The weather has been significantly cooler today which is rare for L.A. Normally it is warm to hot, which is one of the things that I love about the City of Angels. Interestingly the smog was horrendously thick today. For some reason I didn’t think it would appear on a cooler day, but that just goes to show how thick I am. All around L.A motor vehicle mechanic shops advertise “Smog Checks” however I am yet to understand what that actually means. It is normally advertised with the oil changes so am wondering if it means that the mechanic checks the smog output from a car. Today was a good example of why residents of metropolitan cities should go back to pushbikes or having a horse and carriage. New York is just as bad. The Bear explained to me that the very heavy smog is due to an “inversion layer” This occurs when cool air comes in from over the sea and comes beneath a mass of warm weather in the upper atmosphere. The cool air becomes like a ceiling as it cannot rise through the warmer air above. Pollutants such as car exhaust fumes or even just general smoke from fires, get trapped underneath that “ceiling” therefore causing the smog. It cannot simply be blown away because of the mountains that surround Los Angeles. I have noticed however that the smog is not as bad near the water, although the coastal areas are affected by something called the “Marine Layer”. This occurs when a mass of air is cooled over the ocean and comes in trapped under warmer air above it. This appears as a very thick fog however this will burn off during the day by the warm sun.
And there completes my educational lesson today!
As we have done a lot of the usual things to do in L.A several times (we have been to Warner Bros 4 or 5 times, Disneyland twice, Hollywood and the Hollywood sign several times, Universal Studios twice and Paramount Pictures once – just to mention a few) ) we have opted not to do these during this trip. I think its worth mentioning that I believe we should go to Disneyland again as that damned Mickey Mouse needs to be punched in the mouth.
*Warning: Do not read if particularly fond of mice.
On our first trip to Disneyland in 2014 we were met with ten thousand (at least!) screaming children who would shoulder charge us in the belly button when they were running away from their parents. I call this “instant contraception” I find myself wondering if this is their earliest training for their respective gridiron/pro-football careers in years to come. However I tolerated this as I was only really there for one reason – to meet Mickey Mouse. I searched every corner of Disneyland and continually cast a glance over the heads of the screaming children, looking for those impossibly big mouse ears, to no avail. We were approached by countless other characters who seemed to think that we didn’t actually know that there was a dude inside the costume and this got to the point where we avoided eye contact with the said characters (although Beetle-Juice and Frankenstein saw this as a challenge) but there was no damned Mickey.
This STUPID damned mouse managed to avoid us ALL day. When we FINALLY caught up with the damned rodent at 4.30pm, he refused photos as he was going off to another prior engagement! WTF??? Apparently we could follow him to another side of Disneyland to have our photo taken with him. I think not Mighty Mouse! Or is that Mickey Wanker??? Here big nose...I am clicking the camera anyway!
PS: Mickey stupid Mouse is now ranked up there with other feral costumed morons such as Humphrey B Bear (that wanker twat bear) who refused to answer my letters on behalf of the then 3 year old Alyx 23 years ago.
Anyway enough waffle. Back to our last day in L.A. We decided that we would have lunch at The Warehouse Restaurant at Marina Del-Ray which we saw on the television yesterday. The Bear looked it up on the internet and found that this restaurant was one of the locations where the second “Meet the Fockers” was filmed. Given that we now have gone to a number of places where movies were made, we thought that we could add this to our list of "been there" brags so off we went.
We hadn’t been driving for more than 2 minutes when the Bear suddenly conducted a u-turn without warning. I asked him what he was doing, and he just said he saw something and he wanted to know what my take on it was. He pulled over to the side of the road, and pointed to a house, and asked what I saw. I stared for a minute wondering WTF he was on about, and it dawned on me. I told him that the house looked like the one in “Father of the Bride” (Steve Martin and Dianne Keating) but a lot of houses in LA look like that. He told me to look up the tree lined street, and again it looked like something from “Father of the Bride”. I said to the Bear that it wouldn’t hurt to take a photo (I will add a photo when I upload them) "just in case" however given that the Bear had only spotted it on the way past, and given that this was just another gorgeous house in Pasadena, that it is more likely to be just a coincidence. As we waited for our lunch to be served, I looked up the house from “ Father of the Bride” on my phone, and sure enough, it was remarkably like the house in the movie, as did the street. I then googled filming locations for the movie, and sure enough it was filmed in Pasadena. Still there are countless houses like that in the suburb so I told B that when we got back to the hotel, I would blow up the photo on the laptop so that I could read the number on the house. I would also look the same up for the house in the movie. When I did this later this afternoon, I found that the were indeed one and the same. 843 South El Molino Avenue. Seriously….what are the odds? Of the trillion houses in Los Angeles, the Bear happens to spot this just as we are driving along. Absolutely incredible. We actually stumbled on a filming location that we had not even been looking for!
We hadn’t been driving for more than 2 minutes when the Bear suddenly conducted a u-turn without warning. I asked him what he was doing, and he just said he saw something and he wanted to know what my take on it was. He pulled over to the side of the road, and pointed to a house, and asked what I saw. I stared for a minute wondering WTF he was on about, and it dawned on me. I told him that the house looked like the one in “Father of the Bride” (Steve Martin and Dianne Keating) but a lot of houses in LA look like that. He told me to look up the tree lined street, and again it looked like something from “Father of the Bride”. I said to the Bear that it wouldn’t hurt to take a photo (I will add a photo when I upload them) "just in case" however given that the Bear had only spotted it on the way past, and given that this was just another gorgeous house in Pasadena, that it is more likely to be just a coincidence. As we waited for our lunch to be served, I looked up the house from “ Father of the Bride” on my phone, and sure enough, it was remarkably like the house in the movie, as did the street. I then googled filming locations for the movie, and sure enough it was filmed in Pasadena. Still there are countless houses like that in the suburb so I told B that when we got back to the hotel, I would blow up the photo on the laptop so that I could read the number on the house. I would also look the same up for the house in the movie. When I did this later this afternoon, I found that the were indeed one and the same. 843 South El Molino Avenue. Seriously….what are the odds? Of the trillion houses in Los Angeles, the Bear happens to spot this just as we are driving along. Absolutely incredible. We actually stumbled on a filming location that we had not even been looking for!
The Warehouse Restaurant as a charming place that has a very nautical theme. It looks rather like a fisherman’s shack. When we got there, there was not another single car in the car park. There was a man standing near the entrance with a sign saying “Valet Parking” $2.75. I looked at the man, looked at the car park, and looked at the men again. This was optimism at its best. Needless to say, we kindly declined the offer to have our rental car valet parked. The restaurant itself looked like a complete movie set, and whilst the food was nothing to write home about, it was cheap and as per all of the meals served in the USA it could have fed a small army. We recognised a number of spots from the “Meet the Fockers” movie, so that was well worth the trip.
Just something totally random to mention here, the TV ads in the USA are very different to that at home. There are a lot of ads done for lawyers who suggest that if you have had an injury due to this or that, they are happy to represent you in suing them. That are millions of ads that promote a certain medications telling you how they can benefit you, and how they may harm you. With every ad I have seen, I wonder how the pharmaceutical companies stay in business as every ad tells you every reason that you shouldn’t! It always says to consult your doctor, which to me is common sense given that you need a darned prescription to purchase it. Anyway one of those ads just came on, but I only caught the last line of it. “Please ask your doctor if you are healthy enough to have sex”. WTF?
Tomorrow we are not heading to Yosemite as planned. It has had heavy snow there, and we would require chains on our rental car. This is forbidden by Hertz, not that we would have had a clue on how to put them on. So…we have decided to go and stay in Salinas which is located a couple of hours from San Francisco, and therefore a stones throw from San Jose, Santa Cruz, Monteray and Carmel. Every time I am in these parts, I am desperate to seek out Clint Eastwood (the one time mayor of Carmel) so if we swing past there, I will put my stalker shoes on. There is a prediction that there will be a major weather event over the coming days and this will extend to all of the North West and over the border into Canada. Well that just sucks!
Today’s blog hasn’t been funny like the other days but never fear…..tomorrows promises to be a doozy!
Just something totally random to mention here, the TV ads in the USA are very different to that at home. There are a lot of ads done for lawyers who suggest that if you have had an injury due to this or that, they are happy to represent you in suing them. That are millions of ads that promote a certain medications telling you how they can benefit you, and how they may harm you. With every ad I have seen, I wonder how the pharmaceutical companies stay in business as every ad tells you every reason that you shouldn’t! It always says to consult your doctor, which to me is common sense given that you need a darned prescription to purchase it. Anyway one of those ads just came on, but I only caught the last line of it. “Please ask your doctor if you are healthy enough to have sex”. WTF?
Tomorrow we are not heading to Yosemite as planned. It has had heavy snow there, and we would require chains on our rental car. This is forbidden by Hertz, not that we would have had a clue on how to put them on. So…we have decided to go and stay in Salinas which is located a couple of hours from San Francisco, and therefore a stones throw from San Jose, Santa Cruz, Monteray and Carmel. Every time I am in these parts, I am desperate to seek out Clint Eastwood (the one time mayor of Carmel) so if we swing past there, I will put my stalker shoes on. There is a prediction that there will be a major weather event over the coming days and this will extend to all of the North West and over the border into Canada. Well that just sucks!
Today’s blog hasn’t been funny like the other days but never fear…..tomorrows promises to be a doozy!
