The L.A. Experience

So far I've gotten the total L.A. experience with Vijay. After getting off the plane and immediately seeing my first celebrity (the annoying guy from that cooking show... no, not Emeril, the other one) we headed to Manhattan Beach for an afternoon beer, and watched the surfers come in as the sun set above the mighty Pacific. Then we met Marcy, whom had quit early off her shoot because the cameraman was being a pill over a broken camera. Marcy worked wardrobe. She was the rarest of breeds (as I was told), a Manhattan beach native, and she loved to tell us about it. She told us about being a "band-aid" (NOT a groupie) back in the 70's and about shooting the Aerosmith video the night before. After being reminded of the band's name (What's that band with Steven Tyler in it?), she told us how bored she had been back stage (it's a tough life) and then announced she was "too old for Aerosmith", to which I replied, "Aerosmith's too old for Aerosmith". In other news, Marcy also started a surfboard company with her ex-husband and then moved to Costa Rica with her son for a year to escape him. The son's now getting married there so the family can all surf. It's amazing how much you can learn about someone in 20 minutes sitting at the bar.

Vijay and I then headed to a Hollywood scotch tasting with the top down in the Miata, but the air wasn't exactly whipping through my hair. No trip to LA is complete without sitting in stop-and-go traffic on the 405,110, 101 and... well all of them. After an hour of that we gave up and ended to the roof bar of the Standard Hotel in downtown L.A. Now this place was L.A.! They had lounge chairs, strange beds, ivy unicorns, a fireplace, a lap pool, scantly clad waitresses and $12 drinks (a days budget in China I might add), and all surrounded by 50 story buildings (we were on 13th floor). It was actually really cool, though surreal. The place was packed for a Wednesday night and the clientel seemed pretty mellow, though the high rollers started showing up as we walked out around nine.

On the way back to Hunnington Beach. Vijay drove me through the port of L.A. which was quite a sight. Empty containers with Chinese characters spread in every direction as far as the eye could see, and the whole place was lit with flood lighting as if it were daytime, drawing untoldmega watts of, apparently, abundant energy. As Vijay said, "nowhere can you see the trade deficit better than here." I would agree with that statement and add that it's a pretty good view of America's generally excessive nature to boot.



Went to the beach today to watch the surfers, and stuck my feet in the water. Next time I'll be on the other side. Leave for Beijing in 9 hours. Will have less reliable access to internet over there I imagine, so my posts will likely get shorter and less frequent, but I'll keep them coming.