Sunday, December 03, 2006
If weekends were deities, then this one would have have been omnipresent because I was all over LA. Okay, so mabe not omni-present, but maybe a localized version of it. But that's what happens when you hang out good ol' Gilbert. The man is the definition of a Rennaissance Man.It all starts with some excellent sailing on the South Bay. We took out a 25-foot boat from Marina del Rey. It wasn't very windy so there weren't many boats out, which turned out to be a good thing since Gilbert wanted to teach me sailing techniques. We did all kinds of tacking, jibing, man-overboard drills, and I learned all about points of sail, luffing, and air foils.
Looking at the water was pretty depressing, though. There was a lot of floating litter and it was definitely Red Tide. For those of you who don't know about Red Tide, it's basically when a lot of red-hued algae begins growing in the water, and it usually only happens in the summer when the water is warmer. But with all the run off, the algae has more bacteria to feed on (or at least that's how I understand it). Honestly, it's not hard to see why Californians are eco-crazy. Now they just need to stop talking and start doing.
Enough with the hippy talk (what am I becoming?). After paddling our asses back into the harbor (I told you there wasn't much wind), we hurried downtown to go see The Nutcracker with a group of Gilbert's friends. This may seem like normal behavior for mst of you, but it didn't seem to quite fit in my mind, mainly because I was out on a sailboat in shorts and short-sleeves, soaking in the warm sunshine. It does not feel like Christmas here. Not one bit.
The ballet was performed by a touring Korean Ballet company called Universal Ballet. (I said "ballet" a lot in that last sentence. Ballet.) There were some interesting interpretations -- Jess was angry that Clara did not throw her shoe at the Rat King, but used a pillow instead. Who throws a pillow, honestly? I also found out that little girls are supposed to wear a red velvet dress when going to see The Nutcracker. Apparently none of the mothers in Los Angeles were aware of this fact as we only saw one girl following said rule. I'm not entirely convinced that this is in fact a rule; part of me thinks Jess was pulling my leg.
We had yet to eat dinner so we hit up the Daily Grill diner downtown after the show. We go there a few minutes before ten, which was good since they were about to close. I feasted on a delicious (and expensive) filet mignon. I highly recommend the restaurant if you need a place to go on a date and can afford it. Our waiter was pretty cool, too. She (like so many other in this town) was from the midwest and was out here trying to get into the film industry. We ended up having a good conversation with her and tried to get her to sit down and join us (we were the only table left) to no avail.
It was about 11:30 by the time we finished and nobody was quite ready to leave. So we headed across the street to the Westin Bona Vista hotel to ride the glass elevators that went along the outside of the buildling. We tried to get seats at the Bona Vista Lounge at the top (35th floor) which rotates and has a cool view of the city. The 45-minute wait was too long for our taste so we headed back down to the lobby bar instead. After one round, we were all ready to call it a night.
It was pretty sweet getting to see more of downtown LA. There's definitely a lot of stuff to do there, but surprisingly not a lot of people there. Jess claims this another point proving her argument that LA isn't a real city (she grew up in Jersey and went to college in Chicago). Sure, it's not the same as those places, but there's definitely stuff to do. And I plan to find out more.
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