Daily Archives: 24 April 2009

Disaster Dream

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I had insane dreams last night that were something of a mad cross between The Day After Tomorrow and The Happening starring me and co-starring Jared Leto.  I woke up in the middle of the night, crying, having just informed my dream-father on my dream-cell phone that I wasn’t going to survive the Giant Tsunami that was about to wash me out of NYC. 

Zack went into his normal nightmare disaster control when he woke to hear me crying my way through my REM cycle.  Since usually I only cry in my dreams when he dies, he woke me up, assuring me that it was okay, he was there and alive and well.  Typically, that’s quite comforting to me.  This time, however, I was like, “GOOD FOR YOU, BUT WHAT ABOUT NEW YORK?”

Actually, I didn’t say anything out loud cause I was still crying.  But I totally thought it. 

When we woke up this morning, I told Zack what I could remember of the dream–about the natural disasters and facing my own death and all of that.  He smartly observed that maybe being in an earthquake effected me more profoundly than I realized.  I agreed.  And then I secretly wished that I could have at least traded Jared Leto for Jake Gyllenhaal.  Cause, you know, Jake has some experience in these sort of situations.

On Hollywood

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We are so in California, and we’re not wasting any time. Here are some highlights for you:

Yesterday Zack, Galen and I jumped into the Hollywood culture full force by taking a hike up Mount Hollywood.  I thought, after reading the information about it, that it was going to be a gentle easy hike.  And, as usual, I was totally wrong.  It might have been an easy hike if we had done it before or had any idea about how to do it. But we hadn’t, and we didn’t.  So we blindly started trudging up hills until we found the right way on the 3rd try.  Zack  (who knows full well how weepy I can be while hiking) made me hike up 2 hills unnecessarily.  Once we were done with about 2/3rds of the climbing, we crossed paths with a couple coming down the mountain.  We asked them about the path’s direction to double check that we were moving towards the intended final destination.  She assured us that we were going the right way.  She told us to keep going until we came to a water tower, then there was a short trail that went almost straight up, and it would land us at the base of the HOLLYWOOD sign.  We walked for about 5 more minutes and then came across a path by a water tower that went almost straight up.  We were like, “Hey, this must be it!”  We soon found out that the “almost straight up” trail ended after about 10 yards.  After that point there was nowhere to go but back down.  Zack and Galen were like, “Hey, that’s kind of a trail, isn’t it?” as they pointed to the SIDE OF THE CLIFF.  I was like, “I’m not sure that’s a trail, as much as it’s a place where the water has just formed a run-off path.”  Not one to back down to a challenge, I agreed to climb STRAIGHT UP THE SIDE OF THE CLIFF upon the boy’s suggestion that the DIRT CLIFF-SIDE was really the “right way” to get back on track.

The three of us barely scrambled up the side of the mountain, dirt and sand clods breaking underneath our weight the entire way up.  Once we were to the top, we saw that there was a weak pseudo-trail that went straight up the hill (more hill, less cliff, but still very steep) and we all chose to follow that.  At that point the boys had realized that we were in something of a predicament.  We had barely made it up the cliff face without falling, and getting down was going to be really difficult.  They basically relied on me to choose if we should go up further or not.  I was like, “well, how often are we really going to be on Mt. Hollywood having to make this decision, right?  I guess we have to keep going until we can’t go anymore.”  The boys agreed and we trudged up until we came to a place where the “power line trail” (and I use that term loosely, it was more like a water gully) ended and it was no longer safe for us to continue.  By that point we had landed ourselves fantastically close to the sign itself, but on the bottom side instead of the top side.  Before we left, we read that there was a fence that you weren’t supposed to cross, and if you did and were caught, you would be charged a $103 fine for crossing the fence.  From where we stopped climbing the hill, we could clearly make out the $103 fence that we weren’t supposed to cross. And we were on the wrong side of it.  Whoops.

The successes of the trip are as follows: I didn’t cry, we got really close to the Hollywood sign, we did something outdoors and athletic, we were adventurous and brave, and now Galen thinks that Zack and I are some Foliage Identifying Bad-Asses.  The failures are weak in comparison.  I got my new shoes dirty, and we broke a few laws. PSH.  TOTALLY WORTH IT.

After our trip to Mt. Hollywood, we met up with David and went to a comedy club to see Galen’s girlfriend perform.  She was doing a 10-minute bit in a little club called Smiles here in LA.  What I didn’t realize was that David, Galen, Zack and I were going to be the only actual patrons there.  The rest of the dozen-ish people in the audience were comics themselves.  David and Galen had inadvertantly invited us to our very own private comedy club viewing.  The four of us sat at our Lone Ranger of a table for over two hours, smiling like goons, being the target of (and sometimes the brunt of) every single joke.  When a comedian wasn’t funny and they said, “Tough crowd,” THEY WERE LOOKING RIGHT AT US.  One comedian even took to giving us lessons.  “Look,” he said, “we’re comedians. And these lights are bright. So the only way we know if you think we’re funny, is if you laugh.  So if you think something’s funny, laugh. And we’ll make more jokes in that vein.  And if it’s not funny, don’t laugh. Then we’ll change the subject.”  It was completely bizarre and perfect and memorable and I can’t believe we had the whole place to ourselves.

The best one-liner of the night came from a comic whose name I can’t remember.  He said, “I tried to be hot, but it didn’t work.  Man, if I brought SexyBack, all I’d get is in-store credit.”

Today Galen, Zack and I spent a while in the afternoon hanging out in Hollywood.  We saw the Chineese Theatre, Kodak Theatre, and all the stars in the sidewalk.  I took a picture of Kenny Loggin’s star just for my mom.  We went to the world’s largest music store (Amoeba) to drool over CDs and we barely escaped with  our  bank accounts in tact.  After we went to Amoeba, I wanted tacos.  Galen suggested that we go to a place called Sharky’s.  You know who else wanted to eat at Sharky’s today?  Nichole Richie.  That’s right.  Homegirl walked in right after we did.  She even at there, sitting at the table right next to ours.  Her proximity to our location caused me to have to keep my usual “OMG, FAMOUS PERSON, AM LOSING MY SHIT NOW” routine to a dull roar.  It was difficult.  I could barely speak in complete sentences.  Galen, who’s almost a 4-year Hollywood veteran tried to soothe my OMG nerves by reassuring me that he, too, still thought it was totally badass to run into famous people.  This helped 6%.  94% of me continued to lose my shit over a Hollywood Starlet that I really care 0% about.  Also, she seems to be preggers again.  How did I miss that?  Apparently 2nd children are way less tabloid-worthy than their older siblings.  And then people wonder why 2nd born children have such complexes. Pshaw.

Last but not least, this evening Zack and I traveled south to the town of Brea to see one of Zack’s BFFs and his lovely lady.  They took us to dinner at a very nice, very up-scale restaurant that her dad owns.  While we were in the middle of the first course, I noticed that my chair started bouncing, as if the restaurant floor was something akin to a highway overpass or a bridge or something.  Then the chandeleers in the restaurant started swaying.  I looked up to Natalie and she was like, “Wow!  Earthquake!”

WOW EARTHQUAKE?!?!?!?! PUNCUATION OVERLOAD?!?! Holy freaking crap.  At 8:27 p.m., I was in a 4.0 magnitude earthquake.  I was giddy for about an hour after the shake.  Zack and I had been informed that there were little tremors happening all over Southern California that day, and we had been disappointed that we had missed all of them until that point.  So OH MY GOSH, you can’t even imagine how stupidly excited I was to have really and truly FELT one.  What was I thinking during the earthquake, you want to know?  I was thinking, “Wow. Someone really fat must be jumping nearby, cause they are totally shaking my chair.”  God, I’m eloquent.

So there you have it.  I have hiked the Hollywood Mountain, seen the sights, had lunch a table over from Nicole Richie and been in an earthquake.  We are SO California, and we’ve barely even started.