Los Angeles/Week Two: Play

And what a week it was!

I picked up my darling girl at LAX bright and early Monday morning (I was actually early if you can believe it), and headed back to my guitar player's apartment in West L.A. to grab my suitcases and get our asses up to the Magic Castle Hotel.



Funky little number...used to be an apartment building, so there's only maybe 15 rooms. Clean and heated pool right in the middle of the place. We set up shop, took care of business, and pretty much headed straight for what I consider to be the best Mexican food in Hollywood, Los Burritos:


I fucking dream about this place. It's so good it makes me want to walk into my local Scandinavian-owned Chipotle, fire-bomb the kitchen, and gun down all of the wide-eyed, apologetic Nordic patrons (Oofta! Sorry ta get in yer line of fire dere!). And while many of the authentic places down on East Lake Street are pretty good, in no way do they come close to achieving the awesomeness that is Los Burritos. I can't even eat Mexican food for the next month now because it'll just make me fucking angry.

Wow. A burrito rant. I honestly didn't see that coming.

Anyway, since I was with my girl, who has only spent a very brief amount of time in Los Angeles when she was younger, I took her around to a lot of "touristy" spots in addition to some of the hidden gems that your average tourist has no idea about. It was really cool being there in a tourguide capacity in that I saw and did quite a few things that, while growing up and living there for 20 years, I never got around to. Highlights included:

*Driving through Mulholland with the top down.

*The Griffith Observatory.

*Venice Beach (where you can find hand-painted Day of the Dead skulls for $15 and a bum singing "Jingle Bells/Jingle bells/I wanna get drunk" while holding a sign that says "World's Greatest Wino")...


*The Santa Monica Pier topside...


...and underneath...



*Yamashiro, a sushi place housed in a reproduction of a Japanese pagoda 250 feet up in the Hollywood Hills.

*Gladstone's in Maibu, where I destroyed a 4.5 pound lobster, liver and all.

*The Museum of Death on Sunset. The owners JD and Cathy are great people and very accommodating; they weren't even completely open yet and gave us full run of the place. JD is also friends with guys like Genesis P-Orridge, Monte Cazazza, and Ron Athey, which we talked at length about, and which makes him markedly more interesting than your average human being.

*The Hollywood Wax Museum, where I finally got to see Cameron Diaz's tits...


*And of course,The Hollywood sign, where after about 90 minutes and almost giving up, I finally found the little turnout right below it. We could have thrown a rock and hit the fucker...



It was great to see Los Angeles through fresh eyes. And the good news is we'll be going back again at Christmastime for a week or so. The bad news is that I'm back in a city that is comparatively lackluster: dull food, awful weather, and the same 8 things to do since I don't drink and don't like to hang out in bars with drunk people. I know I sound all severe and dramatic, but after having everything I love all in (one) place, it made it very difficult to return to this small, finite, feedback loop of a city. Not to mention that the weather is already turning shitty and will do nothing but get worse and stay that way for the next 7 months. No matter how you slice it, there is MUCH more to see, hear, feel, and experience in California than there is here in Minnesota. It's not an opinion; it's a fact. Of course there's things to do here that you can't do there. I'm just sayin'...

Ah...maybe I am being all severe and dramatic. I have a wonderful woman, a beautiful house in a great neighborhood, my health (except for this goddamn cold), my sobriety. I'm sure it's just the excitement of vacation wearing off.


Oh, hey...wouldja look at that...it's 41 degrees outside.


Awesome!