in homage to the hip venice neighborhood we invaded for a few days while getting to know los angeles, this post contains no capital letters. i found a cute little vacation house close to the beach to rent on vrbo.com. we’ve been renting this way since our trip to washington, d.c. a few years ago. that time, we stayed in an old row house apartment in the eastern market for much cheaper than a hotel, and we tasted real neighborhood life in another city. also, we could do laundry and cook our own meals. this is not as economical as an rv park, but there are perks. this time, the perks included strolling down chic abbot kinney blvd, window shopping, and munching expensive doughnuts. the shops all had one-word names printed in interesting fonts above the doorways, and they were packed with hipsters, casually forking over their lifesavings for vintage t-shirts. poor jane almost blended-in, but she was saddled with a large family unit and a dog that clearly lacked a boutique pedigree.

neighborhood art

peter picked a number of lemons from the tree in our yard. hopefully, i won’t find them rotten in the glove compartment when we get home.

jane, rocking onto electric avenue

fancy doughnuts

we had a great time exploring the beach, santa monica pier, olvera street, getty center, la brea tar pits, and warner brothers studios, but i have to admit, a good deal of our time was spent gawking. we fully embraced our cheesy tourist impulses. it started innocently enough. while sitting in traffic on the way to the pier, i glanced to my right and found myself eyeball to eyeball with tim robbins, celebrity.
“brandon, i whispered, “i think i see a celebrity.”
brandon, generally focused on avoiding a wreck (we narrowly escaped twice), cut his eyes to the right long enough to confirm my suspicions.
“you do. you do see a celebrity.”
by now the kids were interested, though only a couple of them knew whom we were spying.
“he doesn’t look very rich,” someone observed.
“does he know about smoking being bad for you?” wondered another concerned youth.
finally the light changed and our star moved on, smirking and trailing a little cloud of smoke. “maybe it wasn’t him,” i second-guessed as the euphoria of the moment wore off. “maybe he doesn’t even live in los angeles. let’s check on-line; the internet knows all.”
we checked. tim robbins does live in l.a., and he is a smoker. after that, our eyes were peeled for glory.

we were delighted to see another actor or two during our tour of warner brothers studios. our by-day tour guide was a by-night assistant producer full of fun stories about movies and tv. (mary jane is laughing all through the upside-down-kiss scene in spiderman because his nose was stuffed with tissues to keep him from drowning in the manufactured rainstorm.) peter had watched the first episode of the new supergirl tv show, so he was excited to visit the set of her underground lair. we couldn’t take pictures there, which only added to its air of exclusivity!

president barlett’s desk from west wing, available to rent from wb prop building

or maybe some mr. smiths from matrix?

central perk set

trying out special effects

brandon took the little girls to a show at el capitan theatre while the rest of us went on the studio tour.

chinese theatre and hollywood stars

am i the only person who didn’t know that there is a really large and active oil field under the city of los angeles? that’s what preserved the thousands of ancient bones still being unearthed at la brea tarpits–asphalt–not tar. a great former fourth-grade math teacher scooped us up as we walked into the museum and enthusiastically led us through a tour of the museum and research facility. we forgot about celebrities (mostly), and spent the rest of our time in l.a. trying to identify disguised oil derricks like this one next to beverly hills high school:

what’s outside at the getty center is a striking as art on the inside.

vexed and masked

we like our baby jesus hip and peaced-out

on the beach in santa monica, we ran into some former lubbockites and found we had friends in common!

seaweed-topped hotdogs at santa monica pier

nacho libre masks and tasty mexican food on olvera street

the boys in a burbank parking lot, trying to get boo radley (or youtube stars, rhett and link) to come out. pete spent a good chunk of time snooping out the address online.

they did not succeed. this is what we did instead of going to view the largest section of berlin wall outside germany. sigh.