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I guess it all started late late Saturday night/Sunday morning when I realized it was 4am and a very stale 95 degrees in my apartment - even with the windows open and fan blowing on me. So I grabbed the spray bottle and spritzed myself so that the fan would cool me off. That worked only temporarily and I decided a cold shower would do the trick. I think I finally ended up passing out somewhere near 6am due to sheer exhaustion from the act of trying to keep cool.
When I officially woke on Sunday morning I took yet another cold shower and coordinated with Lindsay about hitting up the Flea Market at Fairfax High. Since it was cloudy and starting to sprinkle we thought it would be perfect, hoping against all hope that the heat would break. First we grabbed some Loteria Grill tacos as fuel for our adventure then we were off to the Flea Market just as the sun decided to grace us with its presence. A force that all in Southern California were forced to deal with yesterday. The heat, the asphalt, all of it was too much. We walked around and sweated profusely until we just couldn’t take it anymore. I vowed that the next time I’d go back would be mid-November, when the heat finally subsides.
Back in the lovely AC’d interior of Lindsay’s car we were debating on our next stop. Movie? No, too crowded. Target? No, too crowded. Just drive around in her car? That was the option I was leaning toward until Lindsay said “I know, let’s go buy a kiddie pool!” We thought that Big Lots had ‘em so off we went. No such luck, unless we wanted a clown-pool. Next stop – the dreaded Target. Again, no such luck…however we both got fancy new shoes in the process. Third and final stop, “G” Rite Aid. We really didn’t think they’d have kiddie pools and at this point all we wanted was a big fan and some Gatorade. It turns out that every retail establishment within a 5 mile radius of our location was sold out of fans….and kiddie pools.
Back at the Compound™ we decided the only way to enjoy the rest of the hot summer late afternoon was to water the lawn. We proceeded to attach round sprinkler head to hose, place it directly in the middle of the lawn, grab some porch chairs, chips, berry pie and Gatorade and sit just close enough to get our feetsies wet. We basked in the glory of it all for a while until Lindsay decided we should plant some flower seeds. Great idea! Gardening! Not having the proper tools for the event we improvised with a large spoon and a knife sharpener. It was truly a sight that her neighbors most likely got a kick out of watching…me stabbing the hardened soil with a knife sharpener. So we plant the seeds and water the soil…then all of a sudden we notice about 5 million ants in the soil running around carrying little white things. Perplexed was I and freaked out was Lindsay. (She recently had a little ant problem in her apartment.) After a quick google search we realized that we had disrupted their home and they were transporting their little ant eggs elsewhere. Lindsay, fearing they were making a beeline for her bedroom, decided to try and kill them with Lysol and Windex. I suggested we head on down to OSH and get the more “official” type of ant killer.
Exhausted from our ant killing rampage and basking again in the pre-evening coolness we were discussing our dinner options when Lindsay blurted out that she could really go for some mayonnaise.
Me: “Mayonnaise?”
Lindsay: “No, Mani’s!”
And so it was to be. A great dinner topped off a somewhat productive day of searching for a pool but not coming back empty handed and playing “god” to a few bajillion ants. No one had more fun than us.
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Upon further investigative research I’ve noticed that Wednesday night meet-ups are pretty common in the motorcycle riding world. Any readers have insight on this subject?
Just curious.
UPDATE: within a nanosecond my friend Joe, the Ducati bike riding boy, emailed me the link to this event. it's Hollywood BikeNight. note to self: just go ask Joe. x
I could've linked it to my previous post but I wanted to make sure it didn't get lost in the hubub.
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The concept is this; everyone involved gets together at 8pm on a Friday night. Writers are paired up with Directors using that age old “pick names out of a hat” system. The actors are required to bring a personal prop with them to this meeting whereby they explain their connection to said prop. Then there is a 2 round “draft” for actors with the remaining actors being dispersed evenly among all teams. After all “teams” are assembled the Actors and Directors go home and get a good night’s sleep.
The Writers then sequester themselves in a room until 7am when they are required to have written a 10 page script utilizing at least one of their actors’ props. They also must somehow refer to the series sponsor “Rader Stop Smoking.” At 8am the Directors show up and go over the scripts with the Writers. The actors show up at 9am and rehearsal happens until 4pm. There’s a 2 hour break and at 6pm the show goes into tech for an 8pm curtain.
In a nutshell, it’s madness. And great fun. I was an audience member last Saturday night and had a GREAT time. Seriously, it’s amazing to see what people can put together in such a short amount of time with certain guidelines and limitations. I had so much fun that I have even decided to forgo my personal statement of “not doing any theatre in the month of July” and will be volunteering my services as Stage Manager for the evening.
This Saturday night will be the final installment of this initial incarnation. We hope to bring this back possibly once a month as 3 weekends in a row is finally taking its toll on the Producers health.
Ticket prices are $24 and can be purchased online. Proceeds for this event go to help save The Elephant Asylum Theatre from extinction….and popsicles will be served at the end of the night.
24 Hour Rush Theatre
Elephant Asylum Theatre
6820 Santa Monica Blvd.
(between Cahuenga and Vine)
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Lizard was a true people person. If you visited my place and sat down it was a sure thing that Lizard would attempt numerous times to sit in your lap. He would regularly wander into my neighbor's apartments if given the opportunity and I often said that he could live forever on lovin' alone.
Over the past few years he has suffered from chronic constipation. At first it was kinda funny. "Gotta go take Lizard to the vet for an enema." Then it evolved into giving him medication on a daily basis and drastically altering his diet. For the most part it was a success. The enema trips became much less frequent. He would do great and then every once in a while have a little setback but he always came out of it in a few days. Recently though that wasn't the case. This past episode was the longest and the most difficult for all involved. I was forced to make the most difficult decision of my life. I was with him this morning as he quietly went to sleep and was put out of his misery.
Last evening after work I sat outside my apartment with Lizard enjoying the summer evening as my neighbors said their goodbyes. And last night I slept on my living room floor with Lizard curled up next to me like old times. I took some pictures of our final evening together; forgive me for going a little overboard. He was my old man and I'll miss him greatly.
As it was, you needed a key or a kind soul to gain access to the pool area and at one point some people wandered up and yelled for help. I jumped up to go assist and much to my surprise it was Mondo Rick-o, his partner Steve and a friend, Lisa. We've been playing comment tag on each others blog and were so excited to finally meet each other. We all 4 then became best friends forever and spent a good long time bonding over various topics. Then all of a sudden it was decided that they needed real food and wanted to go to 626 Reserve. For some reason I thought I needed MORE food and invited myself along for the ride. The 4 of us then proceeded to gorge ourselves on crabcakes, ahi ceviche, various sandwiches, asian chicken salad and birthday cake from a random birthday girl in the house. Oh yeah, they had wine. I choose water as my drink of choice for the few hours previous had been vodka with some sort of juice beverage.
Afterwards they dropped me back off at the Loft where I hung out for a bit digesting my meal and talking to friends. Needless to say when the night was over all I wanted to do was drop into bed so I never made it to the Broadway Bar Birthday Party either. 2 outta 4 ain't bad I guess.
Pictures can be viewed here. Enjoy.
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This morning the team met up at the Brite Spot, bright and early at 11am. I've frequented my share of "greasy spoons" in this town but this was my first foray here, and quite possibly my last. Yes, we all silently noticed the "B" in the window but failed to bring it up in pre-breakfast chit-chat as we were waiting to be seated. Shortly after I sat down in the booth I looked over to my right and noticed a roach running along the windowsill. I nearly jumped into David's lap as he and everyone else at the table attempted to kill the creature. It took a while but the humans succeeded. Thankfully his brothers and sisters decided to stay away after seeing the untimely fate of "Albert." Wise choice on their part.
We then ate our carb loaded breakfast and headed over to the docks to check-in at the allotted time of 12:30. This afforded us a chance to see a race beforehand and get mentally prepped for our outing. The team consisted of 8 people; 6 rowers, the coxswain and the drummer. Originally I was scheduled to row however due to a few factors such as my compromised health, an added team member who was a rower in college and my liking to boss people around I was dubbed the drummer. My job was to set a consistent pace for the rowers and keep them in time.
We lined our boats up and were off!!! We had a little bit of a rocky start as we got our timing down but kept pace with our opponent. We even tried to screw with them a bit by slightly steering our boat into theirs, they were tough though and it didn't even faze them. We got back on track and had another little bump in the road with our turn however when all was said and done we clocked in at 7:09. That was the 3rd best time overall for the day at that point.
Now keep in mind that the team we were rowing against wasn't exactly our "competition." There are 5 separate categories of teams and we fell into the "media" category, of which there were 2 participants....us and KTLA/WB. So in our category we will come in either 1st or 2nd. Yes, that essentially equates to Winner or Loser but it's all in how you tell the story. Our team was definitely a WINNER because we gave it our all, and that's all you can ask for. Our run on the high seas was brief but I met some good people along the way. We will be secretly training hard for next year so be on the lookout for Team Blogging.LA in 2007!!!
Preliminary photos can be seen here. I'll link up the others once they roll in.
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