Stan’s Obligatory Blog

4/27/2011

Translating Raymond

Filed under: — stan @ 10:51 pm

Tonight, Kathleen and I went to see a preview screening of “Exporting Raymond“. This is a documentary about adapting and remaking “Everybody Loves Raymond” in Russia. I’m not a big TV watcher, so I’m only dimly aware of this show, but I hear it was quite popular for a long time. And the story of trying to translate it into Russian culture was very entertaining.

The film was made by and centers around Phil Rosenthal, who was the creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond”. He narrates the film, and he’s in almost all of it, as it chronicles his trips to Russia to advise the producers there about casting and acting to re-create the show.

In the end, it’s just a silly sitcom, but to see it this way with Phil as your guide, it’s really hilarious. Phil was at the screening, and he took questions at the end. He was just as funny in person as in the film. So overall, we really enjoyed this.

4/25/2011

Ice Cream!

Filed under: — stan @ 9:09 pm

A new gourmet ice cream place just opened up around the corner from my house. So we took a walk up there to try it out. And it was quite good.

I think we’re going to be walking up there a lot this summer. Yum.

4/24/2011

A shortened Sunday ride

Filed under: — stan @ 9:17 pm

Today’s ride was supposed to be a slightly shorter ride than usual, since I had to be back early to cook a big Easter dinner for family. But it turned out to be even shorter than that. We got rained out again.

We rode up through La Cañada and then down the big hill into Glendale. That was all just fine. But then it started to rain. Just a light sprinkle at first, but then it started raining in earnest. So we turned tail and rode to the Metro Rail station at Southwest Museum. From there, we were able to ride the train back to Pasadena. It wasn’t raining quite as hard as the last time we got rained out, but it was still enough that riding in it was No Fun At All.

In the end, we got home without getting too wet. But it was wet enough that my bike computer stopped working. So I don’t know exactly how far we actually rode.

20-mumble miles.
cycling

4/22/2011

Bird is the word

Filed under: — stan @ 7:26 pm

This little bird was hanging around in front of my office all morning today. I looked through several online bird-identification guides, but I still have no idea what it is.

Addendum: My friend Karl Elvis identified the bird. It’s a guinea hen. Apparently, they are kept as domestic fowl, but they are originally from Africa. I guess that would explain why it wasn’t in the ‘Birds of North America’ guide.

4/20/2011

Last practice

Filed under: — stan @ 9:03 pm

Today was my last practice run up the Aon building before the stair climb a week from Saturday. Randy was visiting from Las Vegas, so we met up there to do it.

As always, I rode the train downtown. I hate driving downtown, and try to avoid it whenever possible.

When we got there, we got suited up and headed up to the 4th floor, which is the staging area for the practice climbs. Randy was planning on doing the climb three times. Once slowly just to see what it looked like, once for speed, and one more time I guess for just sheer perversity. I planned on only doing it once, and going as fast as I could.

I repeated my experiment from last time where I started out without my metronome again. I climbed up to 32 before I turned it on. I had it set on 76, and it was hard to keep up with at that point. But I could see from my watch that I was on track to do a pretty good time.

The last 10 or so floors were a real slog. I could hear some people just above me, so I tried to catch them before the finish at 60. I caught a couple of them, but not all. Still, when I came out, I had 10:24, which is my third best practice time ever, so I really can’t complain. It was a fun little evening adventure.

4/17/2011

In-N-Out purge

Filed under: — stan @ 8:44 pm

There was an article in Saturday’s L.A. Times about how In-N-Out Burger had recently demolished what was formerly their oldest location, across the freeway from their headquarters in Baldwin Park. So I immediately thought that this would make a good sightseeing bike ride. The article also mentioned that now the oldest In-N-Out location is now the one right near here in Pasadena, so I included that in the route.

It was a perfect day for riding. We started out going past the In-N-Out on Foothill Blvd in Pasadena. Then we headed south all the way to Baldwin Park, where we saw the remains of the former burger stand, followed by the gleaming new headquarters building across the freeway.

Our stop was at Panera Bread in West Covina. The sun was out, and it was just a nice day to sit outside for a bit.

46 miles.
cycling

4/14/2011

Downtown art

Filed under: — stan @ 11:27 pm

Lucinda’s been on Spring Break this week. So she’s had an unpredictable schedule, and tonight she decided to spend the night at her friend’s house. Which meant that I had an unexpected free evening. So I called Kathleen, and we made plans to meet up in downtown L.A. for the Art Walk. I’ve heard about these things for years, but this was the first time one fell on a night when I could actually go.

I rode the train downtown and we met at the Museum of Neon Art on 4th St. We joined up with the night photography group there, and we all headed up Spring St to the Los Angeles Times, where they were having a ‘popup event’ in the parking lot. We saw lots of nice photos by Times photographers, and we also took some photos of our own. I was kind of fascinated by the Wells Fargo building sign reflected off the One California Plaza building.

After that, we walked back down Spring St to the galleries near MONA. In one of them, we saw a photography show by Jake Thomas, who played Lizzie McGuire’s little brother on the Disney Channel. He’s grown up now, and his photos were quite good.

One of the attractions of the Art Walk is that all the gourmet catering trucks come and set up shop along Spring St. We stopped in at the Lake Street Creamery truck and got some very good ice cream.

All in all, it was a very fun evening. Parking there was kind of an ordeal, but I didn’t have a problem, because I rode the train there. It was a good time.

4/13/2011

Susie Bright!

Filed under: — stan @ 11:31 pm

Susie Bright was doing a reading and book signing at my favorite book store, Book Soup. So Kathleen and I met up in NoHo and headed over the hill to go see her. We planned on getting there early, since I know from experience that they don’t have many seats at these things. As luck would have it, right after we got there my friend Nina Hartley showed up, so we staked out seats for ourselves and for Nina and her husband, Ira, also known as Ernest Greene.

Susie read a bit from her book, and she talked some about what went in to writing it. She also answered a lot of questions from the audience. In the process, we even got to meet Ali Davis, who wrote the hilarious book True Porn Clerk Stories.

At the end, we waited in line to meet Susie, which gave me a chance to talk with Ernest some more. We both like to collect Cold War memorabilia, and Kathleen and I had just been to the Nuclear Testing Museum in Las Vegas last month.

All in all, it was a very fun evening.

4/12/2011

A nice surprise

Filed under: — stan @ 9:50 pm

Today was another practice session at the Aon building in downtown L.A. Just a little climb up the stairs from the 4th floor to the 60th. Sounds simple. How hard could it be?

For some reason, I was having a hard time getting into the right mental state for this. All the way downtown on the train, I kept wondering if this was a good idea. A lot of this was because of my experience doing this last week.

When I got to the building, I checked in and headed up to the start of the stairs. There was a big group there to do it. I let almost all of them go ahead of me. I figured that having some people to catch might help me to get motivated. I stood at the bottom, looking up the stairs, and I felt a bit like this:

Funny Pictures - Kitten on Stairs
see more ICHC After Dark

Finally, I couldn’t procrastinate any more. It was time to do it. I’d decided to try an experiment this time. I wear a small metronome to use for setting my pace. I’ve noticed that the first 20-25 floors, I have to hold back a bit to keep on pace, and so today I decided that I was going to go without it for the first half of the climb. I’ve done enough of these things now that I know not to make the novice mistake of starting out too fast. But at the same time, I figured I might be able to get a good start on the climb by going a little faster at the start.

When I got to 32, I could tell I was starting to slow down. That was the halfway point, and I turned on the metronome. I immediately had to speed up a tiny bit to keep up with it. But that little beep in my ear helps to focus and keep going. I even managed a small burst of speed at the end, from 58 to 60. I stumbled out on the 60th floor and laid down on the concrete. Lots of top stair climbers lie down on the floor at the finish, so I thought I’d try it.

When I had a look at my watch, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d done it in 10:21, which is two seconds faster than my previous best time for this climb. So in the end, I’m glad that hauled myself downtown to do it.

4/10/2011

CicLAvia two

Filed under: — stan @ 1:11 pm

Today’s bike club ride was a route down into East L.A. to join in CicLAvia. This is the second time they’ve done this. We were there the last time, and it was a fun little outing.

We took a roundabout route to East L.A., so as not to get there too early. Even so, we were there by 9:30, so we just set out on the route across the city.

In Little Tokyo, there was a big crowd outside the Japanese American Museum. Lance Armstrong was there, and he spoke to the crowd for a few minutes.

Continuing on, we went out to Westlake and then up into east Hollywood. That was the end of the route, so we turned around and rode back into downtown. At Main St, we turned off to head for home. We stopped for a bagel at Union Bagel in Union Station, since they have the nice courtyard outside the station. It had turned into a very nice day, so we wanted to sit outside.

From there, we just headed straight up Huntington Drive for the trip home. It was a nice ride.

47 miles.
cycling<>/ttag>

Powered by WordPress