in which i think i’m doing this!

I’m going to write about Los Angeles now! I don’t know how exciting this’ll be – I hadn’t the chance the days just after returning home because of school, then I spent the next few days after that catching up on the internet, and now it just feels like old news – but I’ll try my best. And I’ll try to remember everything we did (that’s Ashley and me, we) in order of when we did it. But my brain is seventy-eight years old, so who knows.

Wednesday:

Ashley and I forget how time zones work. Game Six of the (dreadful, dreadful) World Series is at eight; only, it’s really at five in west coast time. So, we have a taxi take us straight from the airport to a bar called The Shack (not to be confused with Radio Shack, taxi driver), where Philadelphia sports fan unite as one! We happen upon a (real douche of a) kid we went to high school with, and eventually lose the game and series to the Stankees. Defeated, we make our way to Johnny Rockets and then to our hotel to pass out. It was, roughly, nine at night.

Thursday:
We spring from our beds at seven to start our day (what, it would’ve been ten east coast time!). We have some good grub at Mel’s Drive-in, take a little tour of the museum attached to it, and this may have been the morning we walked through Madame Tussauds? I have no idea.

Because we have tickets to that night’s taping of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and because we have bad luck, we head straight to Universal City/Studios to hang out and ensure we get two spots in the audience. We walk through the “city”, eat some french fries, and meet some Kenneths as we wait in line for hours. And then we made it onto the television! (the bit starts at around 3:10)

I think we ordered Pizza Hut this night.

Friday:
We got a late start this morning (gasp!, eight-thirty!). I was finally having my very first LiveJournal meetup with another Ashley, while she was on break at school (FIDM, anyone?!), but it didn’t work out so smoothly. Confusion off the metro, added to the already mentioned groggy morning, and we only had about twenty minutes together, most of that spent chatting with our mouths full over lunch. I will come back and we will have a proper hang, miss!

On the way back to our quarters, we take a slight detour to Amoeba Records, Baja Fresh, and a Scientology museum! Yikes! We even take a tour! No one said I wasn’t allowed to take pictures during said tour, but I was frightened to.

Saturday:
This day, was tour day: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood Homes, favorite celebrity haunts, and back again – but not before stopping at the Grove for the Glee signing at Barnes & Noble!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We weren’t on the west coast when they gave out the wristbands to get things signed, so we settled for stalking through the children’s book section and taking blurry pictures as they walked by.

I don’t know that we did anything after that. We had to take the tour bus all the way back to the hotel (through the second half of the tour, since we got off in the middle of it) and that was tiring enough.

Sunday:
We find out that we have to get right back on that same tour bus in order to get to Santa Monica (through another tour bus – confusion!). So, we sit through the first half of “celebrity haunts” tour and have some Pinkberry whilest waiting for the Santa Monica bus to bring us to the pier.

After freezing our fingies off on the two tour buses back to Hollywood Boulevard, we go to the absolute greatest place on earth:

I ate this.

And then, luck would be our lady that night, we happen upon the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards arrivals!!! We are late to the game, though, and miss some very important people (Jason Bateman, ZOOEY DESCHANEL!!!!!!!!!), but we do see my current Crush and future husband, as well as two former Crushes, amongst others.

Hallo, Herr Waltz. Ich liebe dich.

Oh, look! It’s Joseph Gordon-Smugface!

Way to focus in on the guy next to Pacey, camera.

We stay outside of the Kodak Theatre/Hollywood & Highland Center area (where these awards were taking place, I guess in a room somewhere?) for a long while, hoping they’d be finished soon; after all, I got that shot of Joshua Jackson as he was leaving. No luck, and I will be forever sad that I missed Zooey.

Monday:
Our final morning in the hotel, our final day in Los Angeles. We take one final bus tour – this time, by ourselves! Not awkward at all! – and hang around atop the Hollywood & Highland Center to get some good views of the Old Dogs premiere.

I want to go here, but their website doesn’t say anything about screenwriting? Even though the poster on the actual building said they have it? Confusion.

We also ate here and invited John Mayer along. He didn’t come.

The weather held up, it was never too hot or cold, and the sun shone just about every second of the day. I’m not one for overdoing the summer season, so it was nice having the springtime it gave. Taking the red eye back home and then going straight into a thirteen hour day of school was absolutely rough, but I survived. And, really, my time out there was pretty magical. I got to see some amazing places and learn some interesting facts about the history of Hollywood. Our “zero celebrities spotted” count was blown away by the ones we finally did end up seeing. And I hope I hope I hope I can be a part of that place soon. I want people to put their hands in my clay ones one day! I’ll be whatever that city needs me to be (in terms of writing scripts, though, which isn’t “whatever” at all).