Stan’s Obligatory Blog

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?

Vikki is back from traveling, so we went out at lunchtime for ‘the usual’, which means the Lida Loop.

It was just about a perfect day today. We did the usual route. Vikki told me about her experience of Ironman Canada, followed by a trip to Italy, followed by a trip to Palm Springs. It all sounded quite grueling, but she was in pretty good spirits. In particular, she seemed quite pleased with her Ironman experience, with a time of 12:24:17.

The last part of the ride was straight down the hill and back to the office. It was a very pleasant ride.

18 miles at lunch, 26 for the day.
cycling

Since I can’t ride on Sunday, and nobody felt like doing the sightseeing trip up the mountains to see the old Nike missile site at Barley Flats, I went on the regular Foothill Cycle Saturday ride today. This was a pleasant little ride to nowhere in particular, with some nice hills.

We started out at Michillinda Park in Arcadia and rode back up through Pasadena. I stopped for a photo at B&D Auto in Altadena. This makes a nice companion for S&M Liquor. Then we went past JPL to get to La Cañada. Passing Descanso Gardens, we turned and went down Hospital Hill in to Montrose. Then we went west a bit more and then south into Glendale.

The fun part of the ride was back up and over the big hill on Chevy Chase. This is a nice hill, either up or down. Then we went back down into La Cañada and back home into Pasadena.

At this point, everyone split off to go home. I had only 35 miles, so I continued east, back to Arcadia. I made a loop down 1st and back up 2nd and then came home by way of Grand View in Sierra Madre.

It was a nice little ride on a very pleasant day.

50 miles.
cycling

Last Monday, I saw a movie review in the L.A. Times. They usually don’t have movie reviews on a Monday. But this was “Idiocracy“, the new movie by Mike Judge. Geeks everywhere know him for “Office Space“. The review was pretty good, and they were kind of puzzled by the fact that the studio had basically dumped the movie into limited release with no advance screenings and no publicity. Like they wanted it to fail. And apparently, they are not the only ones who got this impression.

We were intrigued. So yesterday, we went to see it. It was tremendously funny. The story line reminded me a lot of the classic science fiction story, “The Marching Morons“. And Luke Wilson was great as Joe Bowers, the hapless average man who ends up as the smartest guy on Earth in the moronic future. We enjoyed this movie a lot, even though a lot of it seemed uncomfortably close to reality.

I went for the lunchtime bike ride again today. Vikki is out of town on a trip, so it was just me. I did the Lida Loop yet again. I got a new pair of wheels for my bike last night, since the old rims were pretty worn. So I wanted to try them out.

On the way in to the office in the morning, I saw a tree crew working down the street. Apparently, a very big oak tree branch fell on somebody’s garage last night. Have I mentioned lately that the city services in Pasadena are great?

Lunchtime came, and it was very hot. I did the usual route past the Rose Bowl and up and over the hill into La Cañada. On the way down Chevy Chase, I hit 37mph, which was pretty good on the winding downhill. I’m not as fearless as I used to be, but I’m getting better.

On the road near JPL, I had one of those “what’s wrong with this picture” moments.

As always, the last part of the ride was across Pasadena on Mendocino and then the long downhill back to the office.

18 miles at lunch, 28 for the day.
cycling

Today’s bike ride was another of those ‘noodling around not going anywhere in particular’ rides that we do so much. It was fun. It also marked Tommy’s return to riding with the group after being off the bike for a couple of months after crashing in Turnbull Canyon.

We headed east into Arcadia, and then up into the foothills in Monrovia for a bit. Then east some more on flat land out to Duarte and the Santa Fe Dam bike path. We rode the path down past the dam and down the San Gabriel River to Lower Azusa Road.

Crossing the Rio Hondo, I saw a funny sign. Sadly, I wasn’t quick enough on the draw to get a picture. In giant letters it said, “PAINLESS DENTISTRY”, but when I got close, I could see that above that, in tiny letters, it said, “Our goal is”. Heh.

We took El Monte Ave and the giant bike lane back up into Arcadia. Then we rode Huntington Drive west to San Marino. That was where we saw the “Auto Grooming” place. Then we went north on El Molino back into Pasadena. Our snack stop was at the corner bakery on Lake Ave. I got a bagel. I asked for it to be warmed up, not toasted. Then we sat outside for what seemed like forever before they brought me the bagel, and it was toasted. Sheesh.

After the stop, the group fragmented. Everyone went their separate ways. I stopped by my office to water my plants, since I realized that I’d forgotten to ask someone to water them while I was gone. They were all pretty wilted.

The last part of the ride was to go through Old Town and past the Rose Bowl and then back across Altadena on Mendocino. That was where I saw the big sign announcing “Free Pot”. No, not that kind of pot. It was a basket full of ceramic pots. Some of them were quite nice, and I would have taken a couple if I’d had a way to carry them.

It was a very nice ride.

47 miles.
cycling

Friday was our last day at Lake Tahoe. We spent the day just doing nothing in particular, which was nice. Lucinda got to spend some more quality time with the cable TV, which she enjoyed. Cathy and I did some house maintenance. She oiled the wooden cabinet doors. I put up two new smoke detectors with 10-year lithium batteries. We also got a new pulley for one of the blinds. That was hard to find, but Mary’s Draperies had it.

After lunch, we rented bikes one more time. This time, Lucinda wanted to try riding the little trailer-bike that hooked on to my bike. This seemed like a good idea, but in practice it was horrible. The trailer is hooked on to the main bike with a universal joint, and the joint has some play in it. This made it very hard to maintain balance, and it made the ride very unpleasant. I usually take pictures during bike rides, but this instability made sure I could never take one hand off the bars to take a picture. So the only pictures I took are from when we stopped at Pope Beach.

Before dinner, we went to the pool one more time. Then we had dinner at Evans. We always go there on our last night, and as always, the food was excellent.

And thus ended our vacation. The pictures from the day are in our photo album.

Lucinda liked riding the horse on Sunday, so we went back to do it again today. This time we did the two-hour trail ride. Elsa was our guide again, and our horses were Gideon and Big Maude.

The ride was very nice. We covered more ground than on the shorter ride, going all the way to the edge of Fallen Leaf Lake before heading back.

After the ride, we had lunch at Lucinda’s favorite little Mexican restaurant. Then we rented bikes for an afternoon ride. Lucinda wanted to try riding by herself. We rode through the woods to the end of the forest trail and back. It was a fun little ride, even if we had to go a little slower than usual because of Lucinda.

Before dinner, we went to the pool so Lucinda could play there for a bit. Then we had dinner at the Horizon Casino restaurant.

Pictures from the day are in our photo album.

Wednesday was our last day at Lassen. We got breakfast from the Mineral Lodge and headed back into the park. The people at the south entrance told us that there was a beaver dam on Hat Lake. This is the little lake that was created by a lahar in the 1914-1917 eruptions. So this was our first stop.

We were hoping to see some beavers, if for no other reason than to continue our streak of seeing animals that begin with ‘B’. We walked around the lake and saw the beaver dam and the lodge out in the middle, but we didn’t see any actual beavers.

The next stop for the day was the Devastated Area exhibit. There is a short trail that shows some of the effects of the pyroclastic flows from the 1915 eruption, including flattened forests and big boulders moved down the mountain. It was impressive.

Our last stop for the day was Subway Cave. This is a bit outside the park in Lassen National Forest. This was an interesting landscape. The whole region is covered in recent lava flows, which just looks odd to us, since we’re not used to it. The cave is in a section of a very large flow that left a lava tube. We brought jackets and flashlights to take the tour. It was interesting and a lot of fun.

After the cave tour, we got in the car and headed back to Tahoe. We stopped for dinner in Reno, and we got back to the house just before dark. It was a very fun side trip.

As always, the photos from the day are in our photo album.