Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This evening, we had another ‘in the city’ adventure. I rode the train in from Pasadena to meet Susan at her office. Then we headed up to West Hollywood. We had a nice dinner at the French Market Place, and then we went to my favorite book store: Book Soup.

The occasion was a talk and book signing by Tristan Taormino about her new book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships. Now, this isn’t actually a topic that either of us is particularly personally interested in, but we thought it could still be fun. I have a friend who knows Tristan, and I’d heard that she’s an interesting and entertaining person. Besides, the skills that an open relationship requires are good to have for any relationship. So we thought that this would make a nice little weeknight adventure.

Tristan read a few excerpts from the book, and she also spoke and took questions from the audience. She also made a point to mention that a fair number of porn stars were there. I gather that quite a few of them are friends of hers. Also, anyone in that business pretty much has to practice open relationships in their personal life. So it seems it would be a topic of interest to them. She even took a question from the legendary Georgina Spelvin.

I had to run outside to feed the parking meter at one point, and on my way out, I noticed Adrianna Nicole there. So I stopped to talk to her when I got back. I’d met her two years ago at the “O” party in Hollywood. We chatted a bit, and I introduced her to Susan.

Lastly, we went to the back of the store, where Tristan was greeting everyone and signing books. We got our book signed, as well as the other book of hers that I’d brought from home. And with the book, we got a free little bottle of lube. What’s not to like about a book tour that’s sponsored by Astroglide?

Overall, it was a fun little adventure, marred only by one sudden “D’oh!” when I was on the train to L.A. and realized that I’d forgotten to bring my camera.

On Monday night, Susan and I went to the Egyptian Theater and American Cinematheque in Hollywood for a screening of “The Space Movie“. This was part of the Mods and Rockers Film Festival. I’m not sure what the connection is there, but that’s no matter.

The film was put together in 1979 for the 10th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. It was made up of film from NASA and was meant as a tribute to the achievements of the space program. While much of this film has been seen in other places over the years, the real draw was that Buzz Aldrin was going to be there to introduce the film and to talk a bit about his experiences. This means that I have now seen three of the twelve people who walked on the Moon, and also the only one who was also a guest star on “The Simpsons“.

I rode the train down to Susan’s office on Wilshire and we headed up to Hollywood from there. We had dinner at the Pig ‘n Whistle on Hollywood Boulevard, which was amusing. It’s a nice bit of Hollywood history, and it’s right next door to the Egyptian Theater.

After dinner we headed over to the movie. This was the first time I’d ever been inside the main auditorium of the Egyptian. It was impressive. The film was good, although a lot of it had been squashed down to TV resolution, which just doesn’t look all that good when it’s projected on a big screen. And sadly, Buzz Aldrin said that he doesn’t do autographs, so all of us who’d brought books, posters, etc to get signed were all disappointed. But he still had some funny stories to tell, so we had a good time.

This afternoon, Susan and I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Bank of America is having a promotion where having a BofA credit card is good for free admission there on the first weekend of the month.

We went to see the “Los Angelenos” exhibit. For some reason, the opportunity to see the art collection of Cheech Marin was just too good to pass up.

Afterward, we went to see the Contemporary Art building. That was interesting. We saw a lot of nice art, and some pieces by famous recent artists as well. I think the giant balloon animal was our favorite.

Before we left the park, we took a walk around the tar pits. As always, I’m amazed at plants that grow right in the middle of the tar.

On Sunday afternoon, Susan and I went over to Beverly Hills to visit the galleries at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two current exhibits are:

• Ink and Paint: The Art of Hand-Drawn Animation
• Pulling Back the Drapes: Set Decoration Revealed

I’ve been to these sorts of things before, and they’re always fun to see.

The animation exhibit was interesting, and we got to see a lot of original artwork from cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s. And upstairs, we saw parts of sets of quite a few recent movies. We saw Indiana Jones’s desk. Too bad he was denied tenure. We also saw The Chief’s desk from “Get Smart“, got our picture in the cave with the Mark 1 suit from “Iron Man“, and Susan poked around the props from “The Spiderwick Chronicles“.

It was a fun little afternoon, and we finished off with dinner at the French Quarter in West Hollywood.

I did another cooking class this evening at Chez Cherie in La Cañada. This one was the hands-on pasta class. I did the hands-on souffle class last February, and it was fun. So I thought it would be interesting to learn to make pasta.

At the beginning, Cherie demonstrated making it by hand and also with a food processor. Then she asked if anyone in the class wanted to learn the hand method. I raised my hand, along with one other person. So we went up to the front table and made our pasta by hand. That was an interesting exercise. Not all that different from making bread.

After the dough was made, we had to let it rest a bit, so they fed us some fresh pasta with different sauces. Then we got to roll the dough out and cut it. At the end, we each had a bag of our fresh pasta to take home and cook.

It was a fun evening.

This weekend is the big “Ink and Iron” show at the Queen Mary. This started out back in 2004 as just a tattoo convention, and over the years they have added music, motorcycles and hot rods to the show. So it’s turned into a Big Deal. But I still like to go just for the tattoos.

I went down there with Susan after the morning bike ride. We got to Long Beach about 2:00 or so. We went inside and just wandered around looking at all the tattoos. We got to visit with some of my friends who I know from going to so many of these shows over the years. That was fun. We also watched the Aerial Showgirls doing their show in the big open area in the center of the room.

It was a fun afternoon. As always, pictures are in the Tattoo Conventions Photo Gallery.

On Saturday afternoon, Susan and I went to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. I’d been wanting to go there for some time, and they were having an exhibit called “Chinaman’s Chance” about the Chinese immigrant experience. As it turned out, there wasn’t much to the Chinese exhibit. It was three artists whose art reflected their views of straddling the cultural divide. It was amusing, but not very filling.

The rest of the museum was nice, though. There was an exhibit of ceramics from China, along with other artifacts. One of the artifacts was a chair dating from the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644. When I read the card, my first thought was, “that’s one old chair.”

On Friday night, Susan and I went to Griffith park to do one of the evening hikes. Tonight’s was up Glendale Peak, which is one of the small mountains in the park. I’ve done this one before, but it’s a pleasant hike. And it’s also a good way for us to get some weight-bearing exercise.

On the way to the start of the hike, we saw a lone coyote hanging around in one of the parking lots in the park. On the way up, we saw a small frog in a little puddle on the side of the trail. And a bit later, we saw a couple of deer running around just above us on the hill.

By the time we were close to the top, it was dusk, and so we got a picture with the city lights and Griffith Observatory in the background.

The trip down was nice, since it was cooling off by then. And the nearly-full moon was plenty of light to see by.

It was a fun evening.

This evening, I went to another cooking class at Chez Cherie. I’ve done a few of these before. They’re always fun, and they give me some new ideas and recipes to bring home to my kitchen. Even though I don’t really have a family to cook for right now, it’s always good to know how to cook good food.

Tonight’s class was “Weeknight Meals”, which means recipes that can be done quickly, but which are still tasty and good. We got a handout with the recipes, and we got to see each of them prepared. And the preparation was complete with running commentary from Cherie, who is very entertaining. At the end, we got to sample each of the dishes, and they were all quite good.

It was a fun evening out.

This afternoon, Susan and I went to the California Science Center to see the third “Body Worlds” exhibit and also the IMAX movie “Sea Monsters 3-D“.

The body exhibit had a theme of the heart and circulatory system. It was interesting to see, although a lot of the plastinated bodies were really just basically pieces of art, showing how the body works inside. Still, it was interesting.

The IMAX movie was great fun, chock-full of gratuitous 3-D effects. There were prehistoric sea reptiles swimming out of the screen and right into our faces. We had a fun time.