13 posts tagged “hollywood”

  Like I said, breakfast is the best way to start the day... especially when visitors are in town.  So when Nuk came out to visit a couple of weekends ago we took him to one of our favorite joints, the 101 Coffee Shop:

  I was flipping through the L.A. Times on Wednesday when I came across an article on the Farmer's Markets in Los Angeles.  As a high percentage of farmers are getting older (higher, by far, then any other workforce in America) they are finding that a younger batch of people are coming in to take their place, whether it be their children taking over on some of the bigger farms or new families coming in willing to take some big risks to till the land. 

    I feel pretty lucky to be included with the half of the world who got to see the lunar eclipse this evening.  I thought it might be hard with the smog and light pollution to spot it here in Hollywood, but it turned out to be the rainy weather and gloomy skies that threatened to hide my eclipsed beauty from me.  I stood in the middle of our palm tree lined street trying to get a picture, but it didn't work out.  Oh well.  It didn't really look like this, but it will do.  

  My cousin Kelly flew in on Valentine's for a weekend visit.  She is fifteen years old.  (I have to write this down for myself because to me she stopped getting older at age nine.)  She sat between Tim and I as we all ate Zeke's takeout Bar-B-Q in our candlelit living room.  With smokey mesquite sauce dripping off our fingers and the notes of a classical guitar wafting in the background (a random cd Tim got for free at work) Kelly was able to withhold gagging while Tim and I starred deeply and lovingly into one another's eyes.    

  It was an easy going, quiet Christmas in Los Angeles.  We woke up to our little X-mas plant and opened a few gifts.

  The biggest Christmas surprise was tickets to Austria from Tim!  We will fly to Munich, Germany in just a few days be picked up by our friend Harry and then taken to his hometown of Bludenz, Austria, right in the middle of the Alps!  It's time for us to find some wool undies and practice our yodeling.  Austria here we come!
   Despite all the excitement we still managed to relax most of the day.  We played a long game of Scrabble while intermittently cooking Christmas dinner.  I made homemade Squash Tear-Apart Rolls.  This being the first time in my life I have ever made anything with real live yeast.  Although I hated the kneading I did enjoy the punching, especially after I lost the Scrabble game.   Tim managed to win the game and make just about everything else in the dinner.  He somehow orchestrated it perfectly where his last word down was N-O-E-L.  He was very, very proud of himself for that one!

 

  We love going to the Farmer's Market on Sundays to get fresh fruits and vegetables.  And, lately I have been trying to get a fruit or vegetable that I've never really eaten alot to put in some new recipe.  This week~ RHUBARB!  I learned from Wikipedia that the leaves of rhubarb are actually poisonous (that's if you eat enough of them!)  It is really a vegetable although it is used most of the time as a fruit.  Also here's another interesting bit of info from Wikipedia:

  It is or was common for a crowd of extras in acting to shout the word "rhubarb" repeatedly and out of step with each other, to cause the effect of general hubbub. As a result, the word "rhubarb" sometimes is used to mean "length of superfluous text in speaking or writing", or a general term to refer to irrelevant chatter by chorus or extra actors.

  Since Tim and I ate Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins for our moms on Mother's Day we are now eating Strawberry Rhubarb Pie for our dads on Father's Day!!  ;)

  And, now ladies and gentlemen, the journey of Strawberry and Rhubarb:

 

 

 

 

 

  Last weekend I surprised Tim with a date to the Hollywood Forever Cemetary...if that sounds morbid I can explain.  Every weekend during the summer movies are put on in the cemetary.  Everyone grabs their picnic baskets, blankets, and sometimes even bean bags and heads over to the cemetary for an evening of entertainment.  A dj even plays before and after the show.  This night we went to see Rebel Without a Cause and the place was packed!  Don't worry we weren't leaning against gravestones or anything (that would be pretty akward!) instead we all settled in a huge grassy patch in the middle of the cemetary.  We noticed that the cemetary seems to have the most palm trees located in Los Angeles and we were lucky enough to watch a beautiful sunset while we were waiting for the movie to start...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Living out here in the City of Angels you can't help but bump into a celebrity every now and then.  Whether or not you choose to believe I am good buddies with the rich and famous is up to you, but I have the pictures to prove it!!!

 

Justin Timberlake or "J-Tim" as Tim likes to call him was spotted at the gym.  He was shooting some hoops and I was running on the treadmill with "Sexy Back" blaring on my I-Pod.  What a coinky-dink! 

I had the privledge of working with Rebecca on the canceled "Pepper Dennis."  She looked every bit the supermodel, but the show was a bore!  Yawn!  I don't know how Hugh got into this picture.  They must have photoshopped him in.

Jessica Biel snuck into the coffee shop in the wee hours of the morning before the paparazzi could catch her.  She was wearing a hat to remain undercover and I kept staring at her like some weirdo because I was trying to figure out who she was.  That's o.k. cause we're best friend now!  ;P

This Baldwin brother came in to get a coffee.  He's a man of few words.  We're best friends now, too!

Keifer, Oh Keifer!  We go way back!  And, that's all I have to say! 

  What!?!  There are award ceremonies for stuntmen and woman?  I always thought all that high action stuff in the movies was done with computers...I didn't actually consider that real people were out there risking injury and death by being set on fire, sitting in exploding cars, or riding bikes at full speed into a driving cars in order to make sure some movie star maintains their dashing good looks.  I don't like to drive my car above 65 mph so anything slightly daredevilish I consider CRAZY!  Last night I watched the Stuntman Awards Show on the Paramount Studio Lot thanks to Tim's internship at a production company on Paramount where he got tickets for free.  At first, I wasn't too interested in attending (action adventure movies aren't exactly my favorite), but in the end I decided it might be fun to see what that part of the entertainment industry is all about...  And, maybe I'd see a cool explosion or two on stage! 

  Not only did I get to see explosions onstage but I saw tons of stuntmen and women dressed in their finest ballgowns and tuxedos (crutches and canes seemed to be a hot accessory!)...Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford, Burt Reynolds, David Spade, The Rock give/receive awards...Stuntmen from Pirates of the Carribean come out in costume and re-enact a few sword fights for the crowd (btw, they won "Best Fight" in a movie)...and, I cringed when many stunt acrobatic men and women flew into the air and jumped off buildings and out of windows on the set.

  Then there was the post-show party.  I have to say it's one of the best I have been to...you wanna know why?  All food and drinks were free...and, it was GOOD food at that!  They had the party on the New York St- a location for filming all scenes in NY.  (ahhhh movie magic!)  They had a band playing with a lit up dance floor, tables upon tables of food, coffee stands, open bars, ice cream trucks (yes, it is a bit ridiculous how much money these studios have at their disposal, it makes me kinda sick!), motorcycle stuntmen performing tricks in a huge metal ball, light shows, and the good old mechanical bull that the guests could ride when they were all liquored up.  Tim, his coworker Harry, Vern and I thought it would be fun to ride the mechanical bull numerous times.  Bruised legs and a possible sprained wrist later I think I am now regretting that decision!

  If anyone is interested you can watch the 2007 Taurus Stuntman Awards Show on on AMC on Friday, May 25th at 10:30 p.m.  ummm...that's if you really have nothing better to do.

 

  Living in Hollywood you would think it was a scene from a movie.  Or just another scene they were shooting for a movie since regularly you walk down the street and you see cameras and crew everywhere you go.  Just walking to the gym the other day I saw these three cops on motorcycles leading the way for a car scene that was being filmed.  There was the one car with actresses on a ramp being pulled by a truck with about twenty guys in it with all their  bulky camera equipment.  Obviously people are willing to go out of their way to get the perfect shot and you never know what is real or just plain theatrics as you walk around this city!!!  
  So last Saturday while working at the Bean I see a crowd of people on the corner of Sunset and Argyle looking out towards the Hollywood Hills.  About 95% of them had their cell phones pointed in that direction snapping shots with their camera phones. Obviously, I'm thinkng it must be another filming of a movie, maybe they are all seeing some famous actress or actor strutting their stuff down the street.  I go out to look and it turns out that the hills were on fire!!!  And, the first thing that comes to my mind is that they must be filming some big explosion scene up there!    Well, a BIG nuclear explosion scene with thick black clouds of smoke stretching across the clear blue sky!!!     Never had I seen a fire so huge!!!  I kept thinking that they were taking this one a little too far and it wasn't until I noticed the  helicopters flying over the smoke and pouring down buckets and buckets of water (or whatever it is that they would use in a case like this!) that it occured to me that this was a real fire! It looked as though the Hollywood sign was going to burn down and there were reports that the fire was going to spread down to the city. 
  Well, things weren't that bad and they reported that it was actually a minor fire compared to others. It also turns out two boys, ages 15 and 17, had started the fire while playing with fireworks.  Imagine their parents reaction!  Ha!

  You can check out some pix of the Hollywood Hills on fire at this site!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-document3apr03,0,3967856.story?coll=la