Day five: Los Angeles

We got up and called a taxi to come pick us up at around 9.30am, to bring us to Universal Studios Hollywood. The taxi-company’s phone number was provided to us by the one & only Katie/cligers, and it was reliable, since it got us to our destination in a little over 20 minutes, for only 26 dollars. This is important information you’ll need a little further on in today’s recap.

Universal Studios rocked. I’ve been to the one in Orlando, FL a couple of times but this one’s even better, because it’s right bang in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of Hollywood and all the tv shows and stupid movies, and not so stupid movies, whereas the Orlando people just nicked some props from Hollywood and put them in their park where they were growing mould. The Hollywood’s still aliiiive, it’s aliiiive! Now I’m going to look really stupid if it turns out that the Orlando ‘Studios’ are also very much active. Ah forget it, I look stupid anyway, who’s gonna notice?

There were some new attractions, including ‘Fear Factor Live’, featuring a very cute guy called Chris, in a bright yellow overall. His job was to hype up the crowd by making us yell and scream and by showing us glassy boxes with tarantulas in them. All he had to do to hype us up was to just stand there in his little yellow overall, and be cute. That’s all. No spiders needed. No screaming and yelling. Well, screaming… uhm, okay.
The Fear Factor show consisted of 6 dumb volunteers who had to do gross stuff like spinning around for a minute or two, then drink a mix of fish guts and seaweeds in one go. They also had to put themselves under high voltage. It’s what you go to amusement parks for, right?

We walked along some sets, including a ‘European’ one. The most European-looking part of the set was us.
The London phonebooths didn’t look alike either because the sleazy pictures of Ivana and Helga who would show you a good time if you would call this number were missing inside the booth. Bad research.

The Backlot Tour was really cool, it drove us past a lot of famous sets, like the one that was used for War of the Worlds. I tried to block the fact that Tom Cruise DNA was all over that rubble and took a picture.

Tom wuz 'ere.



I drove past Wisteria Lane! EEEEEEE! And they were shooting! EEEEEEEE! And we had to be quiet! EEEehm. Ssssh. Unfortunately, we didn’t see anyone famous and we didn’t see the main street used in Desperate Housewives, but we got to see some side streets which was cool.

After we’d seen just about everything there was to see in the park (it was so big, it had 2 levels! OMGcanyoubelieveit), we got out onto the Citywalk, which is basically a one-street Universal Studios shopping/dining/party area. Tons of tacky stuff was sold, and there was a fun ‘80s band playing called the ‘Rocket Scientists’ or something. We went to the Hard Rock Café because it is our mission to visit every HR Café in the world. Long way to go, but so far we have about 10. We don’t have anything to prove it though. Our fat guts maybe. Yeah, that. Anyway, hamburgers and big fat fries, hurrah! We sat in the U2/Guns n’ Roses/Nirvana corner.

Fat! Yum!



After dinner, it had gotten dark and we were tired and full of fat food so we didn’t really feel like calling up the Well Respected, Reliable Taxi Company provided by Katie, but jumped in the nearest cab available instead and headed home.
It would’ve been nice if the driver’d know which way to go though. Because he went halfway around the city, asked us for directions, stopped for 5 minutes to check his map (he did this when we were only a few miles away from the house), and then asked us to cough up 55 dollars for the 45-minute ride. GULP.

We got our stuff together a bit and chilled out on the Most Comfortable Couch in the History of the World, and waited for Katie to arrive. Tension, teeeensioonnnn! What if the cops who had come by the previous day were right, and she really IS a 83-year-old crossdresser from Saskatchewan? Oh my God, what if she was Playboy Gramps? Fortunately, when she finally arrived at 1.30am, she turned out to be awesome, not resembling a tiger at all, and very friendly. Con was delighted at the fact that she has a US Weekly subscription and knows just as much useless celebrity trivia as she does. We talked for a while and gossiped about you all hahahahahaaaaa! And then we went to sleep, I stayed on the MCCitHotWorld while Katie decided she wanted to sleep as close to the doorstep as possible, because the new Harry Potter would arrive there the next morning and she wanted to keep an eye on the arrival. Crazy!