trip to LA

Pot Head. (HA! Wait, get it?)

After dropping our bags off, we headed off to some bar for a karaoke rendezvous. I charged up with the most "LA" drink I could find so I could "party like a rockstar." (Gay!)

And after this totally convincing ad hanging up at the store we stopped at (I mean look at the before and after difference in girl in the photos!) I stocked up on some Libodo Max. (Just in case!)

We hit the Smog Cutter to meet up with one of my favoritest peoples...

...Emilie Elizabeth! And as a special bonus, look who else just happened to be visiting LA from Boston on business...

...aw yeah, it's Seth Miller! Flanked here by John "Ultimate LA Dirtbag" Wolk. I'd love to nothing more than to type up a few of my favorite John Wolk quotes, but the man works for Disney and I'd probably get him in a world of name-Googling trouble. Hahaha. Bonus points to Mike Doyle for pulling that face in the background. After the team had congregated, it was time to get on with the main event...

...KARAOKE! I warmed things up with a little Bon Jovi (and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was almost as well-received by the Californians as it usually is by my fellow Jersey breathren on the East Coast). After I was done, I learned that one thing a crowd will alway like more than Bon Jovi is...

...when old dudes sing karaoke!

After I dropped my jam, homeboy here hit the stage like a sextagenarian sexpot and made the ladies go all crazy.

Or, at least, he drove the one lady standing behind him in the wacky, multi-colored hat crazy.

I only wish I could remember what song it was that got two girls to start slowdance with each other.

This guy tried to get flirty and seranade Emilie which excited her and made her start tugging on his big, black...

...sweater that was tied around his waist.

Later on, my man Seth finally got on the horn and schooled the crowd with an amazing Stevie Wonder jam.

Which made Michael get all horny and start licking his fingers an' shit.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the face of Disney!

Matt and Michael. After a few more jams, we all hopped in our cars and headed for some houseparty that Emilie knew about going on is Downtown LA.

Emilie on the way over trying out the eye medicine. Hahah.

Seth reacts to the wood-paneled stairs.

"Let me ask you something, Emilie...do you have have any ink?"

John, Em and Seth. For those of you not familiar with LA, Downtown LA is the west-coast equivilent of Williamsburg. As evidenced by...

...the kids in the living room. The only differnce is, they have but ubiquitous celebrities. While I'm stuck looking at the likes of James Iha at pretty much every party there is...

...these kids get Shannyn Sossamon. (That's her in the tank top djing in the background). She was the secret love of my life until I found out that she named her son Audio Science. For real. Like, that's his actual name that's on his birth certificate. Jesus. (Who am I kidding? That's what nicknames are for. I'd still marry her in heartbeat. Hahaha.)

The kitchen had nothing on the decor in...

...the bathroom. Check out the cutouts of above the sink.

Hahahaha.

Meanwhile, back in the livingroom, Nathaniel was getting all "Slash circa '87" with a bottle of Jack. Which we all know leads to only one place...

...the floor. (Actually, it usually leads straight to the bathroom floor).

Emilie and a super-cute hiding girl (who might be Shannyn Sossamon's little sister if I remember correctly).

Flasking it. Note how Michael is lovingly keeping his hand on Mike's head to ensure he doesn't take too much. (Mike told me that later that night he returned the favor and kept his hands on Michael's head to make sure that he didn't "take too much down" either. Whatever that means...)

The wood paneling in the living room was augmented by this "Le Tigre Baby" mural - comprised entirely of Le Tigre stickers.

Around 4am Michael told Matt he was tired and "needed to be taken home" which earned him this photo of shame: Me putting the international symbol for "you're a giant pussy" on his pretending-to-be-sleeping face.

Here's Michael hanging his head in shame as the party goes on without him.

For those of you who are new to this site, "Party going on" = Me jumping over my leg, Kid N' Play style. Actually, about a 30 minutes after Michael pussied out, er I mean left, the party started winding down. So we...

...quickly finished our drinks.

And bounced.

Mike, Emilie and I ended up at Kantor's Deli (which I'm told is the LA equivilent of Katz's) super late night for some grub.

Latke! (For all you Midwesterners that don't know any real live Jews, those are potato pancakes).

Pickles.

Oh hello there, lonely little last bite of latke! I would eat you but I sweat one more bite would make me go pukey.

Saturday, December 11th

The one concession I'll grant is that LA does have dope weather. December = 75° and sunny.

Mere hours after drunkenly devouring greasy diner food, we hopped in the car and headed for the ultimate in greasy dining...

...ROSCOE'S HOUSE OF CHICKEN AND WAFFLES! (Holy Shit!)

New York has a few famous Chicken and Waffle places, but you gotta go all the way up to Harlem to get them jammies.

Mike and one of his LA buddies.

Seth went for the eponymous platter...

...of chicken and waffles.

I'm not ever sure what Emilie ordered because it arrived completely blanketed under a half-inch thick layer of gravy.

Emilie's not pretending to throw up here. She's actually simulating how fat her face is going to be once her body has metabolized all that graaaaavy.

Here's a side-view to give you an idea of just how *burp* thick the biscuits were. The best part about Roscoe's? Well, Duh! That would have to be finally getting to eat at the place that inspired my favorite movie of all time...

"Roscoe's House of Chicken N' Waffles" The Movie!

After we'd finished eating (and administering chest massages to ensure that we all wouldn't drop dead of heart attacks) we decided to drive crosstown and check out Body Worlds. On the way over we had two very LA traffic experiences. The first was...

...seeing this bright yellow Viper convertible with a vanity license plate that said "2 OSCARS." We were hoping it would be someone recognizable but when we passed it was just some bearded, chubby nerdy guy. Mike's hypothesis was that he probably won his two Oscars doing "Sound Engineering" on Lord of the Rings. My 2nd car experience was...

...a fender bender! After eleven years of driving, I had my first accident where I was at fault. Here's the deal - I missed a turn so I pulled into a parking lot to turn around. While making a k-turn in the parking lot, I backed into a truck that was in my blind spot. The owner of the truck wasn't around, so I had the parking attendant go into the nearby pool hall to get the owner of the truck. The guy comes out and he seems super-mellow. I explained to him that I was driving a rental car and that the insurance I had on it wouldn't cover the damage, so I gave him my info, told him to get an estimate and I'd pay for the damages.

Six months later, I get a call from a collection agency - instead of contacting me, the guy went to the rental company, got all sorts of work done on his car and said it was a result of me backing into him. So you see that tiny dent in the front corner panel? I ended up getting charged $2,600 dollars for that. FUCK ME IN THE GOAT ASS! So if you ever get in a fender bender, no matter how minor it is or how nice the other driver seems: get a police report (as it's apparently the only way you can cover your ass).

So back to Body Worlds. Body Worlds (in Germany, "KorperWelten") is a exhibition of 300 actual human corpses that have been preserved through the process of "plastination." Here's a quick overview:

"PLASTINATION is a unique technique of tissue preservation developed by Dr. Gunther von Hagens in Heidelberg, Germany in 1978. In this process, water and lipids in biological tissues are replaced by curable polymers (silicone, epoxy, polyester) which are subsequently hardened, resulting in dry, odorless and durable specimens. The class of polymer used determines the optical (transparent or opaque) and mechanical (flexible or firm) properties of the impregnated specimen." Read more about it here.

I can say with total certainty that this exhibition with hands down the most mind-blowing thing I've ever seen in my life. You weren't supposed to take photos inside, but I had my trusty, tiny cam with me and was able to fire off a few sneaky pics.

How insane is this? This is an actual real body.

The really amazing bodies were the ones cut clean into different types of cross sections so you can see how everything actually looks inside. (I'm still trying to find out what the hell they used to make such clean cuts. Maybe some kind in super-thin high speed bandsaw?)

Here's a close up of the sculpture of a body playing soccer. How insanely beautiful is it? I spend the entire four hours I was there staring at the bodies and I kept saying thing outloud like "Oh my god. This is an actual human body! Like a real dead body! This is what I look like without my skin!" If you ever get a chance to check out BodyWorlds (or the other similar tour "Bodies" that's currently on exibit in NYC now - I'm going to check it out this coming week) make sure you go. Even if it freaks you out, you'll be in total awe. I'm still working to wrap my tiny mind around it. Anyway after four hours of staring (and when no one was looking, secretly touching!!!) plastinated human corpses, there was only one thing I wanted to do...

...EAT! Hahaha. We dropped off the ladies (Emilie and Happy) and headed for a nice Thai meal.

Later that night we went to some crazy Franz Ferdinand afterparty in downtown LA that Mike's friend Ben Lee put together. Here's Ben introducing...

...The Blood Arm.

Girls pogo-ing in tandem.

The place went apeshit for them.

Alex Karapanos snapping pics of the stage antics.

I also ran into Richie (who some of you may remember as being the guy who missed his flight from LA to SF causing us a four hour delay on our trip to Tahoe! Arrrrghhhh!)

I also randomly ran into two former New Yorkers who have since moved to LA. Here's me and The Groupie!

And here's a friend of Tiffany's and I'm totally drawing a blank on her name. Doh.

Nick McCarthy from Franz and Ben Lee. (Yo, Ben Lee's so money he got to borrow one of the official silk Franz tour jackets). Hahaha.

Progressively drunker-looking me with Seth and a few of his friends that showed up later on in the night.

This guy kept asking girls to slap him in the face and each time they did it, he's scream at the top of his lungs. It was actually much funnier to watch than it sounds as I just described it. (Uhhh, either that or I was really drunk).

Ben and Mike.

Hot girls in LA dress even more Williamsburg than hot girls in Williamsburg.

Aftwards, we ended up heading to some crazy LA-rocker houseparty.

I don't really remember too much about it.

Except the fact that by this late at night I was sha-sha-shitfaced.

Sunday, December 12th

The next morning we all went out for Sunday brunch with Happy and Brett (pictured all the way on the right) and a few of their friends.

(The diner that we ate in had all these great family pictures from the 70s blown up and hanging on the walls. Check out the eight year old perv totally busted checking out boobies on the beach. Nice!)

On the way back to Bret and Happy's house, we drove past the "Lava House" (which I guess is apparently some sort of semi-famous LA landmark and is right near their house) and saw that it was up for sale and you could take an open house tour.

Ooooh.

Later that night, a whole bunch of us went to see "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou."

The theater we went to was part of this gigantic outdoor mall complex thingy and when we got out of the movie, there was some sort of crazy-ass nighttime Christmas parade going on. Complete with fake snow!

Snow in Happy's hair!

That upon closer examination revealed itself to be some sort of suds! Sud snow? Gross.

The movie crew: Matt, x, x Mike Doyle, Emilie, Michael (Lurking in the background) and Happy. After the movie, the Mikes and I hopped back in my rental car and headed back to San Francisco!

On the drive back, the toughest decision we faced was whether or not to get tacos or burgers? The solution presented itself at Del Taco: one of each, motherfucka!

(added on 12.26.2005)