Have you ever had the housekeeping staff walk into your hotel room while you were sleeping? Have they ever cleaned the bathroom without waking you up? Have they ever wandered around the corner and seen you rolling around in your bed naked? Well, I didn’t have to worry about that last one—Matthew came back from breakfast and asked the cleaning lady to leave before she finished up in the bathroom. (Plus I was wearing boxers, but two and a half out of three is still pretty bad…)
Yup, I slept in late today. Not surprising, given that I got into bed at about 6:00 in the morning after writing the last entry. It’s something I don’t plan on repeating for a few reasons: 1) I like eating breakfast; 2) I missed out on a bunch of movies, not all of which were absolute stinkers; and 3) meeting the cleaning lady in those circumstances is a little spooky. Thus, I’ll be very sad if I’m up past 2:00. I’ll also be really surprised because it’s not quite 1:00 and not much happened today.
There was a seminar here in the hotel this morning about distribution of films that a couple WaZoo people attended—since they were meeting for breakfast at 9:00 to be ready by 10:00, I didn’t bother to join them. (Truthfully, I was so out of it that I never heard Matthew leave this morning.) When he got back afterwards, I woke up and would have been willing to head out with the group to go to the movie theater. Unfortunately, everyone else was already waiting for him downstairs, so I was stuck walking there by myself this afternoon.
Given the time restraints (or lack thereof) and the fact that no movies really stuck out as ones I wanted to watch, I figured it’d be a good time to clean myself up, take a long shower and shave. I feel pretty, oh so pretty, I feel pretty as pretty can be… That took a while, but I was definitely ready to head out and meet the group out at the theater. The only problem was figuring out how to get there.
I’m glad I asked Mike how to get there before he and Matthew left. He only gave basic directions—head straight one way and take a left—but I managed to figure out which way to go. The way he described “one way” sounded like going down the hill where the gay bar was and coincided with the direction the building was facing. I got down there and hit Santa Monica Blvd. like I was supposed to, then turned left.
The roads I knew about at that point were Beverly, Fairfax and Lamont. (Turns out that last one had nothing to do with how to get there—the theater was on the corner of Beverly and Fairfax). Unfortunately, it sounded like I was supposed to get down to Beverly somehow and I hadn’t the slightest idea which street I should turn on in order to get there, so I just started walking. And I kept walking. And walking. And walking.
Given my innate ability to miss turns and getting thoroughly lost while driving a car, I was starting to get really nervous as I kept going without seeing any of the three street names I was looking for. Still, I never turned around and eventually reached Fairfax. “Thank God!” I thought. Since the theater was supposed to be on that road and I knew I wasn’t supposed to head back towards the hotel, I turned right and started walking. And I kept walking. And walking. And walking.
I think the worst part of that stretch of road was when I passed a farmer’s market that was on the other side. Since we ate lunch at one the day before, I had this horrible fear that the theater was supposed to be somewhere nearby and I never saw it as I was walking down the street. I kept moving, but no theater. But it was there eventually… on Beverly. I walked in at about 3:00—I thought about walking up and down the street for an hour since the screenings run in two-hour intervals (they usually throw a bunch of shorter films into one time slot to keep the schedule pretty consistent). Given that it took so long to get there and knowing that we wouldn’t be staying much beyond 4:00—we were planning on leaving the hotel to meet some other people for dinner at about 5:00—so I jumped inside the theater that was playing a couple shorter clips so I wouldn’t be missing a majority of the plot when I sat down.
I only caught the end of “Gravity,” a film with a pair of soldiers, one German and one American, who were caught up in a tree, hanging by their parachutes with no way to get down. (Well, they got down eventually, though it never showed how it happened.) There was a moment of bonding up in the trees when they mentioned movie stars’ names (that was as close to the same language as they got) and they were chilling out at the bottom of a tree once that ordeal was over. Eventually, the German got up and started running across a field… then got shot in the back of the head by American soldiers. I’m not sure what the moral of the story was, but I’ll have to remember Betty Grable’s name just in case some foreigner and I get caught in an “inescapable situation” and have nothing else to talk about.
The second film I saw was “Silent Ain’t Sexy,” which was a documentary of teens talking about sex. It was insightful, interesting… actually, it was kinda scary when hearing about kids losing their virginity at age 12 just because they’re curious and a girl who thought she got herpes in her throat after giving some kid a blowjob. Clap on, clap off, clap on clap off… the Clapper! (That’d be a nice nickname to have in junior high, don’t you think?)
Once that was over, I headed back out into the lobby and found Matthew talking to someone on his cell phone. Stephanie spent the day visiting family, but he, Mike and Bob had been watching a movie on the other screen, “True Adversity,” and it was apparently really bad. One of those movies that makes you keep looking at your watch, hoping that it’ll be over soon. One of those movies that runs for 90 minutes but feeling more like three hours. One of those movies that prevents you from being honest when the director is lurking outside the exit and asking everyone what they thought of it as they left. Thank God I watched the short clips instead…
So after they left the movie, the other guys wanted to head back and get prettied up for dinner—I had already done that and was kinda interested in some of the clips coming up in the next hour, but there was no way in hell I was going to walk back to the hotel this time around. (Speaking of which, if there had been a handshake involved, Bob would have owed Matthew five bucks because he bet that I wouldn’t show up.) We all drove back and I got to chill out for a while before we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Or maybe it was Spanish. All I know is that there were Christmas-style lights shaped like jalapeno peppers hanging all over the place.
I think four people ordered some form of… well, I don’t remember what they were, but I got to eat one and it tasted kinda like mushy corn. Not particularly good, but not bad. I felt the same way about my taco, but there was one added twist: the meat they used was ostrich. Yep, I decided to turn down other meals that looked fairly appealing and more substantial—I hadn’t eaten anything yet that day—but it was ostrich. How many times will I get the chance to try that? But like I said before about that other stuff, it wasn’t particularly good, but not bad. Plus I can tell friends back in Minnesota that I’ve eaten ostrich. Hey, I’ll take bragging rights however I can get them…
Once dinner was over, we got back to the hotel and got together with the guys from the “S.C.I.E.N.C.E” movie again. They went with Matthew up to the hot tub and pool up on the roof, but I opted to stick around here in the room. I just didn’t feel like going up and mingling with everyone, so I spent that time sitting around, messing around on the laptop and being fairly unproductive. As it turned out, Tom from the U.K. joined the group and brought his guitar, so they all got to hang out with live music in the background. Bummer that I missed out, but given that I was feeling pretty cold and eventually put on warmer clothes even though I was inside, it may be better that I wasn’t sitting out there with everyone else.
Before I jump into bed and get more than three hours of sleep before people go to get breakfast, I feel the need to share something from a little pamphlet I grabbed at the entryway of the hotel. It has nothing to do with peanut butter or jelly—in fact, it’s depressing in a way. It’s advertising for the House of Blues and various acts playing this month (which is for September instead of October, but those aren’t the important details). On the cover for the House of Blues (which includes the slogan, “In blues we trust”), it has a picture with the artists performing on the 24th and 25th of September: Ministry, with special guests, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult!!!
I’ve been racking my brain, but aside from classical music or performers like Enya, those groups are about as far from blues as you can get. But it’s nice to know they’re willing to invite performers like Motörhead along with The World-Famous Gospel Brunch, you know? Equal opportunity is important, even though it might defy the definition of “the blues.” After all, that would mean that last night, I didn’t have “the blues” and I wasn’t in a “funk”—I was feeling “punk rock” or in a state of “death metal.” Sweeeet…
