The Skinny

I spent the majority of Saturday in shorts and sandals. Ha ha.

Phillip had to work on Ventura, so I wandered up and down the street hoping to be discovered. Didn’t happen, but I’m optimistic. Still a couple more days here.
He took me on the touristy route down Hollywood and Sunset, but there was something going on and they’d closed parts of the streets and traffic was awful. I know that’s hard to believe out here, but there you are.
We met up with some UNCG folks we know later on and hit a bar with turtles on it. Jeff and Erin have just moved out here in the past month, Jannatha’s been here for a couple years and Kat just flew in for a visit earlier in the day.
Vince will be in today, so there’s half of the crew of Gi Ho Lo hanging out here. Very weird.

I’m hoping to be fully over jet-lag today. We’ll see.

Well, well, well. Here I am in sunny Cali-4-ny-aye! But what an adventure getting here.

My flight was supposed to leave at 6:55am, land in Memphis at 8 and I had a connection out of Memphis at 8:30 to get to LA at 10:40 LA time.
This was my view for the first three hours of my trip.
The first plane we were on had a sensor go off, so they had to get a mechanic to look at it which took forever. Fortunately they had another plane that was empty due to all the storms up north, so they transferred us over to that plane. Unfortunately, someone didn’t do something and the weight balance info never got to the pilots. So we sat, and sat, and sat. About 90 minutes later someone drove up and handed the pilots the weight balance info. But for the wrong plane.
At some point, I swear I saw our original plane pass us and take off.
They finally got the info for our plane and we headed for the runway. Then stopped again, because the info was 500 pounds off. Twenty minutes later we finally took off.
Now, mind you, this was a total of nearly 5 hours stuck on a tiny little plane, not comfortable at all. Ugh.
Meanwhile, I have missed my connection out of Memphis. I tried calling Northwest to get that taken care of while we were sitting in Greensboro, but they wouldn’t do anything since I was still on the flight.
So, in Memphis we all get off the plane and get in line to get new flights. However, the original flight was marked “cancelled” in the system and the people could reserve us seats, but couldn’t get us boarding passes. I was nice and let a young lady go ahead of me, and wouldn’t you know she got the last seat on the next available flight to LA. They had to put me on a 6:11pm flight, instead of the 2:20 that I really wanted to get on.
Thankfully I made it on the 2:20 via standby and four hours later landed at LAX. No movie on the flight. That was odd.
Phillip picked me up and we had dinner at Acupulco, a Mexican restaurant right around the corner from where he lives in Glendale. Best Mexican food I’ve had in over 10 years!
I had been up since 5:15am NC time, and round about midnight NC time (9pm here) we headed out to a bar for a b-day party. We started at Jillian’s, a grown-up arcade, then went to a duelling piano bar. There were a dozen or so folks in the group, mostly Elon grads and I actually knew a couple of them. I drank a lot, and danced and had a blast.
Went to bed after 2am (5am NC time) and woke up at 9am (noon NC time). Not hungover in the least, thankfully.
The view has improved tremendously since yesterday morning:
That’s what you see out the window here at Phillip’s place. He has two roommates who I know from back in NC, Pat and Daniel. Daniel and I were in a movie together, and Pat auditioned for a movie I directed.

Anyway. Yay!

Well, I am in LA. Glendale to be precise.

After a not very fun day of travel.

I’ll ’splain all that tomorrow.

Yay. California!

On Friday I get to go to LA for a week! That is going to be great.
My friend Phillip already has a party lined up for me to go to on Friday night.

But, I haven’t done quite the prep work I wanted to, and suddenly have lots I need to accomplish before Thursday night.

Gonna be a fun week.

I should have some good posts next week, though. Woo hoo!

I tried the MacAllan, by the way. Pretty good. It’s sweet, yet peaty and a little bitter. The Glenfiddich goes down a lot easier, that’s for sure.

I went to a Carnevale last night.
That’s the ancient (5000 year-old) Egyptian festival that was coopted by the Italians (I think) a couple hundred years ago.

So here we are in Greensboro, NC having one.

Essentially it’s a masked Venetian ball. They had performers (jugglers, fire twirlers, hoopers, dancers, nude-body paint-ees (and -ers)), food, cash bar, vendors, DJs (playing such medevial hits as “Play That Funky Music, White Boy” and “My Hips Don’t Lie”) and a general spectacle.
Lots of nifty costumes, and some not-so-nifty, and some just not. Unless you count denim overalls over a red shirt as a costume.
I wore a kilt, my friend Adrienne wore a lovely dress that fit the part perfectly. We had dinner in the house of Capulet, and there was another dinner down the hill a bit in the house of Montague, and Romeo and Juliet were there and stuff.
And never mind that the setting for that tragic romance was actually Verona.
Or, as my sister put it in reference to my kilt, “Gotta love those Scottish Capulets”.

We had fun.

How often do you get to see a man in knight’s armor wandering around with a Bud Light? That’s what I thought.

Quite the entertaining evening, and Adrienne was great person to spend it with because she’s as laid back as I am (or more so), but likes to dance.

As a result of wearing the kilt (I wore a pseudo-kilt at the Christmas Castle as a performer), I actually bought a kilt today (http://www.utilikilts.com). It’s very freeing to wear one, and I plan to start wearing it out and about.

Anyway. That’s that.

Oh, by the way, I found my credit card.

I lost a credit card today. That’s not good.

But, I had a good day at work. Tried on a kilt I’ll be wearing on Saturday, and it fit. Played some fun Ultimate in Winston - even got some battle scars from diving after a disc on the “grass” (think broken glass, but less comfortable).
Then I called someone I haven’t spoked with in 3 or 4 years. We had a great conversation.
Karrie was a student of mine back when I was thinking of becoming a priest (over 7 years ago now). She was in a terrible car crash a few years ago, and I managed to stay in touch a bit during that time. But then I got distracted and hadn’t called in a long time.
She is doing great - getting a nursing degree and enjoying the cold weather in Pittsburgh. She wasn’t at all annoyed that I mentioned having the A/C on in a car today because it was so warm.

Anyways. A good day.

Now I gotta cancel that credit card…

This happened over a week ago, but since I then jumped feet-first into the video project, I had no time to write about it.

I was having lunch with a friend, and I uncharacteristically ordered a bottle of root beer with my meal. I always get water - soda, with all it’s corn-syrup and chemicals, is not something I like so much. But, I got a bottle of Jones’ root beer.

It was OK.

But the bottle cap had a little phrase on the underside. Call it a fortune if you will, but I found it to be True.
It said:
Your mind, being creative and original, will make you famous.

Which is true.

I was inspired by the little cap. So much so that I kept it. For a couple days. But then I lost it.

Still - True.

Actually, it’s for MacAllan.

I was at a client’s checking their computers as I often do. I spied a bottle of MacAllan single-malt and the following exchange took place:

ME: Who’s the lucky person who gets the Scotch?
L: Well, it was left for Joe, but he doesn’t drink Scotch. Do you?
ME: Yes. I love it.
L: Take it. It’s yours.
ME: flubeergagas?
ME (moments later): Thank you!

I still haven’t tasted it, but it’s bound to be good!

Jason

I like ice cream.

I have Breyer’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and All That And Caramel in my freezer right now. The Reese’s ain’t as good as it sounds, sadly.
I also have Reese’s Klondike Bars. Those are as good as they sound.

You know where they have good ice cream?

Scotland.

It’s absolutely amazing. I may have to go back there just to get some.

They also have good beer, and I just burped a “Sam Adams Winter Lager - Breyer’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” burp. That wasn’t so good.

I think my next post will be about drinking, since I didn’t start until I was 35.

I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan.
For the unitiated, he created “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel”, and then did a little something called “Firefly”.
“Firefly” is probably the best show ever put on television. I highly recommend it.
He also writes comic books, and has written the scripts to one or two movies you may have heard of (”Toy Story”, “Speed” (though he wasn’t credited for that), and others).

Anyway, he directed “The Office” tonight.

Well, OK, he didn’t direct it tonight. That would imply it was live. The episode he directed was on tonight.

It was the first television show he’s directed since “Angel” went off the air three years ago.

And it was brilliant. My first thoughts about him directing a sitcom, especially one like “The Office” which practically directs itself, was that it wouldn’t make much difference. No one would be able to tell.
For the most part, that was true. It was the usual subtle mugging of the camera, in jokes, personality clashes and uncomfortable humor that fans of the show have come to expect.
But he always manages to elicit great performances from everyone, and the show went from laugh-out-loud funny to gut-wrenchingly honest and painful because of the work of the cast.
Of course, there was the great bat segment, that parodied Buffy and Angel. I hurt myself laughing at that. But Michael’s realization that he was set up at the lecture, and then the poignant ending with Pam at the art show were very touching. We also got another hint into why Michael does what he does - it’s for the people he works with.
It was subtle, but the “Joss Whedon Touch” was definitely there.

OK, this is getting long.
Rent “Firefly”. You won’t regret it.

(One of my movie-related dreams/goals is to work with Joss Whedon someday.)