Day six: Los Angeles

We woke up in the morning and waited for a THUD outside the door. No, Katie doesn’t live in the ghetto, where people are shot right outside their doorstep. That’s like so OJ ’94, man. We waited for the new Harry Potter book to arrive. We waited and waited and nope, no book. The mail man had come and gone. Nothing. Katie had to drop something off at a friend’s house at 11, and she’d be back as soon as possible so we could continue hacking her computer and browsing through her closets and stuff. Cool! We have gained some useful facts by staying at Casa Cligers. She has a pretty pink, girly bathroom. It’s too cute. She has lots of books. Which could indicate that she reads. OMG! She drives a stick-shift car. That’s just crazy. She has a huge pink bag in which she keeps everything. She has a cell that always rings. She drives the stick-shift car while rumaging through her pink bag, looking for her cigarettes while she talks on the phone. Also, you can spell the name ‘Clay Aiken’ by taking some letters from her name and shuffle them. Told ya. Closet Claymate.

I had some time left to have an IM conversation with my sister on the other side of the world.
THUD. Fed Ex! The book is here! A few minutes after that, Katie came back and we packed up and drove to another friend of her’s, in Venice. While she installed a new computer there, Con and I walked a few blocks to Venice Beach to check out the scene. How hip does that sound? Very. Venice Beach was nice. Lots of colourful people there, people playing basketball, girls breakdancing, people who tell you this book will cure cancer, people who are standing holding up a screenless tv-frame and talking through it, people making horrible, horrible paintings, people talking to themselves, dazed and confused tourists (hi!), people who want to tell you the future, people playing panpipes. Oh, and there was a beach! But since I’d rather be dressed up as a Frankfurter sausage in the middle of a Bon Jovi concert than wearing a bathing suit on a crowded beach, we decided to just look at it from afar. Ahh, pretty beach.







After all of that, we drove to more touristy places in LA. When we were driving out of Venice, Con spotted Rydell High (Venice High School in real life) from the movie ‘Grease’. That was fun. Katie made a U-turn so we could check it out again to make sure and we could take pictures.
We parked at Rodeo Drive and I tried my very best to spot any stick-insect bobbleheads wearing glasses the size of pizza platters and holding little Gucci bags and a tiny ugly dog, but nope, no dice. Only saw a couple of papparazzi walking outside a store looking at their camera-lcd screens. We went inside one of the shops and it pained me to see they ask $130 for the ugliest pair of shoes in existence. On discount. Seriously, they were so ugly if I’d wear them and I’d walk into poo, I’d be ticked off because of the turd I’d ruined.
We then drove through Beverly Hills. Pretty houses, indeed. Also, the bigger the house, the bigger the hedge around it and we didn’t have one of those handy star-maps with us but Conny being the spotter that she is, saw the Osbourne’s house. I didn’t. But it’s cool, I know where I want to live when I get rich and famous and totally loaded. Not Beverly Hills! No, Mulholland Drive! It’s awesome. We went there and it had more big houses, but these were more bohemian-like, funkier, less pretentious but still huuuge.
We stopped somewhere along the road to check out the Hollywood sign.



We then drove on to Hollywood Boulevard. The Kodak theatre was nice, lots of shops and restaurants and stuff. And HEY it’s that place where Ryan Seacrest had his short-lived show! It’s THAT place? Oh I didn’t know that! Hm, you learn something new every day. Anyway, Mann’s Chinese Theatre looked exactly the same as the one at Disney’s MGM Studios in Orlando, FL. I mean, if you’re going to make a replica, make sure it’s not as big as the real one, Disney. Sheesh. We were on a mission, because my sister had visited LA 2 months before I did, and she’s a big Elvis fan and asked Fat Elvis (who happened to be walking on the blvd, even though he’s supposed to be dead. Dude.) where his Star was and he told her where it was and then she looked and looked but couldn’t find it. So it was my mission to find it.
We asked Cat Woman (did the total embarrassment of her recent film make her throw herself onto the hamburgers and fries? Girl can use a work-out) and she sent us to the complete opposite direction (it later turned out). Jimi Hendrix, same story. He did tell us he always loved coming to Amsterdam. He bummed a smoke from Katie and in return we got our picture taken with Jimi.
After a long search, we finally found the Elvis Star, right at the start of the Walk of Fame, next to the Beatles, under 4 Oscar-statues.

And we found this:



It had turned dark and it was around 11pm when we drove back, on our way back we stopped at a Barnes & Nobles and got our own Harry Potter books. Got back to Casa Cligers, had tea and read the first few chapters of our books. Woo!