Part of my research for my upcoming novel, Rhythm & Blues (Doubleday, 2010) involved subscribing to RSS feeds from celebrity “news and gossip” sites (or gossip and gossip if you prefer). So I’m almost too familiar with the narrow view of LA you can glimpse past the preening and puking stars that populate celebrity news photos. You can see that LA in about three 10-minute stints (each separated by an hour’s drive, of course.)
The LA that’s more interesting to me is the one portrayed by the likes of Francesca Lia Block, inhabited by Gary Busey, or even Dr. Horrible– twisted LA: dark around the edges, silly in the middle, banal in vast tracts, existing almost as if to ask “really? are we doing this?”
So that’s the LA I got to hang out in on the second and third days of my visit. First stop was the Museum of Jurrassic Technology. I am loathe to admit that Wikipedia explains it best:
“The museum claims to have a “specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities.” This explains the museum’s name and also suggests its puzzling nature, since the Lower Jurassic ended more than 150 million years before the appearance of hominoids and in particular before anything that could be called technology (see geologic time scale).
Its catalog includes a mixture of artistic and scientific exhibits that evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 18th century predecessors of modern natural history museums.”
What that means in practical terms is that they have exhibits like a portrait gallery of the dogs of the Russian space programme,
and a room full of telegrams and letters to the Mt. Wilson Observatory,
Lots of displays that use stereoscopes,
and maybe my personal favourite (though too dark to photograph), Selected Collections from Los Angeles Area Mobile Home and Trailer Parks.
The glass-encased weirdness of Day 2 gave way to the living weirdness of Day 3, when Cecil and I got ourselves invited to a cocktail party at the residence of the Consul General of Canada, in celebration of an all-solar-powered car that had been built and driven from the North Pole to Los Angeles by a former flight attendant with a dream.
We were a little early, so we killed some time visiting this nearby home that has something like 18 statues of David on the front lawn.
There was an official red carpet moment:
Ed Begley Jr. was there.
So was Peter Fonda.
And Cecil’s friend, Tanya Allen, who was frankly more interesting than most anything else at the party, save maybe the wine.
(I think she’s maybe hoping not to have to film in Vancouver any more than necessary? I dunno… some kind of message here…)
Here they are together, acting normal and lovely and everything:
There were quite a few people at the party (and all over LA, really) who called themselves environmentalists, while describing behaviours and activities that were not at all environmentally friendly. I started to accept them as part of the quirky landscape after a while.
We left the party and went to Flore for dinner, leaving us only another 8,998 vegan restaurants to try in LA. Everything was extra tasty at Flore. I ate there twice and would go back for sure. The place was crowded, so they seated our party of four at a table for six that already had two guys sitting at one end. We got to telling them about the party, and they said to us “oh, so you’re environmentalists,” and shocked, we said “no!” And they looked at us funny and said “you just left a solar car event and came straight to a vegan restaurant,” to which we laughed and said “oh! no, we’re just Canadian,” like that explained everything.
After Flore, we connected with Cecil & Tanya’s friend, Dave, who took us to a completely amazing bar, The Edison. I’m not in the habit of describing bars as “amazing,” but this one is built 3 stories underground, in what used to be a power generation plant for the skyscraper above, and it still has relics of the original generation machinery worked into the space, like decor. (Follow that link for a virtual tour) There’s a cabaret stage in the middle, they play jazz standards and project old films above the bars, including Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon, which was also featured in Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.
I think it was that night that I got over my jet lag, but then ironically stopped sleeping normally at all. A few days later, we shrugged of daylight savings time, and with it, my ability to slow my brain after shutting my eyes. I’ve been home for a month, and I’m still off-kilter.
When we continue: last days in Wonderland…
Related posts
- Retroblogging: March trip - LA movie theatres
- Retroblogging: March trip- Griffith Park Observatory
- Retroblogging: March trip- LA, the days get hazy
- Retroblogging: March Trip - Flight to LA
- Retroblogging: March Trip - LA, day 1
