This is where my journey started. Of course, I had the whole LA experience - touching down in the airplane and then being forced to wait on the tarmac for over 1/2 hour until a spot became free, leading to me being a total of 2 hours late.

Anyway, after meeting up with my touring crew we headed off to Venice beach. There was hardly anyone down there (it was the middle of winter after all) but it still had a pretty cool atmosphere. After checking out Venice beach we cruised down Santa Monica boulevard for a while and then went to Hollywood boulevard. Here I did the total tourist thing and got my pictures taken with whatever stars I could. I look back on it an think “what was I on?” - they were only names on the concrete after all, but anyway.

We then met one of the crew’s friends. This is what I had been looking forward to all day. She was a former chick from Baywatch - not one of the main characters, but a background fill-in. But she was in Baywatch! She also played a small part in Jerry McGuire. Nowadays she seems to be obsessed with peace and scented oils. She also didn’t look as young as I thought she would… but Baywatch was a while ago after all. We met up with her and her boyfried at a really cool bar in suburban LA. After that we went back to her place where we drank and where I attempted playing guitar whilst being drunk. Not advisable! Her boyfriend prepared us some appetizer that had Parmesan cheese and… cinnamon! What is it with Americans and cinnamon? They have it with everything! It actually tasted pretty good though. I spent a lot of the night trying to work out what the boyfriend actually did. He did a lot of things, but I think he was a cook but also trying to get into the acting scene. They (as in, actors trying to get a start) are apparently pretty secretive about that sort of stuff.

So anyway, the pictures from LA are here

NOT! This has been the biggest weekend of nothing I’ve ever had. I was feeling like crap all of last week at work. I think it *may* have had something to do with my trip over to California. Hmmmm… So I spent the whole weekend recovering in bed. I also discovered cable TV this weekend. Normally, I’d only turn the TV on to watch “The Daily Show” on the Comedy channel (oh, and Reno 911 and Drawn Together). But this weekend I watched the History channel as well and I watched a 3-hour special on stealth technology in the armed forces. Fascinating stuff.

I also spent a lot of time mucking around with my new Razr V3 phone. I’ve completely Aussied it up. The background is the boxing kangaroo and my ring tone is an mp3 of “Land down under” by Men at Work. Americans just love that stuff, and since coming over here I’ve become more of a patriotic Aussie anyway. ESPECIALLY since Australia is donating all that money for relief in the Tsunami disaster. Oi! Oi! Oi! (believe it or not, once someone found I was from Australia that’s all they would say to me).

Goodnight!

There have been a few songs bugging me my whole life coz I like them a lot but I don’t know who the hell they’re by (and I don’t know enough of the lyrics to google them). One I don’t think I’m ever going to figure out until I actually hear it on some CD coz it’s some Spanish song from the mid 80’s or something like that. I’ve just solved the identity of one of the others however. I used to listen to this one when I was in Year 1. Yeah, a long time ago. There was a tape player out in the shed and I used to play this song over and over and then sing it at school. The name of the song is “Listen to the band” by the Monkees. I got it wrong at the time, I used to say “Listen to the fan.” It didn’t make much sense back at the time, and last week I thought about it again and determined that it must have been “band” instead of “fan”. A quick google and a download of the song and voila! Mystery solved.

Today is a good day.