I have to say, there has been a lot of Living Fabulously the past couple of weekends. I had been working long hours on a film for the last couple of months; but with the workload winding down, it was time to start taking back my neglected social life.
Culver City Artwalk was going down two Sat’s ago. Seeing as how this was happening pretty much at my doorstep, I was able to motivate myself to go. I was also able to persuade Marc to come all the way down to Culver City to roam the Artwalk with me. This translated to us pretty much snacking our way through downtown Culver City. The day began, as so many good weekend days do, with brunch. G was once again caught in the midst of finals, thus he pretty much has to spend the day studying; however he was able to start the day off right -- accompanying us to eat at Tender Greens. Now full of good, healthy food, we moved on to get lattes at Starbucks, and these were to be shortly followed-up with green tea lattes at Royal/T, along with a red velvet cupcake with Marc -- which I picked at of course. Another snacking incident was narrowly avoided at Surfas, but it was a close one.
In between the lattes, we did actually manage to see some art. Some of it was good, but there was plenty of bad too. I think I was most amused by these cool structures displayed at this gallery in the downtown area.
They’re like sophisticated, popsicle stick dollhouses! They just made me a little sad that I was too big to go inside. (Although, they do create people sized structures, they can't really fit many full scale structures in the gallery. Sad for me.) They also had a rocket-ship go-cart in an alley behind the gallery, complete with helmet. It took all my restraint to keep from trying to crawl inside!After a long day of artwalking, Marc accompanied me to meet some co-workers at Birds for celebratory end-of-film drinks. From here the night wandered from drinks to the apartment of one of the crewmembers for more drinks and stories of old Hollywood and the creepiness of Scientology. From there everyone tagged along with said crewmember to a stranger’s party in Hollywood – complete with a minor celebrity sighting. Living in LA provides many of these. With so many actors living here, I’m constantly seeing people that look familiar in a way that takes a while to sort out whether I’ve actually met the person or just saw them in a commercial or TV show at some point. All in all, a highly satisfactory Saturday in Los Angeles. Good Times.
Sunday was a little more chill. June 1st was the anniversary of our wedding #2 (we had 2 weddings– one in Colombia and one here). Since G was going to be all wrapped up in finals, we just made a mini-date out of Chipotle Burritos and a 3D screening of Disney Pixar’s Up! Adorable, by the way. Only Pixar can make a story about an Old guy and his chubby boyscout sidekick rescuing a giant bird from the clutches of another old guy and his talking dogs while flying a house via balloon to South America actually work and effectively strike all the right emotional cords. I’m just wondering how that pitch meeting went down.
Last weekend was pretty a carnival. I kicked the weekend off treasure hunting at sample sale with my friend Jesse. YAY treasures at tiny prices! Then it was time to celebrate the end of G’s first year of B-school with him and all of his B-school buddies. I met up with them at Q’s, where the celebration had already been underway for several hours and continued until late in the evening. Very Impressive, future MBA’s! Cheers to you!
But why should the celebration end there? The dionysian revelries got an early start on Saturday with an Excursion to one of our favorite spots– Malibu Family Wines. This is one of the few wineries in the LA area and they have a beautiful tasting area in the Malibu Hills. The tasting room is really a cute little shack in a park-like area with tables. My co-workers, the dynamic duo known as JP and Kate, decided to host a picnic at the winery. They had to do a lot of arm twisting to get us to go – I really love a picnic. Pretty much say the word and I’m there. We arrived at 2 and snacked and drank straight through to about 5:30/6.
From there, we made a brief stop at home, and moved onto a birthday party at the Culver Hotel (a fun bit of trivia I repeat constantly – the Munchkins from the Wizard of OZ staid here during the filming of the movie and crazy orgies).
The birthday girl is a friend of G’s from school, and just when we thought we’d had enough imbibing for one evening, she and her husband invited everyone over for homemade limoncello. Lovely People! Really, now how could we pass up that kind of hospitality? Luckily, they 2 blocks from our apartment, so we could just walk home.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, I knew the first couple of hours of my day were going to be painful. Believe it or not, I never crossed the line passed buzzed on Saturday. Still, my body isn’t really used to a 12-hour slow and steady stream of wine, cocktails, and liqueur. I woke up surprisingly early, but actually moving or doing anything at all was difficult for a while. When G and I finally got ourselves up, cleaned and dressed, we headed out in search of sustenance. Greasy Spoons were invented for mornings like these and we headed straight to the closest one – the S&W Diner.
Of course, about 5 seconds after ordering I realized that I had completely miscalculated the time and I was never going to make it in time to meet Marc for our previously schedule appointment. Never fear! Take the food to go. Now I don’t know why, but meatloaf with two eggs, fried tomatoes and biscuit tasted amazing as I stuffed my face and wolfed it down on our walk home! Admittedly, this was very risky business. The wind was blowing kind of hard and I was wearing white. But . . . .mmmmmm . . . hangover food!
And I did actually make it to meet Marc in time (mostly) for the screening we were going to at LACMA- Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman. I know you’re probably thinking, 'Wow, that’s an interesting choice of film to see with a hangover.' Yeah, I’m not all that impressive. I won’t pretend I knew anything about photographer Julius Shulman prior to the screening. Marc and his love of architecture and urban design picked this one. I’ll also admit it was rough going for me at the start of the film, as I waited for the Advil to take effect. But it turned out to be a great little doc, Mr. Shulman was a delightful subject, and now I know that he was the go-to photographer for all of the major modernist architects. (I'm actually still mulling over purchasing the book of his work. It would actually serve as a great guide to Los Angeles architecture) Afterward, we wandered around the museum for a while, so I managed to offset the indulgences of the previous day with a little culture.
I opted for a more low-key finale to the weekend. I went off wandering around my neighborhood on a photowalk. I took G’s fancy camera, but turned out it was out of batteries, so I had to use my Iphone instead.
I think I packed a lot into one little weekend. Somehow, I even managed to do a cursory clean-up of our apartment, laundry, and a good workout – and honestly, I really can’t feel good about a weekend unless I’ve crossed some of this mundane tasks off my to-do list.
Even better, the good times rolled right on through the week. Monday, G and I caught The Hangover (appropriate) with some good friends we hadn’t seen in far to long. Afterward we all went out for a bit and friends of our friends shared pictures with us of recent trip to New Zealand that made the pics at the end of the film look tame. I think I’ve learned that I probably can’t hang with the Kiwis – if those pics are any indicator, they are some crazy partiers. Good times!
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