July 15th-23rd. My trip to the city of angels. Day One; After having worked on Saturday and Sunday (the 13th and 14th) and minimal sleep Sunday night I was tired and not in the best of moods to be going on a trip. Vacations with my family, I often thought, should be taped and sent to a University for psychiatrists to study. My father acts like Chevy Chase from the Grizwalds on vacations and my mom; well, my mom goes through different phases. One minute she'll be very happy and trying to please. The next minute she'll be anxious to yell at someone for the smallest thing. She complains that my sister and I are picky eaters (which she use to state because neither of us liked tomatoes or soup - this has since changed) yet it's a chore to find a restaurant she's willing to get a meal at. "There's nothing here healthy I want to eat". "This is too expensive". "None of this looks good". "I don't just want a hamburger". Generally, it's the biggest hasle in the world to get her to eat. And eventually my dad, who is an incredibly calm and cool man (which I expect has come from years of dealing with my mom) will say something like "Karen, you've got to eat something" in a very calm and cool my-dad-esque way and she'll more than likely snap back with "No I don't! Don't tell me what I have to do!" which will be followed by her not eating anything at all for dinner and yelling at whomever she gets the chance to the rest of the night. Anyway, day the first. We get to the airport and everything is going perfect. We board our little plane which is set to take us to Cinncinati. Oddly, I discover that when they say Cinn. what they mean is a Kentucky town about 30 miles south. Not important. One flight to Kentucky and an hour stay in between flights. Our second flight on a Delta plane will be roughly 4 hours and includes the movie The Rookie as entertainment. I opted out of paying the $5 for the headphones to watch it. Now, we get to the actual interesting stuff. On the flight, for starters, my parents sat next to a young, gay, fashionable man who was moving from New York to Los Angeles to become a screen writer in L.A.. Our first cliche of the trip! After a long hassle getting our rented car we arrive at our beautiful hotel on Wilshire near Rodeo Drive. For those who don't know (which would have included me up until about a year ago), Rodeo Drive is the most expensive area of L.A.. Stores like Gucci, Sax, Barney's, Mont Blanc.... all have thier hugely expensive stores on Rodeo. We settle in our room and make our way out to California Pizza to have dinner. It's 10 o'clock L.A. time, and 1:00 in the morning to us. Enter cliche number two. Our waitress is a beautiful young woman who has just graduated from Univeristy with a degree in acting. She has come to L.A. with hopes of (obviously) becoming a professional actress and is currently working as a (obviously) waitress. Now, before we went to L.A. our family was told by numerous people that the people in Los Angeles were about as rude as they come. With my low expectations already in place for the U.S. of A. I was generally expecting to see a lot of snobbery (if that's not a word it should be) and Florida-esque lack of manners. I was genuinly pleased on day one to see quite the opposite. No one had been rude to me in such a way that I would notice and the only people I had actually had a conversation with (including a woman on the plane from L.A. who was shocked - yes, shocked - to hear that Toronto was experiencing 35-40 degree Celsius weather) were very polite. After a pretty good chicken-caeser salad it was time for bed. Day Two; Ahhhh, up bright and early. Er.... Okay, well it was bright. We woke up at about 11:00 and the long days of vacation began. Usually when I say long days of vacation I mean the days when my mom is pissed off at everyone or my parents are pissed off at each other; but this was not to be one of those days. No my friends, this was a day of shopping. The area of Rodeo drive is all of about 6 blocks which holds expensive and popular stores. My mother and sister decided, of course, that it was a necessity to see each and every one. So the next four hours of my life consist of; walk 15 feet, find a place to sit, sit for a while, get up, repeat. I spent the time people-watching. Anyone who's travelled a fair amount can attest that it gets easy to tell the difference between a tourist and a native (especially in a place like L.A.), so I just sat there picking out who was a native, who moved to L.A. and who was a tourist. Oh and, uh, enjoying the women of L.A. of course... Dinner for day the second was.....interesting. Very American, to say the least. It's a highly accepted statement that American food (and I will often aruge, culture in general) values quantity of quality. And the evening of the 16th showed that nicely. We went to this massive restaurant and I ordered a 'spicy chicken sandwhich'. Basically what I got was a plate the size of my chest filled with four wraps stuffed with completely non-spicy chicken, too much mayo and some lettuce and tomatoes. Ug. Day Three; The third day on our trip was probably the one I was least looking forward to. Day starts off with a drive to Hollywood Blvd where my family basically walks up and down the street looking in all the stores and then goes back to this mall-esque area near the famous Groman's theatre and look in more stores. My mom and sister are happy as can be and my dad finds his own stores to go into. What did I get? One of the mall-esque stores was a sports store, and way in the back past the L.A. Galaxy (city soccer team), various basketball and football jerseys I noticed a rack of hockey jerseys. As the ever-curious Canuck that I am I decided to venture back there and check out what teams they had and what California's prices were like on hockey jerseys. What teams did they have? From the NHL - NY Rangers, Anaheim Mighty Ducks, L.A. Kings, Carolina Hurricanes. From National Teams - Canada, Switzerland, USA. Hold on a minute (says I)... Canada? Why the hell do they have Canada jerseys here? And why so many of them (there was about 8)? Outside of Toronto (the tourist capital of Canada) it's hard to find a Yankee hockey jersey mainly because 99% of Canadians would sooner die than see Canada loose to the States in hockey. And even Toronto stores only hold 2-4 jerseys at best of the States. So what the hell was this? Anyway, the prices were pretty good on the jerseys. Seventy bucks U.S. equates to about what, $120 Canadian? That's a good price for a Nike National Jersey. After more shops our day turned into one of those two hour "Homes of the Stars!" tours. There was us and one other family from Mississipi in this van-esque thing with a tiny asian woman who sounded more like she was speaking Arabic because of her HUGE accent (no, her accent was not Arabic. just the mixture of english and a tiny woman's asian accent somehow made it sound arabic). This was actually more fun than I assumed it would be. I actually liked seeing Shaq's HUUUUUUGE ass house and Aaron Spelling's, hmmm, what's the word I'm looking for.......fortress. And then....the playboy mansion. We saw one bunny leave the house, but that wasn't even what my mind was on. I have decided that getting into the Playboy Mansion is officially one of my life's goals. I don't care about the bunnies, or the sex, or the greenhouse (okay, that's a lie, I do care about the greenhouse), or even the parties and celebrities. I just want to meet Heff. I want to shake Hugh's hand and talk with him. He is one of my god-like heroes. I would sooner pray to Heff than I would to any god. I want to meet Heff. Day Four; We slept in this day and then went to Universal Studios. Not much to say abotu Universal. It wasn't really as good as the one in Florida, in my opinion. We opened the day doing the Jurassic Park ride which is basically a small water fall. Then on to E.T. the little kids ride for my sister (who is 14). Following was the excellent ride Back to the Future, which my dad is obsessed with. A good short ride on that and we were off to wait in line for Terminator 2:3D. Interesting experience on this one. As I'm in line with my family some girl looks over and smiles at me and I politely smile back. You know how lines work where it goes like..... |_|~| ..... Well, we were facing each other pretty much so she was like one turn ahead of me. Anyway, after the polite acknowledgement she leans over and starts talking quite intensely to one of her 5 friends with her. Allow me to be superficial for a moment - the one that smiled at me first had an awsome body and a so-so looks; the one who she talked to had a decent body and was very pretty. After they shortly converse they both look and smile at me. Again I acknowledge. When we get up to almost near the front of the line it appears they are going to make it in and we won't and will have to wait. So both girls start signalling me to come join them. My mom sees them and says "go ahead". So I walk up and join them; "hi there, tyler". We get into Terminator 2 and I'm faced with a decision. I sit in between them (as they arrange) and both of them look waiting for me to put my arm around. Now, I am not the type of guy to initiate any kind of wacky three-way thingy so I didn't have the guts to try that. I chose the pretty one and didn't regret it for a second. Okay, out of Unviersal Studios we drive all the way back to Beverly Hills and go to a deli nearby. You know what the problem is with L.A.? Not enough middle class Jews. We searched long and hard for a deli that looked decent and even the one we found wasn't Jewish enough (who wants to see a natural-blonde waitress at a deli?) to be good. Let's be honest people, the only good delis are Jewish. Day Five; Not much really to say about this day, and I'm getting kind of tired writting all this. We went to Santa Monica beach and began walking towards Venice Beach. On the pier at Santa Monica there was a musician playing guitar and harmonica and singing. He was doing a great job. And this is when I realized another group of people I despise - people who stop and listen and enjoy a street musician for a while and then leave nothing! There was assholes who sat on the steps near him for 3 or 4 songs and just enjoyed the music then left no money. These people have no honour. Anyway, Venice Beach was awsome. At first we stopped in and I got to watch some guys playing chess for a while. Then the shop areas start and there's actually some really cool stores to go in. There's entertainers up and down the street, and then you realize you're getting into the slum area. First there's a man standing on a crate with a cheap flute randomly playing a couple notes than ranting about marijuana legalization. At this point you just think its a wierd area. Then you see a man with 15+ large white boards on the sidewalk with anti-semetic, pro-christian, pro-love messages written on (one was entitled "Hitler was right, his methods were wrong") them. But you still think it's just a wierdo. Then it changes. You know you're in a bad area of the city when there's a bong shop every 5 stores. It literally goes from one every 20 stores, to one every 15, to one every 10, then all of a sudden BAMN; there'll be two beside each other and another one 4 stores down. Fun fun!!! That night my family went to a place called Johnnie's New York Pizza for dinner. I had a delicious caesar salad and then ordered the Tyler Special pizza - goat cheese (no other cheese) and chicken, not chopped finely, but in big chunks. They made it and are adding it to their menu because the chef liked it. Day Six; This was a very short seeming day. It started off with me going to the hotel's weight room and working out for a while before I was engaged in conversation with a New Yorker (he had a heavy accent! first york accent I've heard in some time!) about politics and he was incredibly interested in hearing how Canada operated and about our prime minister and our past politics. After work out my family and I went to Six Flags! There's a pic posted in the pic thread of us right outside Six Flags. We get to the little area that you wait at to take the trolly from the outer parking lot to the front gates. As the trolly arrives a family of 6 begins boarding in two rows and as the husband is about to step on as the last one an old Spanish woman pushes him aside and steps onto the seat. The woman behind her (the wife) starts saying 'excuse me, that's my husbands seat' and the Spanish woman just looks strait ahead and ignores her completely as she gets her two children to sit on her lap. I really do hate Spanish women for the most part. At least the old ones. VERY rude and VERY much assholes in California. And who thinks Spanish is the language of love? Maybe if you speak it very slowly and sensually but it sure as hell isn't in real life. It sounds like two cats with bitter hate fighting each other. Anyway, my mom and I are the only ones who like rollercoasts. So we did four runs; one small rollercoaster that sucked, one called Goliath twice which was really great with a huge first drop and a massive g-force for a roller coast, and one other with tons of loops. Tons o' fun! From Six Flags we drove straight back to California Pizza and I enjoyed a chicken caeser which was nothing special, but good enough! Day Seven; Another day that is short to write up. We went to a cheaper part of L.A. and went up and down the stores. About the only thing worth mentioning in relevance to me was a comic store that had a lot of cool stuff. The greatest thing I saw there was a set of action figures from the old, old Rudolph Christmas specials! They had all the characters; the host, the snot-nosed kid, rudy, the chick-deer, santa, the gold/silver guy, the snow-dude. It was hilarious! After walking up and down the streets we returned to johnnie's pizza and I ate the single greatest calzone I have ever had. It was monsterous. Again, it was my Tyler Special of goat cheese and chicked and fucking hell was it amazing. I can't even begin to explain!! Day eight/nine; Day eight and nine are all a one-day blur to me due to flight times. We started off the day by leaving our hotel and my dad buying a wallet. We checked out of the hotel and then drove all the way to try and find Fox Radio so my dad could meet Jim Rome. Unfortunatly, my mom had stopped in a store she liked before hand and because of her we missed Rome by about 20 minutes. This was one of those moments I despise my mom. She acted very "oh so what" about it despite that this whole trip my dad (and myself) and basically let her and my sister do their thing. Anyway, after that we went to Malibu and relaxed on the beach for an hour. We then at about 7:00 went to the airport and I listened to music for 3 hours before our plane was ready to start any kind of leaving process. After another hour and a half we were in the air, on the way home. I was more than ready for it. At this point I was actually kind of anxious to see how sciforums had been since I'd been away. Anyway, the four hour flight out of boredom I spent watching Big Fat Liar staring that little kid from Malcom and the attractive (keep in mind, I'm 16 so I can legally say this!) Amanda Bynes (or something like that). Bad movie, but it passed the time. Then more music time! We arrive in Kentucky and then ship right onto another plane and take a quick one hour flight back home. All of us very happy to be home and proud to have had an entire trip together with almost no fighting. Then we get home. Disaster. We have two dogs, a German Sheppard and a mutt (who's dumb and small). We had hired a dog sitter for our trip. He fucked up the dates and left our dogs alone, one locked downstairs one locked upstairs for two whole days. The dumb mutt had ripped apart a good amount of the house and both had, obviously, done their business all over the house. The perfect ending, eh? Anyway, aside from the end it was a successful trip. And I just felt like writing some of it down. And I posted three pics in the pic thread. So there ya go.