Hollywood

Well I've been in LA for 3 nights now and I can safely say that it's pretty damn weird. My first night here I didn't do much, wandered down Hollywood in the rain for a bit and fell asleep pretty early. The day after however was much more interesting.

I took a walk down Hollywood and saw the famous Chinese theatre, the Kodak theatre and Hollywood Walk of Fame (favourites so far include Dean Stockwell and Angela Lansbury). I didn't see any famous people, but there was some guy offering tickets to a TV show. I took them of course, not even knowing what the show was. It turned out to be The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson who was actually pretty funny. They recorded 2 monologues and 2 interviews, one of the monologues was for Friday's show so we had to pretend it was Friday, seeing as I wasn't all that sure what day it was anyway, I ended up very confused. We saw him interview Jackie Collins and John Larroquette. I had no idea who Larroquette was, but he had some pretty damning stuff to say about the way the US government responded to Hurricane Katrina, so I liked him.

On the way back down Hollywood our (Mark, from Western Australia) and I's way was blocked by a premiere for the new Tim Allen movie. They were all inside watching the film, yet we still couldn't cross the road. Rather than walk all the way round we decided to grab a beer in the nearest bar, which just happened to be Hooters. We ended up having dinner there and waited out the crowds. It's a pretty odd place, it's basically a Harvester but where all the waitresses go through a rigorous interview to make sure they are good waitresses. I swear to God, there was one girl who couldn't use a bottle opener to open a bottle of beer.

Yesterday we decided to follow up on a call for "Hollywood movie crowd scene, people needed all week". Which basically meant pay $200 and we'll call you. No-one felt like getting ripped off so we walked around Hollywood some more, got some pictures of the sign and headed off to see Sunset Strip. It was a pretty long walk, but the strip was pretty cool, we saw the Viper Room, site of River Pheonix's drug overdose. We also saw the Hustler store, only in America people. Once we reached the end, Latif and I started to walk back to Hollywood. This is where LA really showed its glamourous side. First up we saw a small queue outside a bookstore so we joined it. It turned out to be a book signing by Mr. Bonzai, a rock photographer. He was there with members of The Police, The Travelling Wilburys and the singer from Devo (famous for Whip it). Seeing as we weren't going to get the book and the guys from the Chili Peppers hadn't turned up, we took a picture and left. Then we saw another crowd inside a Virgin Megastore. So we looked in. Turned out to be an interview with Gustavo Santaolalla who wrote the score for Brokeback Mountain, took a picture, left. On the way back we saw more commotion outside a restaurant so we crossed the road to see what was going on, we saw professional tart Paris Hilton. I got a photo of her entourage going in, but missed her by a second. I then had to explain to my friend Latif who is from a country called Eritrea who she was and why she was famous. He barely believed me and the conversation ended with him shaking his head and saying "America, what a country".

Might take a trip to Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, or Venice Beach today, or go check out a museum. I am booking a train to Merced so that I can go hiking in Yosemite tomorrow, so if I vanish for a few days, that's where I am.