Stan’s Obligatory Blog

One of the great things about living in L.A. is that we can just go out and play tourist any time we want. So today was the day.

We went over to West Hollywood and had lunch at the French Quarter, which is one of the big gay hangouts for Sunday brunch. The food is pretty good, too. And for us, it’s a chance to see what it’s like to be in the minority.

Next, we went to the Hustler Hollywood store. I got a DVD player for my 10th anniversary at my job, so we wanted to get something to play in it. Outside the store, we saw Ron Jeremy’s hand prints in the concrete. They had several others, but he was the one we are most familiar with.

After that, we went back to Hollywood Boulevard. Along the way, we passed Rock-n-Roll Ralphs on Sunset. We used to shop there sometimes when we lived in Hollywood, and it was always an adventure. When we parked, we saw the to the Skooby’s Hot Dogs car, as well as the dancing shoes on the parking structure. Then we went to the Erotic Museum for the Hollywood Sex Gods exhibit. It was interesting, giving the history of movie censorship from the Hays Code up through the establishment of the present ratings system, as well as a little bit of history of the association of porn and Los Angeles. We also saw some original Vargas Girls, Hugh Hefner’s robe, slippers, and pipe, and the inside of a Real Doll. Yikes. It looked kind of like the Terminator’s love-doll fantasy, with the metal skeleton exposed.

When we left to come home, we passed the former Pussycat Theater on Hollywood Boulvard. I find it immensely amusing that the former smut palace, done in by the invention of the VCR, has found new life as a church.

On Saturday night, we went to the opening party for the new exhibit at the Museum of Neon Art in downtown Los Angeles. This year is the 24th anniversary of the museum, and we’ve been going there for almost all of that time. It’s still our favorite art museum.

There was a pretty good crowd there, and lots of nice neon on display. We saw the dancing devil from last time, as well as some new pieces. And they had food there, too. Lucinda and I chowed down on the chocolate chip cookies. After riding 66 miles that morning, I figured I’d earned some.

There were a number of religious-themed pieces. There was Jesus on a cross decorated with neon and peeps. There was also Jesus painted on beer-bottle caps. There were also some animal pieces. One had a neon frog leaping into a pond, another had a neon frog skeleton, and a third had an animal skull with neon antlers. It was fun.

We went to see “Downfall” today. This is the story of the last 12 days in Hitler’s bunker, and it’s my nominee for the ‘feel-bad-movie of the year’. But at the same time, it was very interesting. Bruno Ganz was great in the role of Hitler. He was very believable, which is often difficult for actors to pull off when playing a very famous person. This film also makes a good companion piece with “Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary”, which we saw a couple of years ago. This film was told largely from the viewpoint of Traudl Junge, the aforementioned secretary. She also appears briefly in the film, speaking at the beginning and the end about her personal feelings of guilt for having been a part of such a monstrous evil.

“I realized that she [Sophie Scholl] was the same age as me, and I realized that she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. At that moment, I really sensed that it is no excuse to be young.”

Since Lucinda is off school this week, we made arrangements to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Cathy scored some free tickets a while back, so the conditions were perfect. We went with Heather and Jacob from up the street, as well as their mom.

When we got there, we wanted to see the otter feeding, but the tank was empty for cleaning. I guess the otters were in a motel somewhere. So instead we went outside so that Heather and Lucinda could pet the rays and touch the starfish and anemones. Then it was feeding time for the sharks in the touch tank. That was entertaining, even if they are all fairly docile sharks.

We also saw a diver in one of the tanks, cleaning the kelp leaves. I wonder how they put that into a job description.

We went into the Lorikeet Forest, and Lucinda managed to persuade one of the birds to land on her arm, so she was happy.

They had one exhibit of shark eggs with little windows in them. We could see the little sharks wriggling around inside. Very Alien-esque.

Later on, we went back inside and saw feeding time at the South Pacific exhibit. They had three divers in the tank handing out food and being mobbed by the fish. One of the divers had a microphone and she talked to us and described what was happening. That was an interesting addition to the show.

When it was time to leave, we took a moment to see the driver’s-eye view of a bit of the Long Beach Grand Prix course, since we had to cross the street to get back to the parking structure. Then we headed home, getting immediately stuck in traffic on the freeway. Have I mentioned recently that I love living in L.A.?

There are also a few more pictures in Lucinda’s photo album.

We went to the Museum of Neon Art today. This is the last weekend for the current exhibit, so we wanted to see it before it went away. And we were not disappointed.

The exhibit had two parts. One part was neon beer signs and old neon business signs from the ’50s. There were some great old signs there, although sadly, the ceiling was too low for some. So we had to make do with the neon sign for “Al’s LIQ”, because that was all that would fit. The other part of the exhibit was neon and other electric sculptures. One piece we particularly liked was “A Dime a Dance”. This was a four-foot-tall Satan puppet on strings. He was standing on top of a lucite box with a neon sign inside it. The card said, “Insert a quarter to activate the Devil”. We just couldn’t resist that. The speakers began to play “Pipeline”, and the Devil danced for us. It was great fun.

After dancing with the Devil, we went outside and Lucinda played in the park next to the museum. Then we went to Chinatown and had Dim Sum at Empress Pavillion.. We’ve been going there since it opened in 1989 or so. It’s always packed, even though I think the food is a bit overrated. The restaurants in San Gabriel are just as good or better. But Empress Pavillion is still one of the best-known Dim Sum places in L.A. And it was good.

Today we went to see the second Body Worlds exhibit at the science museum. The big attraction here was the “Suicide by Fat: Obesity Revealed” exhibit. Lucinda and Daddy went to the museum and met Aunt Maggi there. We had a quick lunch at the McDonald’s in the museum, since there’s nothing like having a Big Mac and fries before seeing an exhibit on the horrors of obesity. I also made a point of eating at McDonald’s before going to see “Super Size Me”, so there is a pattern here.

The new exhibit was as big as the first one, but with different specimens. They even had a camel, which was kind of novel. The human specimens showed a range of different things, from the muscles used for skateboarding to various horrible diseases. It was all quite gruesome and also quite interesting.

Afterwards, we went outside and Lucinda played on the “Big Lever” exhibit outside. She wasn’t quite able to lift the truck by herself, but she did it with the help of another little girl.

Today at lunchtime I took a ride over to Memorial Park in Old Town Pasadena. The American Friends Service Committee is putting on an exhibit about the human cost of the war in Iraq. They had 1,519 pairs of boots laid out in the park, each with a name tag, representing the soldiers killed in the war. The concept is simple, much like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in that the exhibit is just there. You are free to look at it and draw your own conclusions.

Seeing so many boots lined up across the park was impressive. It really makes the numbers tangible in much the same way as the time we saw the AIDS Quilt. Most of the boots had just a name tag, giving the soldier’s age and hometown. Others had pictures or other bits of memorabilia donated by their families. Alyssa Peterson’s had an essay that she had written in 5th grade on the meaning of patriotism. I saw a small memorial for Michael Pedersen donated by his mother, Lila Lipscomb. Lila is known for her appearance in “Fahrenheit 9/11″. A few of the boots had tags saying that they had their names withheld at the request of their families. There weren’t many of them.

In another section of the park, they had several thousand other shoes lined up to represent the Iraqis killed in the war, along with plates listing thousands of names of Iraqi civilians killed in the war.

The exhibit is going to be traveling around. The web page lists the dates and places. It’s worth a look.

We went to see “Inside Deep Throat” today. It was a hoot. Very entertaining, and informative, especially if you’re not really up on the history of the porn industry and the government’s attempts to shut it down. They tracked down and interviewed a lot of the people who were involved in making, distributing, and prosecuting the film. They told lots of funny stories about their experiences, and talked about how this little movie they made became part of history. It’s also funny to see people such as Roy Cohn and Charles Keating denouncing “Deep Throat” in the film, since their ’skeletons in the closet’ were not yet known at that time.

The guys who made this documentary are the same ones who made “The Eyes of Tammy Faye“, which was also very entertaining. Overall, we recommend this film. It was great fun.

We went to see Julia Sweeney’s show “Letting Go of God” back in December, and we liked it so much that we decided to see it again. So we called our friends who are always interested in L.A. culture and asked them if they wanted to join us. So we all met in West Hollywood for lunch at the French Quarter for lunch and then headed over to the show. Even though it was Super Bowl Sunday, the theater was packed. The show was just as good the second time around, and we all enjoyed it tremendously.

Afterward, we all headed over to the Hollywood Forever cemetery so our friends could see the statue of Johnny Ramone.

Our tattoo artist friend Shannon had her fortieth birthday party this evening. It was at a little tapas restaurant in Old Town Pasadena. As one might expect, it drew an eclectic collection of characters. It was a fun time. They had a flamenco show there, and they made a point of dragging everyone who was having a birthday up on the stage to participate.

Also, quite unwittingly, I took one photo that was kind of funky and arty and quite the sort of thing that I’d like to be able to do. It was an accident, but here it is.