Los Angeles and back

On Wednesday we had a very long wait in an airport. It actually went by surprisingly quick-like. I sepnt a lot of it doing such things as blogging, emailing, posting to web forums, etc. What a nerd. Also they stuck us on a shorter, direct, slightly earlier (but just barely) flight.

LAX is a strange airport. Every terminal is totally separate and self contained. Not having to take trains or busses or really long walkways to distant terminals is sort of nice, and the baggage gets there fast, but not having everything interconnected is not so much fun whenever you have a wait leaving. We were picked up by Akmal, who takes nice pictures for Pitchfork sometimes, and who we previously adventured to San Diego and Coachella with, though that was slightly before I started this here weblog.

Having hardly seen the Pacific ocean, Fiona suggested going to the beach. We drove down manchester until it ended. Strange houses on very steep hillsides. The garages and entrances are on the street at the crest of the hill, and from there, they look like tiny, one-story huts. From any other angle, they appear to be 4- or 5-story mansions with tiered balconies and gardens, and fantastic views of the ocean. We drove down, fairly close to Marina Del Ray, a few miles south of Venice, and hit the beach.


We walked along. Eventually, everyone took off their shoes and socks. I was the last. It had been so long since I walked along a beach barefoot, sand between my toes. Walking along the water, the tide would come in and my toes would curl against the cold water. We saw a dude go swimming in it. It was pretty dang cold! There were many seagulls, just chillin', barely a few meters away. I decided to run through them. They all took flight. Then they landed, and I left them alone. We ate Jamaican food. The homemade ginger beer was too intense for me.

That night we drove to Hollywood and saw a show put on by The New Pornographers. Akmal shot photos. Lavender Diamond opened. Their songs were pretty, and themselves they were funny. Of course the Pornos rocked. That A.C. Newman sure can bust it out, oh and Neko, how you sing! After the show Ice Cream Man gave us free ice cream!! And we were deposited at Joshie's. Our kind host, Josh was running around town to deliver DVDs of the TV show he works on to various producers. We went along for a ride, and saw a ton of L.A. if only by night. Thanks for the tour, Josh!

Thursday was spent eating delicious lunch on melrose, shopping for curios, buying really silly belts and tons of glowsticks, and a trip to scenester heaven: Amoeba Music, possibly amongst the greatest record stores on the planet. So many good tunes! I barely even looked in the movies section...

Finally, all those things done, we headed over to the Hollywood Bowl for another night of Arcade Fire. Josh had come through with some tickets for us, for which we are grateful. As luck would have it, through a happy meeting at Red Rocks, we also appeared to have some guestlist tickets waiting for us, or so we thought, which had a chance of being a little closer. The main will call box didn't have them, nor did the other box office, they kept sending us up the line but never turning us away. Eventually the tickets did exist, though about as far back. We enjoyed all of LCD soundsystem, but of course wanted to be down where the action was.


So we devised a plan involving borrowing Pool Circle ticket stubs (unfortunately already punched) from the lovely Gina and forging hand stamps. Fiona's forgeries (hmm, should trademark that name..) fooled venue security in the two sections between our original seats and the pool, but the security guy at the pool would have none of it. They were, after all, the wrong color... But we were only one section back, so the only trouble became dodging security, who repeatedly told us to stop blocking the aisles and return to our seats. Of course, our seats were about half a mile away, so we just had to move to another aisle and block that one for awhile. Eventually we found a box full of happy, excited people crowding toward the front of it, so we snuck in the back. These happy, excited people told us to come on in, join the fun, so we collapsed some chairs, pulled out our glowsticks, and rocked the fuck out. Down below we could see other glowsticks distributed to the pool by Joshie and Akmal. Will nearly destroyed his guitar during Haiti. The song Windowsill turned into Money Changes Everything by Cindy Lauper, then into All My Friends by LCD. Fantastic! How many thousand people can shout along to Wake Up? A lot!

Our lucky guestlist tickets didn't get us any closer to the stage, but they did get us wristbands that allowed access to the after-gettogether. It's strange to go to those sorts of things... lots of people, and we knew few if any. But it allowed us a chance to thank a couple band members for helping us out and putting on a great show. And what stand up guys, they thanked us for coming. Ah, they're so great.

Back to Joshie's, and figuring out a ride to the airport, and crashing. The next morning: packing, relaxing, walking a long way around the block, and some delicious pancakes at a short order place called Astro Burger. Fresh squeezed orange juice like you wouldn't believe! And then we're back at LAX, which is much less fun to depart from. The sad part about a vacation is that it ends in a sad series of goodbyes, and then you have to sit alone for however many hours on a flight. Ah well! I try not to say goodbye on things like these, only see you next time! And I will. So until then....