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Fag University

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Hollywood

The California trip blog continues...  

Part One: The Hotel

Dave and I decided that we needed to stay somewhere fun and swanky since we were only going to be in California for a few days. The W was booked so we opted for The Standard, a West Hollywood boutique hotel full of hipsters. 

So I've never, ever been at a place where I've used valet services--it just seems too lazy and weird to me--but we had to use it at the hotel to park.  The only reason I bring this up is because we rented a Chevy Cobalt and it was totally and utterly out of place from the other guests' lux sedans, but I suppose we all kind of felt that way the entire time we were at the hotel anyway.  The hotel is, as you can probably tell from the pictures, a bit self-conscious of how cool it is/wants to be.  I have nothing wrong with this, and in fact, it's probably what attracted me to it. So when we checked in, we immediately noticed the Cactus lounge was full of the beautiful and the well-dressed. A bit intimidating, actually.  So we checked into our room, took turns sitting in the silver bean bag chair, and played with the thermostat which only read: blow "hard" on one side, and blow "harder" on the other (heh).  

So then it was off to the pool. This was the closest thing I've ever been to being on another planet--uncomfortable on the one hand, fascinating on the other.  Again, I wish I would have taken pictures: this was a land of the very privileged 20 somethings. It was kind of like going to a really horrible cliquey high school dance if your high school was filled with the cast of The Hills.  Instead of bolting, we sat down and had $12 cocktails. After taking everything in for a while, the landscape seemed to come into better view. While at first glance everyone was amazing looking, there were just as many ordinary people there too. Of course, as I told Dan, for all anyone knew, we could have been the sons of billionaires who burned money to sleep at night, so no one was really looking at us knowing we were Nebraskans utterly out of our element. The experience, to me, was like being inside a Brett Easton Ellis novel--a mini Less Than Zero all there to mull over. In fact, I think having read so much Ellis made me appreciate the scene at hand even more. The over-sexed tan hotties in the pool with their $50 pitchers endlessly smoking could have come right out of the novel. I know my coping mechanism is supposing that everyone was coked up and had totally unhappy, empty lives,but it's just as likely that they have everything they want and are well adjusted wonderful people.

On our last day at the hotel, I decided that another trip to the pool was in order.  Since it was Sunday morning, there were only a few people around, mostly maids in pink uniforms vacuuming the blue astroturf back and forth.  A couple sat across from me on the other side of the pool. They were mid-20s and pretty in a "we-have-money" kind of way. The woman pulled out a script from her large Louis Vuitton tote and began to study it, mimosas were ordered, sun tan lotion applied, and then he read Wired, frequently breaking off to read passages of the article to her. Above them, patio doors opened, the hotel guests were waking, smoking, getting ready for another day in LA. Then, more mimosas. What a life. 

The last picture below, by the way, is when we arrived back at the hotel around midnight. The glass box behind the front desk was occupied with a girl who apparently just sat there looking at the Internet. I think she must sleep there, too. I told you it was too hip.  So, in the spirit of the hotel, I have a picture of me trying to be too hip in the hotel. 

Part 2: Holyfuckingshit, it's radonkulous

Thanks to one of Dan's colleagues at his conference, we had a new term to throw around during our trip: radonkulous.  It's like ridiculous, but on a much grander scale.  There were many things we saw in California that fit this definition to a T, especially the film festival we happened to find as we drove by the Silent Movie Theatre.  They host a Saturday night filmfestival called Holyfuckingshit that features--exactly--the kind of B-VHS movies we enjoy on weekends.  The night we were there, they screened The Story of Ricki-Oh. The link will show you some highlights. It was a great group of fun people, and the movie along with the previews, including Night of the Lepus and Bugs, were really funny. 

A few other radonkulous items to report:

Driving into the Hollywood and Vine area, we spotted Marilyn Monroe walking her dog. There was something so, well, pedestrian about seeing her on the sidewalk, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary in seeing a long-dead celebrity walking her dog. So truly wonderful.

When walking down Hollywood, we found this great bar called the 

The walls were great, full of Hollywood icons, inlcuding

LA was fun, radonkulously fun.

The anticipated second entry--Specifically, the Pacific

After such a great kick off to my blog, I have been really bad about updating. I hope the photo at least offers some explanation as to what I have been up to (and it proves that I was thinking about the blog in California!).  Now that I'm back, I have been wasting even more time (different obsessions, future blogs). 

The picture was taken at Point Dume in Malibu. The day was perfect for the beach, although it would have helped had we thought to bring any kind of beach-going staples with us--namely towels--but in our defense we had only been in California for a few hours, not sure what our first stop was. After a few trips off the Interstate we scored no towels, although we did keep seeing places like Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond off in the distance. We could only surmise that they were indeed beyond our reach because when we backtracked for them, they were no where to be seen. We tried one of the largest 99 cent stores I have ever seen, but they only seemed to carry massive quantities of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble DVD (in Spanish, even better). 

So we nevertheless made it to Point Dume after twisting and winding around the PCH for a few miles--every inch is like the most amazing postcard, one blending into the next. For someone who has lived his adult life on the Plains, the Pacific Ocean was breathtaking. Actually, it was breathtaking once the first wave hit me and threw me back a few feet. I was pretty hesitant about getting far out into the water--I have always seen surfers on TV diving in to waves and it looks so seamlessly easy, but in person the water is heavy, powerful, and well, moving faster than it looks when you are daydreaming on the beach, thinking it's just a massive pretty picture. Dave and Dan got pretty far out. I will vividly remember the image of Dan inside a wave for a split second, and Dave's head bobbing in and out of the grayish-blue water. 

Once we got out, we dried off on the beach, using our shirts as towels.  The sun was warmer only a few yards away from the ocean.  Dan had work to do with his podcast (those are his feet above), so Dave and I decided to walk along the beach, headed toward the "point" of rocks that jet out into the ocean and presumably gives Point Dume its name. By this time it was late afternoon and people were headed home so there weren't many people to walk around as we headed toward the rocks.  The houses on the cliff above the beach were so strange to see in person--yes, people live in this kind of splendor every day--I just can't image that.   These houses are the kinds of places that Joan Didion rented in the '70s and writes about in The White Album (the newer '80s and '90s houses, however, are the kind  you'd find in say, a Lifetime movie or an episode of Silk Stalkings had it been set in California and not Florida). 

 

We walked a lot further than we thought and finally ended up at the rocks. I took some pictures, and Dave took one of me:

As you can see, getting to the craggy point was pretty cool.  Of course a long walk to means a long walk back, and I must say that walking in sand isn't easy, but it was a lot fun.

After reuniting with Dan, we drove (about 50 yards, ha) over to a very 70s looking restaurant/bar fittingly called The Sunset (right of the red Hummer in the picture above).  We enjoyed a fruity drinky treat that the bartender claimed was his speciality, but strangely he had no name for it.  As we sipped his concoction (it was pretty good), we took in the fascinating people who were in the bar.  I should have been braver and taken pictures: there was an aging hippy couple who looked like rich Hollywood types and they took most of our attention.  There were also singles talking to Bluetooth head sets (some stranger than others) eating sexy flatbread salads and drinking expensive wines, as well as a few other groups of tan people (they all seemed so utterly casual) who came and went.  The people who came for dinner were equally fascinating: lots of plastic surgery, blonde do's, and expensive outfits that were, in true Malibu style, passing as "casually thrown on." 

We only had one drink at the Sunset, and fittingly, by the time we left the beach in search of a hotel in Burbank, the sun was setting: emitting a blindingly golden light.