Dearly Departed
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Today was a special day. I took a day off work to go and take the Dearly Departed Tragical History Tour of Hollywood. I had recently found out that my friend Sherri shares my interest in Hollywood history and celebrity death. So we went on the tour together.
First, we met for lunch at Musso and Frank, since that’s Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, and many of the old-time movie stars who are stops on the tour had eaten there. We sat in one of the small booths and had our lunch before walking down the block to the tour meeting place.
The tour was great fun. We started off seeing one of the costumed characters who stand in front of the Chinese Theater. He was dressed as Batman, and he was carrying a McDonald’s bag. The McDonald’s bag was surely the detail that made it funny.
Early stops on the tour included the apartment where Bela Lugosi lived in his final days. Also the house alleged to have been the site of the Black Dahlia murder. And the La Bianca house where the Manson Family began their rampage back in 1969.
The next picture shows the house where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio lived during their short marriage. Nearby was George Burns’s house, complete with his initials in the concrete driveway.
The tour includes one bathroom break in a park in Beverly Hills. The one where George Michael was arrested for lewd behavior back in 1998. We all took turns getting souvenir pictures by the bathroom entrance.
We took a turn up into the hills to see Ozzy Osbourne’s old house, which was featured on “The Osbournes“. Then we came back down into Hollywood, passing the apartment where Dee Dee Ramone lived and died.
Overall, this was great fun, and made for a perfect afternoon getaway. I was able to forget for several hours the utter disarray and awfulness of my life. So this was a Good Thing.
We’re going to go back, too. He does a special Helter Skelter tour once in a while, and that’s surely not to be missed.
