Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I sent an item in to Steve Harvey’s column in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, and he published it today, complete with the photo I sent in.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-only14jun14,1,6592639.column?coll=la-mininav-california&ctrack=2&cset=true

Also, my dead dot-com gallery got linked from Milk and Cookies the day before yesterday.

Every Memorial Day weekend there is something that happens near here, because we have fighter airplanes from World War II flying over our house. It’s kind of odd, but also interesting. The sound is distinctive, and quite different from any other kind of current airplane. It’s not every day that you have a piece of history flying overhead.

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.

Today, Lucinda’s class did a little performance at lunchtime. The had been rehearsing some songs for the last few weeks, and today was the day that they invited the parents to come and see. So they all filed in and took their places on the front steps of the school. They sang “It’s a Grand Old Flag”, “America the Beautiful”, “God Bless America”, and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”. It was all very cute.

It was also an interesting adventure, since I rode my bike to the school from the office. It’s about 5.5 miles, and the last bit is pretty steep uphill. It wasn’t bad, though. I’ve done it before. And on the way back, I passed by some filming near Caltech. Whatever this was, it was a big shoot. There were trucks and trailers parked along the streets for a couple of blocks on both sides.

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 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.

The egret was back on campus today. This is the same one that likes to hang around the ponds at Caltech.

I got a nice close-up shot of it this time, as well as some of the turtles and tadpoles in the pond. The tadpoles were easily the biggest I’ve ever seen anywhere. They were as big as a Six Dollar Burger. No wonder the egret likes to eat from the ponds. I don’t actually think the egret could eat one of them, but it probably eats the ones that haven’t had time to grow quite so large.

There is an egret who sometimes hangs around the Caltech campus. There are a few little pools that are stocked with frogs and mosquito fish, and apparently the little fish and tadpoles are very tasty. So the egret hangs around the ponds and eats. It’s an interesting bit of actual nature, red in tooth and claw, in the middle of the big city.

We’re having more rain today, and it’s kind of windy. Whenever it’s windy here, the birds are all lined up on the wires with their beaks into the wind. When it’s not windy, they don’t all face the same way.

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.