Stan’s Obligatory Blog

We had dinner at “Renaissance” tonight. This is the restaurant at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood.

They don’t have a sign outside, so we just sort of wandered in and asked. There were lots of very friendly people in their faux-naval uniforms wandering about. One of them showed us the way to the restaurant. Inside, the place was nearly empty. I guess they don’t get a lot of people coming in off the street. The service was very pleasant and attentive. They didn’t try to get us to take a personality test or anything like that.

Outside the restaurant in the hotel hallway they had lots of displays about how wonderful Scientology is. And they had L.Ron Hubbard’s study preserved there, with a little velvet rope across the doorway.

The food was all right. Not bad, but not great. We’ve had better, but it was still a unique experience.

After this, we went to the Renberg Theater at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood to see Varla Jean Merman‘s new show, “Under a Big Top”. As always, La Merm was hilariously great. We also bought her DVD video collection, and she signed it for us. We’ve seen her three times now, and she’s always great.

There was a movie crew filming near our house today. This happens a lot down near Caltech, but not not that often near our house.

We went to see “Mayor of the Sunset Strip” today. It was really good. Got to see Rodney everywhere in Hollywood. Lots of fun.

Today we went to see “Maestro”, which is a documentary about early underground dance clubs in New York, and how they spawned a whole genre of music. It was interesting, but the visual look of the film was kind of hard to watch.

We went to the opening party for “Evolving Light” at the Museum of Neon Art this evening. The new exhibit had lots of nice neon pieces.

We got to see an advance screening of “10.5”, a made-for-TV disaster movie today. Overall, it was pretty cheesy. The screenshot below pretty much sums up the whole movie. Didn’t the writers have a dictionary?

Tonight we went down to Flor y Canto to see Keith Knight. He talked and showed some slides of his work. He was very funny. We also bought a copy of his latest book, which he signed for us. Overall, it was a fun little adventure.

There is a crew filming a movie in front of a house on San Pasqual near Caltech. I guess that it’s supposed to be set in some place that’s not Southern California, because they’re wrapping sheets of rubber fake bark on the trunks of the palm trees to make them look like ‘regular’ trees.

In a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture moment, there is a bus parked near our house. It’s painted in New Jersey Transit colors. Maybe this is like those stories I’ve read about migrating birds being blown off-course by storms. But the route marker on the front says “Beverly Hills”. Maybe NJT has a new Weehawken-Beverly Hills route going…

  

We went to see “My Blue Sky” at The Project in Downtown L.A. today. This was an art installation of sound recordings from various places. Very strange. After that, we went to the Museum of Neon Art to see the “Bumfuzzle” exhibit.