13 posts tagged “anecdotes”
Last night we met a friend for dinner at Malo. She brought along some friends that were visiting from New York. They brought a friend who has been in L.A. for 5 months. We did an informal around-the-table canvas of what everyone does: tv producer, publicist, internet developer, fund-raiser, etc. When we got to the gentleman on my left, the one who has been in L.A. for 5 months, he said, "Oh, I'm in a sitcom."
My brilliant girlfriend replied, "So you want to be an actor."
He was a bit taken aback, and said, "Well I thought I was one."
She said, "No honey, so many people come out to Los Angeles from New York and I can't tell you how many people I talk to who haven't made it."
At the end of the evening, coming home from the bar down the street, my girlfriend said, "I guess he actually is on a television show, because everyone at the bar knew his name and said hello. But I've never heard of this show, have you? The Class?"
"Isn't that the new sitcom started by the producers of Friends?" I ask.
"Whoa, that's major!"
I'm not sure why our downtown-dwelling friend KC chose to have her birthday party 20 miles away in Westwood. There's no good way to get there from Los Feliz on a Friday night, so we met up with the party at the end of a Persian dinner, in time for the present derobing (she and her coworkers are the wardrobe crew for a well-known television show, so my poetic license when I say "derobing" instead of "unwrapping" is allowed, if only I hadn't had to explain it here.) We had brought a great gift, an amazing wine carafe my girlfriend found at the MOMA store. It came wrapped in orange and silver, and the hot pink envelope from the birthday card I picked out at Uncle Jer's really fit KC's aesthetic.
Meanwhile, there were a lot of candles and picture frames among the offerings, so we were pleased with our contribution. We were also pleased at the sight of Doughboy's red velvet cakes as the waitstaff brought them to the table. Unfortunately, the party had decided to move on to the W hotel, and so we were recruited to cart the red velvet cakes there. (A dangerous thing, to be sure — we envisioned a scenario where we showed up with only two of the four small cakes left and cream cheese all over our faces.)
We drove to the W hotel, dropped the car at the valet ($20 + tip), and got interrogated by the doorman. We weren't on a list, and everything on Friday and Saturday night is by reservation or invitation only. We managed to talk our way in, but the guy said we weren't allowed to bring the red velvet cakes into the bar. So we had to leave them at the concierge, whose podium bore in brushed steel lettering the single word: "WHATEVER". How corporately rebellious.
We went into the bar area, where a waitress actually asked people to leave a little sofa lounge area that our party had reserved. I wondered momentarily what it must have taken to reserve a spot in this over-the-top bar. I soon found out that the party was required to purchase two bottles of liquor for at least $600.
I know. "What?!?!"
I quickly did the math, and even if we had full representation from the dinner party, each share was going to come out to $50, which meant a $100 bar tab for me and my girlfriend. To give you an idea of the pricing structure, a bottle of Stolichnaya (for which my dog is named), which normally retails in the $25-30 range, cost $300. If you wanted to get really crazy with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label, which normally can go for $160-175, you'll shell out a cool $750 at the W (clearly heavily discounted compared to the Stoli markup).
Our friend explained that there was another friend who was also celebrating her birthday and staying at the W, and that likely she and her friends would cover that tab. If we didn't want in, we could go and order drinks at the bar. We were happy to take that option. We asked if she would like a drink, and she ordered champagne. That, a glass of truly awful Cabernet for me, and my girlfriend's "Blueberry Breeze" martini, cost $42, or roughly the price of our dinner and two glasses of wine before the festivities. And I think the bartendress was stoned.
In the plus column for the evening, I got to meet KC's boyfriend for the first time, and we had a conversation about his experiences in the ER at USC County hospital. It was somewhat unnerving to listen to listen to him casually talk about intubating a man with severe AIDS-complicated pneumonia and thinking, "Bye, do you know you've got a 5% chance of having this tube taken out of you while you're alive?" Eesh. He also talked about his 2 years in the Peace Corps in Honduras. I told him the closest experience I'd had to Honduras was a bad neighborhood in Alhambra.
We took a walk through our neighborhood Sunday afternoon, and as we were making our way home, my girlfriend suggested we detour down a little-traveled street parallel to ours. We were approaching a house with a fence made of vertical bars around its perimeter when we saw a little dog running toward the corner closest to us. It started barking in a hoarse, pipsqueak voice, running from point to point along the fence, clearly rather put out by our presence.
We laughed a little. We both love dogs and comment on whichever ones we see when we're out. This one was some kind of bizarre mix, like a Yorkshire terrier crossed with a poodle or Brussels Griffon. It was really small—note more than eight pounds—and had curly hair that got in the way of its eyes. The little guy was a strange-looking dog, so we continued to laugh a little.
As we were passing by the fence, my girlfriend said to him, "Oh, you're so cranky!"
He redoubled his efforts, bounding around the front yard, barking up a storm, ricocheting off the fence and generally being pissed off. As we got toward the center of the fence, we were at our closest proximity to him. This infuriated him, and he turned to spin up another furious protest...and ran through what looked like a severely trimmed back, possibly dead rose bush. His barks turned to screams as a branch broke off and stuck to him.
Our smiles immediately dropped. He was yelping and still running around the yard, stuck between a V of branches with thorns on them. "Oh my god," my girlfriend said.
I tried to beckon the little dog over to the fence so I could try to remove the branch, but he wasn't having any of it. He was utterly panicked. We looked to see if anyone inside the house was coming out. Nothing. The screams were loud enough to start drawing the attention of the neighbors. We looked around and shrugged our shoulders, and I thought I was going to have to try to scale the fence to help the little dog. He ran around the corner of the house, still screaming bloody murder, and then it stopped.
"I guess someone in the house got him?" my girlfriend said, I think trying to convince us both.
"I hope he's not dead," I said.
We walked on, unable to really do anything about the situation. By the end of the block we were already chuckling about it, but we still felt bad.
They originally billed it as a wine tasting, but by the time we arrived at Cobras and Matadors just a few blocks from our house last night, it had been reworded as a Wine Pairing. This was their first event, basically a prix fixe menu of some of their best tapas served with Spanish wines of their recommendation. It wasn't as geared toward wine tasting as the events we've attended at Silver Lake Wine (no anecdotal coverage of the wines themselves), and wasn't as scholarly a review as those we've experienced at the Irregular Wine Tasting at The Echo. It was really about the food:
- Asparagus and goat cheese croquettas (fried...yum!)
- Pork tenderloin with charred apples
- Bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese and almonds
- Apple and cinnamon bread pudding with vanilla bean ice cream
Each course was served with something just shy of a full glass of wine, except for the entrée, which came with two glasses. The pairings did a lot to highlight the food. And at $29 a head, it ended up being a really good deal (we've easily dropped twice that at a regular dinner there, for less food and drink.) Recommended! (Just don't eat lunch beforehand.)
This happened:
At the tomato vendor's booth at the Silver Lake Farmer's Market, they happened to also be selling navel oranges. A backpacker-yoga-type guy remarked it was early in the season for navel oranges, wasn't it? Yes, said the vendor.
Yoga Guy: "Well, I'm going to have to contemplate the navels." [pause] "Do you get it?"
Tomato vendor: "No."
Me [jumping in]: "Contemplate your navel?"
Yoga guy: "Yes!"
Me: "Omphaloskepsis is the technical term for that."
Yoga guy: [blank stare]
Me: "Navel-gazing. Omphaloskepsis. I've been waiting to use that word for years."
Yoga guy: "Omphaloskepsis? It starts with Om. How interesting. Maybe that sound crosses cultures?"
Me: "You may be right."
Yoga guy: "I usually am."
Tomato vendor: "Good for you."
All the listings we saw had Architecture in Helsinki opening for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Henry Fonda. Doors open at 8pm, show starts at 9pm. So we got to the venue at about 8:45pm, had enough time to get a drink, and sat on the floor in front of the stage with all the kids. The first band came on right on time, but we were confused. Weren't Architecture in Helsinki kind of a keyboard band with a girl? This was your traditional four guy lineup. And what was with the lead singer's harmonica. The first song was okay, nothing special, and then they introduced themselves as Takka Takka. I leaned over to my girlfriend and said, "Oh, I saw their shirt at the merchandise table. I just thought it was a nonsensical Clap Your Hands shirt." So we left and went upstairs to lounge on the sofa until they takka-takka'd off the stage.
Let me just say this: if you don't have a killer, kick-ass, blow the beanies off your fans stage presence, you shouldn't have Architecture in Helsinki open for you.
Despite the staid, uninteresting connotations of their name, this band is like an Australian version of the Scooby Doo gang, a traveling 24-hour party that roams the country in their Mystery Machine and blows the doors off unsuspecting venues. Holy crap was I impressed. There's a definite percussion/chanting aspect to the performance, and it's enhanced by the fact that these kids genuinely look like they're having the best time of anyone in human history when they're playing on stage. I can imagine shows in their hometown Melbourne turning into sweaty, naked pogo orgies. This is one of the best non-headliner shows I have seen in memory.
Another note: all ages shows suck.
Having established a relatively strong position on the floor, after Architecture in Helsinki wrapped up, I left to get another round of drinks. This scenario is always a bit of a concern, because my girlfriend is five feet tall on a good day, and returning is like trying to find a sewing needle in a pile knitting needles. Also, people are more forgiving when a girl is trying to squeeze her way through a crowd. But, we all make sacrifices.
So right, all ages shows suck. When I got to the bar, there were a half dozen eighth graders standing in front of me. I could see right over them to the bartender, but they were caught up in some scandalous gossip session, one or two of them departing at various times for reconnaissance missions. When I finally got to the front of the line, the bartender said, "One drink per visible wristband."
"What?"
"All ages show. I can't give out more than one drink to each person."
So I ordered my girlfriend's drink. Damn you fourteen year olds.
I squirmed my way back through the crowd and found my girlfriend by a couple of signposts I'd eyeballed around her before leaving: old guy, and big hair guy. She had just ingratiated herself with the crowd by yelling at a 6 foot 5 guy who had dared to stand in front of her.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah came on. Their name is just egging on the crowd. I don't think I've heard so much clapping along to a band ever. We had obnoxious people next to us who in addition to not clapping in time with the music also felt it necessary to "Wooooooooooo!" throughout the songs and bump into everyone around them. Perhaps I'm just getting curmudgeonly in my old age.
I'm going to say it: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sound better on their album. The sound was muddy, very garage bandesque, and you couldn't pick out the little flourishes that make every song on their debut album a winner. Their stage presence was flat compared to Architecture in Helsinki, and perhaps that's owing to them not liking Los Angeles (so my girlfriend read in an interview). The crowd really carried their show. All in all, it was fun, and I even liked some of the non-album (couldn't tell if they were new) songs they played. But now I can say I've seen them and not see them again.
File under random: coming home from a quick dinner at the local taqueria, Malo, I picked up a scrap of paper in my front yard. It turned out to be an automobile registration card. I brought it inside and naturally Googled the name. The owner is a supervising producer on Grey's Anatomy (which shoots at the lot across the street from my house). At least they peeled off the sticker and put it on their license plate, but they should have retained the registration slip too. I'll have to go across the street and leave it with one of the security guards tomorrow.
Last night we went to our last Hollywood Bowl event of the summer (and just in time – it's getting crisp out there at night). Due to work schedules, as well as my desire to not pay $25 for closer parking (we paid $4 at Hollywood and Highland and paid ourselves $7 for each additional block we had to walk), we got to the show late. The Bowl was as crowded as I had ever seen, and it took us some time to cattle-walk with the other concertgoers up to where our seats were.
Whenever we show up early to the Bowl, we have aisle seating on the long benches. Anytime we're late, we get stuck in the center and have to beg and pardon and climb over and bump our way there, usually knocking over or stepping on whatever people put at their feet. Such was the case last night, and by the time we got settled in to our seats, we were able to hear about 2 and a half songs by the Strokes. At least we've seen them 4 or 5 times before – but never at the Hollywood Bowl.
The gentleman next to me (who must have been in his fifties or sixties) applauded at the end of the set. His wife asked, "Did you like them?" He replied, "No, I'm clapping for them to get off the stage."
So, having sat on the bench for all of ten minutes, we got up to go get drinks. We politely climbed over our bench to the row behind us, having realized that there was nobody in that one (when our own row was filled with people shoulder-to-shoulder). The concession lines were not lines at all. They were crowds. Half of the people in line were just trying to get past the lines to their seats.
One of the early-twentysomething girls behind me said, "That opening band sucked."
I couldn't believe it. How old are these kids? At twenty-two, wouldn't they have grown up on The Strokes? I feel like I grew up on The Strokes, and I'm considerably older. This wasn't just, "The Strokes played a subpar set." This was "I don't know who those guys were, but I didn't like them." Damn.
We ended up switching to a different concession stand (with a more clearly delineated line), and spent the entire 40 minute intermission standing inline for a beer and a sangria. Twenty-six dollars, please. I kid you not. Usually we're allowed to bring our own food and drink, so this was a bit of a shock.
The Tom Petty show was awesome. I don't call myself a fan, in the sense that I don't own any of his albums, but I've always liked his music, and I knew 90% of the songs they played. Jeff Lynne came out to play The Traveling Wilburys' Handle With Care. The biggest surprise of the evening was "the only honorary Heartbreaker in the world," Stevie Nicks coming out for several songs.
One thing I've noticed with both the Tom Petty show and Willie Nelson's performance a couple weeks ago is that these older bands have a real sense of showmanship. They ooze experience when compared to the youngster rock bands I usually go see. There's a distinct difference in quality – and the fact that the entire audience knows the words to most of the songs doesn't hurt.
What are your personal memories of September 11th?
I remember waking up early, exercising, and returning to read the headline on Scripting News asking, "Are we at war?" I had no idea what was going on.
My sister and I, who shared an apartment at the time, were stuck in front of the television, watching the replays of the explosions and collapses. Then I had to go to work.
At work, we have a badge system to get through the doors, and as I was leaning over to badge in, somebody burst through the door and nearly took off my head. I couldn't even be mad at the guy coming through the door. The air was so somber.
I remember playing a lot of Sigur Ros after that day. It had the right mood.
Within the next week and a half, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time. I didn't say as much to her, but the reason behind it was that even though we'd gone out for a year, it wasn't my instinct to call her first when this tragedy happened. It just clarified a lot for me.
After that, with a lot of time on my hands, I participated in the NaNoWriMo novel writing contest, and wrote a really horrible novel trying to piece together information I'd collected online about the experience of being downtown on that day.
What's your middle name? Is there a story or history behind it?
My middle name is Alan. There's a bit of a story behind it. For whatever reason, the men on my dad's side of the family always have names with the initials G.A.H. Yes, it sounds like an exclamation of frustration if you read it... gah! Like a more flabbergasted 'doh!'... I'm fairly certain that was not the intent. My dad, my grandfather and my great-grandfather were each named with these initials.
So when it came to naming me, my parents went through all the various permutations of G.A.H. As a joke, they told my grandparents they were going to name me Gunther Allouicious. Dead sexy, right? But no, Gregg it was. Not Gregory, even though my girlfriend calls me that sometimes.
Incidentally, my parents had considered naming me Geoff, but when you run that together with my last name (if you know it), you end up hearing the name of an embarrassing bodily function. So, no go. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.
