Stan’s Obligatory Blog

We went to see “Borat!” over the weekend. It was tremendously funny. And today I saw this article in the Los Angeles Times about a Russian who traveled to L.A. to stalk Hilary Duff:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-duff7nov07,1,3641208.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

Man is arrested in stalking of Hilary Duff
…Myaskovskiy “apparently came to Los Angeles a little over two years ago for the sole purpose of meeting and becoming romantically involved” with Duff, according to court papers…

Presumably he wanted to have “sexy time” with her. No word yet on whether or not he brought the traditional wedding sack.

There was an article in Thursday’s Los Angeles Times about the New Jersey Supreme Court decision that same-sex couples are entitled to some sort of ‘legal equivalent of marriage’. When I read this, my first thought was a snarky comment that ‘legal equivalent’ sounds a lot like the old Jim Crow doctrine of ‘separate but equal‘. So I dashed off a letter to the editor to that effect, and they printed it today:

So the New Jersey court says that same-sex couples are entitled to the legal equivalence of marriage. Hmm. “Legally equivalent” sounds a lot like “separate but equal.” And we all know how well that worked out.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-friday27.6oct27,0,4646427.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters

There are a couple of local political issues going on here in Pasadena right now. So I just wanted to mention them.

First is Measure A, which is an attempt at a referendum on trying to get an NFL team at the Rose Bowl. Los Angeles has been without a football team since 1995, and we’ve been getting along quite nicely without it. There have been efforts to get a team back here, but the NFL always seems to want the city to pay for either a new stadium or major renovations to an old one. This seems like a bad deal. Now they say that having a team would bring untold riches to Pasadena, which seems doubtful. What it would do is cause all manner of disruption to the area around the Rose Bowl. And again, we’re doing fine without it.

I read part of the text of the actual proposal. I didn’t read the whole thing, because it’s 96 pages long. But they laid out the basic argument for it in the first 10 pages. They say that the city is currently on the hook for several million dollars worth of maintenance and improvements to the stadium. They claim that the NFL would pay for this and more. That the NFL would sink something like 500 million dollars into the stadium. This seems very far-fetched. Judging by the past, the NFL usually wants to spend that much money on its stadiums, but they prefer to spend someone else’s money. Like ours. So even if this passes, it seems unlikely that the NFL would actually agree to its terms.

The second issue is that someone has bought the old Shakey’s Pizza at 2180 E. Foothill Blvd and wants to build a strip club at the site. Apparently, the city made rules years ago that forced all the ‘adult’ businesses like that out, and it seems that they want to keep it that way. But the courts decided some time ago that cities have to make some accomodations in their zoning to allow these sorts of things somewhere, and apparently the old Shakey’s qualifies. So the city council is trying to figure out a way to change the rules to not allow it. Changing the rules to not allow something is just because someone is uncomfortable with it is just not fair. And they are bandying about all sorts of improbable statistics in support of this, like claiming that a strip club would cause a 100% increase in crime and such. Sheesh. We’ve lived near things like this before, and it’s not that big of a deal.

You can read about the latest on this at the Pasadena Star-News web site.

But what it all really comes down to is: we hate football, but we like strip clubs. So there.

Route map and photo locations

Today’s Sunday club ride was a sightseeing trip to Downtown Los Angeles. I had read that they had a fake toll plaza built on 4th St as a set for “Live Free or Die Hard“. It was a kind of dreary day, with a slight misting drizzle, so there were only five of us today.

We rode down Sierra Madre and Huntington Drive to get to Downtown. On the way, I picked up another couch for the Abandoned Couches Blog. Then we took Main St into Downtown.

Crossing the 101 Freeway, we passed the old Hall of Justice. This building was ‘home away from home’ for Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson, as well as being Control Secret Headquarters in the title sequence from “Get Smart”.

We took a right on Temple and then a left on Grand to ride down through the towers on Bunker Hill. At the overpass where Grand goes over 4th St, we stopped and saw the ‘Toll Plaza’. It certainly looked real. The toll booths looked real, and they’d painted lines on the street so the whole thing looked like it had always been there.

We rode around to Hope St to get a better view. At the top of the ramp, there was a broken NYPD police barricade. The guard there told us they had filmed a stunt there yesterday. He showed us how the barricade was built of balsa wood, and it had cuts in it so that it would break in predetermined places. I got a picture of Vikki lifting it up to see how light it was.

Leaving Downtown, we rode down Grand to Wilshire. This is where we saw the street dressed up as Tokyo last winter. This time it was just plain Los Angeles.

Continuing on, we took Wilshire through MacArthur Park, passing the über-cool American Cement Association building. It’s been converted into lofts, and it’s a very dramatic building.

Turning off Wilshire on Alexandria, we rode up to 2nd St, where I picked up some more couches. Then we turned right on Larchmont and went to Noah’s Bagels for a snack.

At Melrose, we passed Paramount Studios, as well as a big sign for a burlesque show. Looks like fun. Then we took Bronson north all the way to Franklin. Then we turned right and rode over the Shakespeare Bridge to Rowena Ave.

At Fletcher and Riverside, I stopped to get a new picture of the hillside art project. Then we rode up through Eagle Rock to Yosemite Dr. I picked up one more couch there. Then we took the ‘shortcut’ up the Colorado Hill. It’s short and sweet. I actually said ‘uncle’ and shifted to a lower gear to get up the hill.

The last bit was to take Orange Grove and Paloma back to the park. At that point, I had 38 miles, so I rode out to Sierra Madre and back just to pad it a bit.

42 miles.
cycling

This weekend is the 15th Annual Inkslingers’ Ball. We go to this every year, and it’s always a fun time. Sadly, this might be the last time that they have it at the Hollywood Palladium. I’d read recently that the building was sold, and the way things go here in Los Angeles, it might not even exist any more by next year.

I went over in the afternoon on Saturday, arriving about 3:00. It was kind of quiet compared to previous years, but there was still a pretty good crowd.

I found Big Rick there, doing photos in the corner. We talked for a bit, then I continued wandering around. I had brought along a big stack of photos that I’d taken at past shows, and whenever I see someone I’ve photographed, I give them a copy. I gave away a fair number of photos. And, of course, I took a bunch more.

At one point, I was approached by a very cute girl wearing nearly nothing. She was selling raffle tickets. What was I to do? I’m not made of stone. Needless to say, I didn’t win. But she was very cute anyway.

One person I saw was a girl we’ve seen at a number of recent shows. Being bad with names, I can’t remember hers. But she’s the one who’s always wearing wild outfits. But this time she wasn’t working. She was dressed normally. And she wasn’t wearing huge platform shoes, so it turns out she’s really not tall. That was kind of strange. I didn’t recognize her at first, what with being eight inches shorter and all.

Dinner break was down the street at Fabiolus Cafe, which is something of a tradition by now. Then it was back into the Palladium for more fun and frolic. It was about this time that Cathy came over. We saw Shannon and her posse there. Shannon told us about her experience on CSI. Apparently, the season opener episode story line involves a tattoo shop, so they hired her to play the tattoo artist. She said that the show will be airing next week.

We saw Anna from Anagram Fine Art. She always has a booth there, and Cathy likes talking to her. They get to trade mom-stories and compare notes, since they’re both moms who sometimes feel like they don’t quite fit in with the regular PTA crowd.

While they were talking, I noticed that Kylie Ireland was there. We had met her briefly on Thursday night at the “O” party, so I went over to say hi. I got a picture of her and her tattoos. She said that she’d have more tattoos, but that porn producers don’t like them.

Overall, it was a very fun evening.

We have a friend who is a pornographer. He’s also one of the smartest and funniest people we know. And he’s married to Nina Hartley, who most people know from the AVN Hall of Fame. She’s also quite charming. Thursday night they invited us to a party for his new movie, “O – The Power of Submission“, which is his hard-core ‘re-imagining’ of the erotic classic, The Story of O. Needless to say, we thought this sounded like great fun. Followed immediately by the question, “what are we going to wear?”

The party was at Boardner’s in Hollywood. We paid to park close by, since we didn’t want to have to walk far to get there, what with Cathy in six-inch stripper shoes. When we got there, we went in the door and saw a roomful of normal-looking people. That was odd. But then the bartender told us that the party was around the back, and to go down the alley next to the building. When we went there, we saw girls in latex spanking dresses and we knew we were in the right place.

The party was in the back room and patio area. This was a bit of a problem, since the floor there was very rough. This is bad for women in tall stiletto heels. And there were lots of women in tall heels there. There was also a door connecting the patio to the front room, where all the normal people were. When people from the front came down there, they looked through the door, and their eyes got big. It was pretty funny.

We expected to see a lot of people we know there, but as it turned out, there weren’t all that many. But that was all right. We met several of the cast members of the movie. Carmen Luvana was nice. She seemed very together, and everyone said that she was the consummate professional, always on time and pleasant to work with. But our favorite was Adrianna Nicole. She was smart and funny and we liked her a lot.

Overall, it was a very fun evening, and certainly something a bit outside our normal routine.

Of course, we have no pictures. There were a few officially designated photographers there, but otherwise it was one of those ‘cameras not allowed’ kind of events.

Have I mentioned lately that I love Los Angeles?

There was some filming on campus at Caltech yesterday. They were doing a couple of scenes for “Numb3rs“, but when I saw this truck, the first thing I thought was, “Isn’t this CSI spinoff thing is getting out of hand?”

Today was a day for playing tourist right here in Los Angeles.

We started out at the MPAA gallery in Beverly Hills for the “It’s Alive!” exhibit. This showed animatronic animals and monsters from movies. For some reason though, T-Rex from “Jurassic Park” just isn’t all that fearsome when he’s only 10 inches tall. We saw Aslan the lion, from “Narnia”, who apparently has no legs. And I got a picture of Cathy with Mighty Joe Young’s hand and head. It was interesting to see. The actual models were not animated, but they had TVs set up around the room showing clips from the movies that the models had been used in.

After lunch, we went to the Marvel Super Heroes exhibit at the Science Museum. This was really intended to be just a basic science exhibit for kids, and the super heroes were just there to try and get the kids interested. Still, Lucinda had some fun there, lifting the car with Iron Man’s mechanical arms and such.

The last part of the exhibit was about the history of comic-book super heroes and how they have evolved with our culture. There was a large poster of Peter Parker hanging up his Spider-suit while declaring, “and every boy… sooner or later… must put away his toys and become a man”. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought this was very sad.

Outside the museum, Lucinda did some climbing on the rock scupltures, and then she and Cathy both were swinging on the ropes attached to the ‘Big Lever’ exhibit.

By the time we were ready to leave, it was close to 5:00, so we thought we should just go to dinner, rather than brave the Los Angeles traffic to get home. Since we were close to Downtown, we went to Union Station so that Cathy could have her official Birthday Dinner at Traxx. We’ve been there a few times before, and it’s always been good. And this time was no exception. We had a very nice dinner outside in the courtyard.

It was a fun day.

I recently got a new camera. It’s a Canon Powershot S2 IS. My last two cameras were Canons, too, and I was very happy with them.

This morning, I looked out the front window and saw a hawk on our driveway. Hawks don’t usually come this far down out of the mountains, so this was kind of a treat. It was standing there, tearing up a small piece of meat. So I grabbed the camera and went outside. I managed to get pretty close to it. Close enough that the 12x zoom got a good look at it.

Actual nature, right here in the wilds of Los Angeles.

This evening we went down to meet my Chinese family for dinner. Uncle Hsin always knows where the best Chinese restaurants are, and it’s always a fun time to have dinner with them.

This time we went to New Capital Seafood in Rowland Heights. It’s the usual Chinese seafood restaurant, with big tanks by the door with fish, crabs, shrimp, lobsters and various other captured marine life awaiting their fate. I remember always being fascinated by the live fish when I was kid, and Lucinda is interested in looking at them, too. She doesn’t like actually eating them just yet, but she still finds them interesting.

One of the dishes we got was squid, which was the Sunday Cephalopod. It was fried with lots of garlic. It was tasty and all, and I made a lame attempt at assembling an entire squid on my plate for a photo opportunity.

My always favorite thing since I was a kid is when we get Peking Duck. Sadly, Lucinda has not developed a taste for this. But she likes the rice chips that it comes served on, so it’s not a total waste for her. We also had a lobster and a steamed fish, which she didn’t like either. I can’t remember how old I was before I developed a taste for fish. I think I was about 10, so there’s time. And she’s learning to use chopsticks now.

Overall, it was a fun time.