I get dropped off at uncle’s house, then head out to drop off a script for Marilyn Atlas to read. (She only reads hard copies).  I email Elizabeth, her assistant/literary manager, since she’ll check out a pdf.  Marilyn gives me many hugs and kisses.  

I put in the address for Mosaic Media, so I can meet up with Jake Kurily. Of course, the address does not come up in the old GPS. I call him, give me my coordinates. I’m 5 minutes away. Lucky me. Mosaic is awesome, covered in framed posters of some little movies they’ve done-Ace Ventura, Dark Knight, etc. Jake and I chat mostly about home prices, then we talk some business. He offers to help me find a manager and I send him my realtor’s contact info. Jake is a very sweet guy who knows his shit, big time.

It’s my last night in town. We go and pic up my cuz from the airport.

Today is my recording session for Pilar Alessandra’s On The Page Podcast, near my uncle’s house in Sherman Oaks. I stop off at Ralph’s, next door to On The Page, and bring up some Heinekens for Pilar, Matt, and I to drink. I forgot that Matt doesn’t drink. Doh.  He was cool anyway.  It was pure silliness. We covered riveting subjects like: emoticons, query letters, The NWSG (of course), my script, moving to LA, and talking animal movies. Matt did do the worst accent EVER-Northern Irish. Yikes.  We loves them.

Afterward, I kill some time at the Guitar Center in Sherman Oaks. I play one of the electronic drum kits. Some dude comes in and buys a $2500 Roland V-Drum kit because he plays Rock Band a lot and wanted to try the real thing. Ahole.

I meet up with Danny Walter (former Boardie and Writing Group dude), who moved to LA in July for the Act One program.  He lives over in Mar Vista. We eat some killer empanadas and hang at a Venice Beach coffee shop where we were the only ones sans laptop.  Of course, we do bust it out to review some pages of my script, since I call Danny the DOCTOR, because he can diagnose many a story problem. 

We meet up with Leilani and Sho at a Venice eatery and drink some margaritas and talk about how we love LA. Much fun.

We drive down to Manhattan Beach to check out Kevin Chang’s new digs, half a block from the beach. Lucky dude. As we came over the hill, the sunshine made the beach glow and sparkle. This made Laura’s eyes glow and sparkle.  Gotta talk her out of moving here now.  

Changers was still in the process of moving in.  We hang at some fratty bar, can’t remember the name. It was get your own everything. The waiters were more concerned with picking tunes on the iPod than actually doing their job.   Changers is awesome.

He hang with Chang until it’s time to meet up with Sanjay Shah. We head north from Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica. He treats us to a vegan meal near his condo, close to the water.  Meet his wife for the first time. Lovely lady. Funny. He gives me published scripts for The Wrestler, Knocked Up, and Little Miss Sunshine.

Off to Silverlake + Los Feliz (anglicized pron. is FEE-LEZ). Everyone says its cool. I knew it would be similar to Seattle, so what’s point, except to show Laura yet another part of LA.  We head up there, notice the hills, lack of parking, narrow streets, old houses, and hipsters. The main difference is the existence of palm trees instead of our towering “real” trees.  After grabbing some nice vegan fare, we head back to the car. I hand the keys to Laura, who hasn’t driving yet in LA. We figured, let’s get that out of the way.  

Unfortunately, Laura, in brand new high heels, stepped in something. We sit down and she instantly goes into gag mode, while I wonder where that smell is coming from.  We look down.  Human, crackhead excrement all over the floor of the rental car.  What to do?  I step out to figure out where it came from. Apparently, she got all of it on her shoes.  We consider the heels a lost cause and pitch them out the window in a plastic bag.  We stash the floor mat in another bag and pop it in the trunk.  Windows down all the way, we use the GPS to find a Vons. We pick up all manner of disinfectant supplies and wipe down the car as if MRSA has broken out.  We’re both done at this point. We still have to hoof it back to Sherman Oaks. What a shit afternoon.

At home we rest up (two hour nap) and head out to meet with Marilyn Atlas that night. Lovely lady, very helpful, very funny and certainly one of a kind.  We love her. She offers to read my script.

We were blamed all day for bringing the insane rain to the southland.

Met up with good friend/mentor/teacher/awesome dude/past Guild guest, Blake Snyder over in Beverly Hills.  Had  quick but awesome chat about living and writing in LA, new story ideas, and of course, I got to soak up his infectious optimism.  Nicest guy ever. We returned to the Beetle to find a $55 parking ticket, courtesy of the Beverly Hills PD.  Assclowns.

We visited our friend Mike and his two awesome doggies, Hemi and Buttons at Doggie Styles. Got in some much needed puppy time since the Brando is back in Seattle with Apollo (the pekingese/chihuahua) and Molly (Manager of Chocolati in Greenwood).  Laura couldn’t resist getting him a shark hoodie.

Drove around Beverly Hills for a long while, ended up in Century City for a meeting with the lovely and talented Dan Nguyen, who is over at Fox Atomic. Cool office. It was exciting walking around the Fox lot, of course, until it started pouring rain (which didn’t stop).  The cafeteria we were in was a mixture of h.s., Devil Wears Prada, and the Microsoft cafeterias.  Weird, crowded, bustling, hot, loud, etc.

Dropped some coinage at the Fox company store.  The lady working there was so distracted with her party plans for Grammy night (on the phone the whole time), that she accidentally gave us the employee discounts ($15 each) on all the seasons of Arrested Development. S-C-O-R-E.

Post Dan, we explored the depressing Mar Vista, the shiny Marina Del Ray (MDR as they call it), kickass Venice (visited the Arbor store), and Santa Monica. We met a really bitchy “celebrity” who none of us recognized. Apparently, she’s a rock star. All I know is she’s mean and “has body odor.”

Went to George Mastra’s book signing of Fidali’s Way. He used to write on Breaking Bad, so several alums were present.  Patty Lin invited us, and we were joined by Sanjay Shah.  We met a guy, Clark, who was a research assistant on Mad Men and getting his MFA at AFI PDQ. How cool is that?

Finally we ate dinner (vegan friendly for the wife), and hoofed it back to the Valley after spending 14+ hours on the road. Phew.

We walked along the beach in the middle of winter and it was 80 degrees. Woohoo. Sunshine feels good. 

Had our first pinkberry, got razzed by some local coffee snobs for soy milk in Laura’s nico (a-holes), and bought some sneakers (on sale) for the Brando. Yep, sneakers for the hot/freezing concrete.

Ate Indian food with my uncle and aunt at The Clay Pot in Brentwood. Nice place.

We just got to LA, actually Burbank, picked up our Electric Blue VW Beetle and went off to Sherman Oaks.

We found it really hard to fit all our luggage in the car, so I don’t think we’ll be buying one anytime soon, or at all.

After a lovely vegan meal at Kung Pao Bistro (in Sherman Oaks, on Ventura), I bought a couple copies of Spider Man with Barack Oabama on the cover, learned that Virgin Comics is no more, and we killed time at the Galleria. Laura bought new flip flops and saw Hotel For Dogs (cute story, some poor acting, but if you love dogs you gotta see it). The lead dog, Friday, acts just like the Brando so we’re a little puppy sick already.

The first thing she
says is, "Sorry I’m stinky, I just got out of rehab." Oh shit, it’s gonna be
a long flight. We warned her that she sat between the wrong guys–we were
planning on drinking the whole flight to celebrate his 100th flight on Southwest
Airlines.

Talk about a captive audience. We spent the next two hours talking her down,
trying to keep her from freaking out and puking her guts out on the plane.
We were regaled with her rehab buddy’s junkie poetry, sat
through a slideshow, begged for pills, saw pictures of her "baby girl," and
asked if we made a lot of money. We did meet a fit model and most of the flight
attendants were nice to us, so it wasn’t all bad. But, my advice, if someone
is going through withdrawals from opiates, try not to let them sit next to
you on a plane.

Got back to the pad and took a short nap.