Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good

My friend Gina (a rampant Cure fan who wore lipstick around her eyes until c. 2002) arrived at LAX about two hours after Allie left. She brought only one small bag of stuff for her entire six-day visit.

The first day we wandered around LA and went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I worried when I read their first plaque about antediluvian man (and thought maybe I’d wandered back into the bible belt), but my worries were unfounded and it was actually a very cool place. I think I enjoyed it more than Gina, though she was the one who suggested we go there.

We ate at a Mexican outdoor restaurant (like Corpus Christi Texas, the vast majority of restaurants near our motel in Inglewood are Mexican). Gina’s vegetarian enchiladas came packed with beef, so she went hungry because she wouldn’t let me bring the error to the attention of the woman who’d taken our order. My burrito tasted like dog food, but I finished it. We’re not going back to that restaurant.

The next day we drove down to San Diego to visit the zoo. It’s a pretty incredible place. We didn’t wait in line for the celebrity panda, but we snuck up to a fence and watched him (or her) do nothing through the cracks in the wood.

The next day we went to a party at my friend Derek’s house. I hadn’t seen him in years, and I haven’t really spoken to him since high school. We were in the same program for smart kids in fifth and sixth grade and it was there that we created the comic Spanky and Slim Jim. I think I mostly just peed my pants laughing while Derek wrote and drew all the stories—tales such as: Spanky and Slim Jim and the Great Glass Eye, Spanky and Slim Jim and the Pulsating Pelvis, Spanky and Slim Jim and Beaver Giardia, and Spanky and Slim Jim and E. Coli the Little Guy (this one was my favorite). The whole series was a complete rip-off of Ren and Stimpy, but we had a good time making them. And with the help the television studio at Massasoit Community College, we made a movie in Jr. High called How To Become a Super Spy in Three Easy Steps. It was a great success and featured some very innovative camera work. The funniest part about watching it these days is the fact that Derek’s voice had changed but mine hadn’t. If you close your eyes and watch the movie it sounds like a young man with a chipmunk sidekick. Derek is still mad that the studio wouldn't let him include the super-spy tip: being black is a plus.

In high school Derek got mono and I took over his role in the December drama production, You Can’t Take It With You. Derek quit drama after that play and I got the majority of the funny roles from that point on. I was always very thankful that Derek got mono.

Derek currently does some graphic design stuff, but he was working in the movies, doing makeup until just before the writer’s strike. We talked about all our old friends while eating some undercooked, E. Coli ridden chicken wings.

That night, Gina and I boarded a midnight bus for San Francisco (we wanted to find Danny Tanner’s house because he was a second daddy to both of us). The bus was surprisingly full and I didn’t think we were going to get a seat together for the eight hour bus ride, but then a bearded man in shabby clothes who didn’t get the memo about the sixties being over offered to move and give us his seat. He grabbed his sticker-covered hurdy gurdy (at least we think that’s what it was) and sat down next to a biker dude across the aisle. Later on, in the middle of the night and ride, the bearded man started moaning loudly and the biker dude had to get up to find a new seat.

We arrived in San Francisco at 6:30 in the morning and nothing was open, so we walked toward a big bridge. Although it was grey and not red I began taking pictures. Gina stopped me and said it wasn’t the Golden Gate, but I insisted that it must be and they were probably in the middle of repainting it. I asked a trash man picking up bags in the park we were in and he told us the Golden Gate was actually miles away. We were looking at the Bay Bridge.

We took a trolley up the road a ways and walked to the Golden Gate. The day was overcast, but the bridge is still very cool to look at. I’ll be driving over it in a few days when I take the Odyssey up the West Coast.

We didn't find Danny Tanner's house, but I'm pretty sure I saw Comet running through the Golden Gate park.

Yesterday we went to Malibu and I jumped into the Pacific for the first time. I don’t deal with chilly water very well so I didn’t stay in long, but I’m glad I can say I’ve been submerged in it. When I got out of the water, I discovered a seagull had pooped on my fanny pack and I was pretty pissed off.

Last night we had dinner with my friend Ezra, a guy who’s been very good friends with my older sister since high school. He had a book published in the fall, Cinescopes (which was featured in Parade magazine and the Early Show), and worked in Hollywood for years before that. He’s out of Hollywood now, working with Autistic kids, and hoping to get a series of children’s books published. It was nice for me to pick his brain about publishing and promotion. Although I haven't tried it yet, I am interested in learning as much as I can about traditional publishing. He said to write lots of query letters. He and his co-author wrote over a hundred before they got a response from an agent.

Gina talked a little about her own efforts in 16 millimeter animation. Ezra seemed surprised when we told him about our network of hugely unsuccessful artists (our failed gallery). He had to go to Hollywood to find a network of creative people.

BTW, Gina and I watched Be Kind Rewind on a night when we were too tired to do any more sightseeing. It is now officially the best movie ever . . . except for Ghostbusters.