of nice. There was this American woman on the plane, sitting just across from me. Spent half the flight laughing out loud to what ever she was watching, about ten times louder than she needed to. Everyone's sleeping and she's cackling away like it's the last time she'll ever laugh again. The first time I heard it, it woke me with such ferocity that I thought the plane was going down. Her conversations were loud, too. Everyone's gotta hear.

Yesterday the girls took me to lunch (that's them over on the side - Allison with the lollypop, Stacey's blonde, and Alyssa just graduated from College last week). We went to this little mexican place, and we got tacos and Coronas and the service was amazing, people just DOTE on you. Then I sorted my phone situation out - I have a number, it's 562-279-4641 - and then we went out to San Pedro, which is kinda a poorer district where lots of Mexicans live, and we went to see the Korean Bell and sat on the hill, which has ocean views on three sides ... beautiful. Excecpt the smog kinda prevents you from seeing anything too far into the distance. It's so smoggy! The pollution here is terrible, and kinda sits on top of the city, trapping in the heat. So even if it's not sunny, you feel sticky. It seems to get better as the day progresses, though.





That's us at the Korean Bell.


Last night the girls made mushrooms and rice and asparagus for dinner (they're vegetarians) and their friend Kate came over to eat with us. We watched Planet Earth documentaries and freaked out at elephants being eaten by lions and had some sangria and talked about crocodiles. It was ace. Later on, their friends Bill and Lindsay came over.Today we're going to go hang out in LA, on the Walk of Fame with all the Hollywood stars and shit, and then we're going to see a baseball match, the Dodgers and some other team. That's really exciting me - chilli dogs and beers in cups and peanuts and nacho hats! Tomorrow I think we're going to Salvation Mountain in the afternoon, and then Thursday we might go to Disneyland or do some other stuff. I fly out for New York on Friday.

I'm writing this from a little coffee shop called Portfolio, and it's like an indie Starbucks. All the coffees are still at least a litre of milk, and the emphasis seems to be on milk rather than coffee itself. I just got a latte, and it's not bad. I got a small and it's still the size of my face. Everyone is pretty much here by themselves, on their laptops or cell phones, but in this incredible performative way - whilst they're all alone, no-one's really 'alone' in that they're in their own world. There's a lot of 'presenting' hapenning, loud conversations on phones or very grand sweeps of the hair as arty looking people try to express frustration at their writer's block without words. Everyone's writing a screenplay, probably.

I should go, but I'll finish just by saying that it really is like being in a film or something. All the cliche images of LA exist - the really wide roads running along the water, the streetlights that hang over in the middle of the lanes, the hanging street signs, the palm trees, the muted pastel colours ... it's bizarre. The supermarket next to the girls' apartment is like Officeworks or something, warehouse-sized with enormous displays for odd things. Like, a sausage meat aisle. A whole freakin aisle for sausage meat. And cheese! I pointed at it and laughed and the girls said "Haven't you ever had cheddar before?" and I insisted that I had, but it was just a nice normal colour, not fluro fuckin orange.

Nothing too outrageous has hapenned yet, but I live in hope. Text me, ya bums!

xd