Alas, the blog gods ("blods") have smiled upon us... it must be for the act of blogger martyrdom I committed in using my last 30% of battery life on last week's post. But we're back, baby! After exactly one week of having a dead and inoperable laptop, my new AC adapter arrived in the mail this morning.
So... busy week. Lots of L.A. ventures that I'd be happy to tell you about. Ready? All right then.
Since my internship boss is still in Paris-or-Russia-or-wherever, I got today and yesterday off for the second week in a row. While much of this time has been spent sitting in bed reading "Angela's Ashes" and wearing a sweatshirt with no shirt or bra underneath, I've also managed to accomplish a number of obligatory tasks that have needed addressing for a while... laundry, sending snail mail, depositing checks (yeeea buddy), putting air in my I'm-pretty-sure-one-has-a-hole tires, AND
Okay, this shit is nanners, yo. Like most places in DTLA, the library is a massive stone building of epic proportions. I've been there twice in the past two days, seeing as it is a convenient 1-hour walk from my flat... convenient, that is, if you've got nothing else to do with your day and you've been doing nothing but standing and eating Chinese pastries for the past month. I've only explored a couple sections of the library so far, which amounts to some incalculably small percentage of the total building. It is HUGE. And it goes below ground a couple floors, which worries me, because if the mole people start becoming literate then there will be no stopping them.
Oh yeah, and check out this magical lighting apparatus in the middle of the whole operation:
I got me some books, some CDs-- CDs of bands I actually want to listen to, like the Flaming Lips, not random albums with cursive font and pictures of emo dudes wearing cowboy hats-- and I am all-around stoked to have an LA library card that isn't for the "South Whittier Library." I used to do tutoring sessions at that depressing little room-with-books, and once witnessed a librarian kick out two guys who were drunk at the computers. Which begs the question, is it good or bad that the nation's alcoholics are going to libraries?
While we're on the subject of books, I also paid a visit to The Last Bookstore in downtown. This place is a cool two-story book shop with a neat layout-- the second floor is set up like a labyrinth and you can wander around the little pocket rooms of different genres. In one room, the only sorting method is by color, so if you feel like reading a book with a purple cover your options are all conveniently located on one shelf. Half of the upper floor is also an art gallery complete with different installation rooms, so that was pretty neat as well. Oh, and they also have a knitting club up there. I don't know shit about knitting so that's not too relevant to my life, but I'm still tickled that it's there. Downstairs are more books and things, and there's a stage with couches in the middle, which leads me to believe they do poetry readings and things... finally, my chance to be just like that incredibly overly-sexualized beat poet from An Extremely Goofy Movie.
In even more downtown places-to-be, I met up with Macy during her lunch break yesterday at Grand Central Market.
I don't know how I haven't been here before... it's kind of a "thing" in LA. But now that I've been, I can stick my nose up in the air at anyone who hasn't gone and say, "What do you MEAN you haven't been to Grand Central Market? Have you been living under a rock?" Crawling out from under my little Chinese rock, I discovered that not only does this place offer a great variety of cheap and delicious lunch options, it also has a grip of stellar produce vendors with lots of fruits and veggies at extremely cheap prices. So much for my theory that everything in downtown is heinously expensive. I guess next time I'll know to be more prepared so I don't wind up hauling weighty bags of grapes and zucchini two miles across town.
Another thing I did today was walk a different route to downtown on my way to the library. Every time I go into town I like to try a new way, since every street's got something different. This time around I took the scenic route down Grand Avenue, which is where you find a lot of the landmark buildings in LA, like MOCA and the Disney Concert Hall. I gave in to my touristy urges and spent a good deal of the walk staring up with my jaw open. Like a god damn turkey in the rain.
This thing keeps happening where I go someplace in LA and am vaguely reminded of having gone there a long-ass time ago. Namely, as a Sophomore in high school my Drama Club went on a field trip to Hollywood for the weekend, and of course I had absolutely no frame of reference for anywhere we went. Lo and behold, I walked past the Mark Taper Forum today and realized our club had gone there to see the Tom Waits jukebox musical "The Black Rider" back in 2008. Speaking of having zero frame of reference, I'm pretty sure there was only one girl in our entire group who even knew who Tom Waits was, and that girl was not me.
And in writing-related news, I have not done much since I've been without laptop... but I did resort to writing scripts longhand last Monday since I was signed on for my first-ever Shut Up & Write! meeting and had no computer. I also began a half-assed zine that, if I follow through with printing and distributing, I will see about dropping a few copies off at with Last Bookstore.
Oooooop, dog-for-dinner dinner time. Later Christian Slater
So... busy week. Lots of L.A. ventures that I'd be happy to tell you about. Ready? All right then.
Since my internship boss is still in Paris-or-Russia-or-wherever, I got today and yesterday off for the second week in a row. While much of this time has been spent sitting in bed reading "Angela's Ashes" and wearing a sweatshirt with no shirt or bra underneath, I've also managed to accomplish a number of obligatory tasks that have needed addressing for a while... laundry, sending snail mail, depositing checks (yeeea buddy), putting air in my I'm-pretty-sure-one-has-a-hole tires, AND
getting a library card with the LA Public Library!
 |
| Well tickle me pink. |
Oh yeah, and check out this magical lighting apparatus in the middle of the whole operation:
 |
| Salvaged from Paul Bunyan's crib mobile. |
While we're on the subject of books, I also paid a visit to The Last Bookstore in downtown. This place is a cool two-story book shop with a neat layout-- the second floor is set up like a labyrinth and you can wander around the little pocket rooms of different genres. In one room, the only sorting method is by color, so if you feel like reading a book with a purple cover your options are all conveniently located on one shelf. Half of the upper floor is also an art gallery complete with different installation rooms, so that was pretty neat as well. Oh, and they also have a knitting club up there. I don't know shit about knitting so that's not too relevant to my life, but I'm still tickled that it's there. Downstairs are more books and things, and there's a stage with couches in the middle, which leads me to believe they do poetry readings and things... finally, my chance to be just like that incredibly overly-sexualized beat poet from An Extremely Goofy Movie.
In even more downtown places-to-be, I met up with Macy during her lunch break yesterday at Grand Central Market.
 |
| Fish heads! Get yer fish heads here! |
Another thing I did today was walk a different route to downtown on my way to the library. Every time I go into town I like to try a new way, since every street's got something different. This time around I took the scenic route down Grand Avenue, which is where you find a lot of the landmark buildings in LA, like MOCA and the Disney Concert Hall. I gave in to my touristy urges and spent a good deal of the walk staring up with my jaw open. Like a god damn turkey in the rain.
This thing keeps happening where I go someplace in LA and am vaguely reminded of having gone there a long-ass time ago. Namely, as a Sophomore in high school my Drama Club went on a field trip to Hollywood for the weekend, and of course I had absolutely no frame of reference for anywhere we went. Lo and behold, I walked past the Mark Taper Forum today and realized our club had gone there to see the Tom Waits jukebox musical "The Black Rider" back in 2008. Speaking of having zero frame of reference, I'm pretty sure there was only one girl in our entire group who even knew who Tom Waits was, and that girl was not me.
 |
| It was an extremely confusing two hours. |
Oooooop, dog-for-dinner dinner time. Later Christian Slater
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