Abbi's L.A. Times

On Friday, we all took a trip to Tucson to drive/hike Mt. Lemmon. Kate was still not feeling well, so she didn't do much hiking. We stopped in one location at the bottom of the mountain and the hiking there was pretty steep. That got old quickly, so we decided to drive up the mountain, stopping at vista points along the way to walk and climb on the rocks. It's amazing going from the base of the mountain where it is hot and dry with cacti all over to the top of the mountain where there are normal tree you might see at home and even snow! Kate and Stef informed me that a cactus only grows arms if it has been alive for 70 years or more. Stef and I took Supai all over the rocks at a really amazing vista point with rocks that jutted out from the mountain.

Yesterday was Cortacal! Back at IC, the big football game is played between Ithaca and our rivals, Cortland, and it's called Cortaca. So Because we're in LA, they add the extra L on the end and make it Cortacal. Pretty nice play on words there I'd say. Basically, we do the same things in LA as what the kids back in Ithaca are doing: get up really early to watch the game and drink. Except we have to do it even earlier here given the time difference. The game started at 9am, so people were drinking starting somewhere are 8am. Cortacal is usually held at a bar here called The Casting Office, but it closed, so we had it at Dillon's instead. It was really fun. They had a ton of TVs set up to stream the game and a highlights reel of old ICTV shows. We got a "Happy Cortacal" message from my adviser and the best man on the planet, Pete Johanns. Someone even made a video with a Cortacal theme song for this year! Sona had t-shirts made for the game that looked like the In-and-Out sign but said Cortacal instead. They are grey and really soft. I got a pear cider at the bar. It was awesome to have cider back in my life! I even convinced my boss at B&B, an IC alum to come. I'd been pressuring him into it all week, and he actually did! It was really awesome to see a ton of people I knew who now live out here. It was a really good community atmosphere. After the game, we were all exhausted from getting up so early, so we all went home and crashed for a few hours. It's really confusing to do this to your body because it felt like all of this occurred in the course of two days when it was really only one.

That night, Danielle, Siobhan, Sarah, Maddie, and I all went out to the local dive bar, Dimples. It was the first karaoke bar in the United States, so of course we wanted to check it out. A ton of celebrities have sung there over the years, but I'm not sure how popular it is now. Apparently, the IC kids used to go there all the time, but no so much this semester. I got a pina coolada finally! Siobhan, Danielle, and I decided to sing "Livin' on a Prayer," and the bar loved it. People were dancing and singing with us, so it was kind of funny. I was really nervous to do it beforehand, but it wasn't so bad. My first time ever singing karaoke. Newbies get a free picture and DVD, which is nice of them to do. We did have one celebrity citing that night though: Dennis Haskins, the principal from Saved by the Bell. He was a pretty awesome singer actually. It was a pretty cool night even though the bar was a bit sketchy in general.

Today, I had an RA event to go to the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena held on the second Sunday of every month. Although it's weird to charge a fee for entrance, we had a really great time. It's HUGE! They have a whole section of antiques and stuff on top of all the normal craft items. We spent a few hours looking around, got to go inside the Rose Bowl, and then went home. I'm glad we went. Seeing more things that are unique to LA. This was a pretty fun weekend. Now back to the grind for another week to get things done before Thanksgiving break!

Tonight, Danielle and I used our other voucher from volunteering at AFI to see Jeff, Who Lives at Home with Ed Helms and Jason Segel. It was a really funny movie about the relationship between brothers as well as living a lifestyle of just going with the flow, believing that "everything happens for a reason." It was a fantastic, and a lot of the conversations were improvised. There was a Q&A afterwards, and Ed talked about the difference between improvising for comedy and improvising for drama, which I found really interesting. So we got to see Ed and Jason in person and take a picture with Ed Helms, and I got Jason Segel's autograph! I love him in How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and I can't wait to see the new Muppet Movie. It was a great evening, and I'm glad I got to see two awesome movies at AFI.

This weekend, I worked at the 25th annual AFI Film Festival, a week-long film festival that takes up three different venues in Hollywood: Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Chinese 6 Cineplex, and the Egyptian Theatre. It was really cool to see the Chinese theater all decked out for the galas that were held there. All three nights, Danielle and I worked the late shift at the Chinese 6 Cineplex in House 1. I scanned badges and tallied tickets and badges on a clipboard. It was not difficult at all, but it was really fun to work at another event, and we got to leave early most nights. We got free shirts and credentials for volunteering, and every four hours you work you get ticket vouchers to easily get a ticket to any film. All the films are free for everyone, but the vouchers let us skip the lines and get tickets if the film is sold out. They also hold raffles every night for the people who volunteer, and I won a nice sized bottle of tequila on the first night! A margarita night has definitely got to happen!Also, on the first night, I came right from work and ate dinner at the really really sketchy McDonalds in Hollywood. There are crazy people who sit outside of it and the same crazy people also sit inside. For example, I was sitting hear a man who was verbally abusing his child! It actually made me very upset. I can't believe people can just swear at their kids like that for no reason. After my shady McDonalds experience, I got a marshmallow, chocolate, caramel stick from this really awesome dessert place in Hollywood. On the second night, Danielle and I got there really early, so we spent some time at Forever 21, looking for a jacket for her and trying to find something to use the gift card Shelly gave me for my birthday on. I found some two really cute shirts, but I had forgotten my gift card and bought then tonight instead. One shirt is gray/green stripped, plain but nice. The other is a cropped off-white shirt with a black sort of Arizona, geometric-like pattern on the front, and I got a black tank top to go under it. I was in desperate need of some new shirts. I feel like I wear the same things all the time.

The time that I was not helping at AFI was consumed by my stupid Government and Media paper. I am writing about network neutrality, and it's only 10 pages but it's in a form I've never really written in before. It's really hard to do research without a library, and I've just had so many people visiting in the last month that I could not get it done until the weekend before it was due, definitely not my style at all. I had started it, so that's fine, but still I had a lot of work to do. On Thursday, I had typed up all my notes to more easily find quotes and facts to cite, but somehow all of that work was deleted when I went to go find it to use on Saturday! I was pissed! No idea how that happened, but it meant 4 hours of work I couldn't get back. Either way, I was able to finish it and turn it in today. I'm just glad it's over. I also found out I got a 90% on my mid-term, so that's good news.

The one thing, aside from AFI, that I did do this weekend was go to the Getty Museum with Danielle. It actually has a tram that takes you up to the top of the mountain where the museum sits. It was a beautiful museum and the gardens were stunning. It was a chilly, fall day, but it was just nice to get outside and be in the sun. We took a tour around the property, and the guide gave us some information about the architecture as well as the gardens. The architect was Richard Meier, and he wanted to build the museum to fit in with the mountain, looking as though it was coming from the mountain itself. The building is primarily white with accents that pick up the colors in the mountains. The traverstine stones that are used throughout are really cool, from a quarry in Italy where the stones for the Colosseum came from. They are unfinished in many places, and there are fossils of feathers and leaves in them. There was one stone in particular the guide showed us that is more of an art piece outside. It is an 800,000 year old reed pond! It was really cool to look at and touch. A design competition was held as to who would design the central garden, and the winner was a sculptor named Robert Irwin. He wanted to design the gardens like a sculptor and make sure that no matter what season a patron visited in there would be flowers in bloom to look at. Meier was not thrilled about having his garden design taken away from him, and he and Irwin really had very different views for it. Irwin used zig-zag patterns for the paths around the garden, and there is a maze at the center, while Meier was all about creating symmetry and straight lines. My favorite part of the gardens were the 6 tall tree-like pieces with purple, white, and pink flower blooms at the top. They were a really nice pop of color among all the white of the buildings. The view from the museum and gardens over Santa Monica and the rest of LA was amazing! After taking the tour, we took another one of the main part of a special exhibit called Pacific Standard Time. Different art from the exhibit is being shown at many of the museums in the area, so it's a collaborative special exhibit. It features Californian artists from the 1960s and 1970s who really created an art scene when there wasn't one happening here at the time. There was assemblage (found) art, which was really interesting as well as modern art, like a huge circle made of resin that you could see through but not see your own reflection. I was really impressed with the exhibit, and I like that it was something special that you can only see here and for a limited time. After seeing the PST exhibit, we went to see a photography exhibit. One part was really cool; all the photos were of different trees and plants in the forest with what looked like pages of books or sentences forming some of the leaves or branches. We then looked at some impressionist and European art, some of which I recognized from seeing pictures in classes I have taken. Another really awesome exhibit was the illuminated manuscript section. Illuminated manuscripts are from the time when monks had to copy the Bible by hand, but they not only copied the words, they also illustrated many of the stories or parts of stories and added patterns to make it more colorful and vibrant. They are really gorgeous. Danielle and I spent a good length of time at the museum before heading back to go to our last shift at AFI. It was a really nice day.

Today, I spent my entire day working on the paper that I finally turned in. Danielle and I used our vouchers to get into I Melt With You. It's a movie about four college friends who get back together for a week. It is probably the most intense film I've ever seen in my life. It was amazing and mind-blowing, but maybe even too intense for me. I won't give away what happens in the end, but it's not a buddy-comedy, that's for sure. At the Q&A with the actors and director afterwards, the director said he wanted to make a film for people like him, 40 year old men because, unless you wanted an action movie, there really was nothing out there for that age group. It really explores masculinity and age and is just a very dark film. The cast featured Rob Lowe and Jeremy Piven, both of whom were at the Q&A afterwards, so it was cool to get to see them. Rob Lowe had some of his friends from Parks and Recreation come to the screening, so Danielle and I also got to see Chris Pratt and Adam Scott. It was a fairly star-studded evening, and I was happy to get to see one of the AFI films all the way through. It really is a great film festival. Tomorrow night, we are going to see Jeff, Who Lives at Home with Jason Segel, so I'm really excited about that too.

I stole the title for this blog post from what apparently LA calls their Halloween weekend. Nice play on words I thought. Therefore, I'm going to tell you about my Halloween weekend.

Saturday night, after having spent all day writing my government and media paper and studying, I needed some relaxation time. Danielle and I decided to take my sangria to the hot tub. We drank a whole jug! It was a really nice, relaxing night then. Afterwards, Danielle went to use the bathroom at Chris's apartment because it's right next to the hot tub. A bunch of people were getting ready to go out, so we hung out with them for a while and danced. Chris's dance moves were hysterical. Everyone had good costumes: Maddie was Courtney Love, Sarah was the walk of shame, Siobhan was the house from Up!, Chris was a guido from NJ (which is funny because he's Irish and is, in fact, from NJ), and Jack was Scuba Steve from Big Daddy (which I thought was wonderful). It was a really fun night, and a good start to Halloween weekend.

As my last blog post says, Sunday I went to Runyon Canyon with Danielle.

Today was Halloween, and the biggest thing to do in LA for Halloween is to go to West Hollywood for their Halloween Carnival. It's HUGE! Also, West Hollywood is known as the gay section of LA, so there were tons of drag queens dressed up in crazy costumes. There were so many people dressed up in some wicked awesome costumes. I think among the best were a wolf-man in a cage, the queen of hearts, and Ursula from Little Mermaid. But my favorite costume by far was the Angry Bird's couple. This one's for you dad:
So anyway, it was cool to walk around and see all the costumes, but it was really crowded. I'm glad I had the experience of spending Halloween in LA though. It was really fun.