Hooray for Hollywood

Well, good morning, and happy Monday, my gentle readers! I write you today from the City of Angels, where I have taken yet another mini-vacation. I really should have only a three to four day work week (as well as unlimited funds), so I can spend long weekends in Los Angeles more frequently. I arrived on Saturday afternoon and was greeted by temperatures not too hot but, nonetheless, a good 6-8 degrees warmer than in San Francisco. The rest of the trip could have been exceedingly boring, but that alone would have put me in a good mood.

However, my sojourn has been anything but boring thus far. On Saturday night, after an early dinner at Umami Burger, my sister Fabulous Patti and I met my friends Dave and Katya at Tiki Ti for delicious and authentically strong tropical cocktails. FP went home relatively early, but Dave, Katya and I stayed and chatted, imbibed and made friends with the bartender. I even chose my final drink by spinning the Tiki Ti wheel of mystery (I just named it that). I'm a daredevil, after all. After Tiki Ti, we went for Thai food at Palms on Hollywood Boulevard, which happens to be across the street from Florentine Gardens, a delightfully ridiculous 18-and-over dance club where I would shake my barely post-adolescent groove thing back in 1988 and '89. Ah, memories. Some probably are best left in the past.

Yesterday saw me sleep half the day away, but I'm on vacation, so who cares? Once fully awake, I took a late afternoon jog/power walk through Los Feliz and saw actress Jeanne Tripplehorn sitting in a totally nondescript Mexican restaurant on Hillhurst. It was weird for a second, but then I remembered that I'm in L.A., and even actresses have to eat. Last night I met my friend Emily and our fellow high school alum Randy for karaoke at a place called Rick's Tavern in Santa Monica. That was much fun; we all got to sing several times before calling it a night at about 12:30.

And this brings us to the here and now. I'm in town until tomorrow night, and we'll see what adventures I can cook up between now and then.

In case you're wondering what I've been doing between the last post and now, I offer you this photograph. This is me, along with my friends Valerie and Jessica at Beer Revolution in Oakland. We spent a delightful afternoon there with our friends Joo Eun, Chris, Frank and several of Joo Eun's friends whose names I don't recall sipping microbrews and snacking on vegan soul food (that's right) from the restaurant next door. I then was able to walk down the street to Jack London Square and catch my musician friend Michele, a.k.a. Tippy Canoe, performing an early show as part of the Oakland Underground Film Festival. After that, I headed back to Beer Revolution for more conversation and one last drink and before making it back to San Francisco at a very human hour. Not bad for mid-May Saturday by the Bay, huh?

Okay, my vacation is calling, and I must get back to it. If I don't relax, who will?