A Southern Boy's Adventures in LA: Ben vs. The Talking Deer at the Griffith Observatory

Many of my readers are aware that I love my location in LA.  I live nice and close to just about everything, which is great most of the time.  True, whenever the Lakers play downtown at the Staples Center, traffic can be a bit more intense around us, since we live only 2 and a half miles from there.  But aside from putting up with traffic caused by Kobe and his team, we got it pretty good here in Echo Park.  We can see the Hollywood Sign from our rooftop, which is great, but something even cooler is right up there next to the sign.  The Griffith Observatory.  

The Griffith Observatory is arguably one of the most well recognized observatories in the world, and it's visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year.  Perched atop the mountain ride next to the Hollywood Sign, it's become an iconic part of Los Angeles and a spectacular place to go and get a great view of the city, as you'll see from my photos above.  It's pat of the massive Griffith Park area, a great place to go and hike, get away from the concrete jungle of the downtown area and actually get up above the smog that hovers over the city like a blanket.   Well we like our view from atop our apartment in Los Angeles just fine, but we figured we'd actually go atop the mountain some evening and check out what view the Griffith had to offer.  When JP and I noticed that the crescent moon of the evening had two bright dots lining up beneath it in more or less a straight line, we hopped online and discovered it was actually Venus and Jupiter, visible to the naked eye above the horizon and beneath the moon.  

There's never a better time to visit an observatory than when the stars and planets are aligning and making news, so we hopped in my car and went up to the observatory that very evening.  It's free to visit, and the only thing that costs money is the actual planetarium show itself, and even then, it's only $7, cheap for Los Angeles... probably one of the coolest places in the city to visit for the least amount of money, and since we're poor and live only 4.7 miles from the Observatory, we figured we better go check it out.  I hope to go more often after our experience, it was awesome, and totally worth it.  

They've filmed many a movie scene at the observatory, including most famously one of James Dean's movies, Rebel Without A Cause, and they have a bronze bust of Dean out front to commemorate his contribution to film and solidifying the observatory in Hollywood history in such a memorable way.  The grounds outside the observatory were full that evening, it was a Sunday night and many people were there to see the planets and stars.  Inside the observatory they have a pendulum swing, a bunch of scientific displays, and all sorts of interactive information about science and other cool stuff.  They even had a Tesla Coil which they fired up to show an impressive display of crackling blue electricity.  

As we walked around the outer edges of the building to observe the view of the city itself however, we noticed a funny thing.  We could hear what sounded like soft, stealthy footsteps beneath where we were standing... we looked over the edge of the railing down into the dark forests below and that's when we saw them.  Two deer, a mother doe and a baby, both walking around the base of the observatory.  It was one of those quiet moments when you stumble upon something so unexpected and yet so profoundly unique and beautiful in it's own way.  Alas, our moment of silence and amazement with the deer wasn't to last.  From a level above us, we suddenly heard the high pitched squeaky voice of a small girl call out "Hello deer!  Heeeelllllooooo Deeeer!!!!"  It was cute, sure, but it also made me laugh because JP opened his mouth and said back "Hello Human" in a funny little voice.  Since our diminutive companion above us couldn't see us, for all we know she may have thought the deer were talking to her, because all she could see were two deer and hear JP's voice responding to her own.  Whatever happened, whether she knew it was other people messing with her and we scarred the little girl or she was amazed at the magic of the talking deer at the Griffith Observatory, our little friend fell silent once JP responded to her salutations.  It was a fun little moment of entertainment and a fitting end to what had been a fun week out here.  

We continued our tour of the interior and took pictures with the statue of Einstein, watched the documentary about the history of the observatory hosted by Leonard Nimoy, and had a lot of fun before the kicked us out at the closing time of 10 pm.  Worth visiting if you're ever in the LA area, the Griffith Observatory is a great place to enjoy the view, both of the city and the stars above.   

A Southern Boy's Adventures in LA: Ben vs. AFI Fest, The Rooftop of the Roosevelt Hotel, and The Great Gay Riots of 2008

This story is an overdue one, but things have been busy lately and I've fallen behind on my blogging.  As some of you have already seen and heard from the pictures I posted about a month ago, in early november I got to attend a few screenings at AFI Fest, one of the more prestigious film festivals hosted by the American Film Institute and put on right here in Hollywood, California.  My roommate JP worked at the festival as a their volunteer coordinator, (which doesn't imply that he volunteered... he actually raked in pretty good money, he coordinated where all the volunteers went).  Anyway, as things would have it, JP was able to pull a string here and there and get some of his roommates and best buds into some fairly large Hollywood events at this festival.  For starters, he got us all into the world premiere of Last Chance Harvey, the new film starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.  It's a good film too, very simple story of two people who find love later in life... actually it's a very good film in that it's a sweet love story with no sex, which is extremely rare in this town.  

Anyway, we all got to see the screening in the Cinerama Done at the Arclight Theatre, which is kinda a big deal since it's one of the more historic theaters in the city.  The place was packed, and they started the screening by introducing Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, and director Joel Hopkins, all there in person to promote the film.  Kinda cool to be in the same room with Dustin Hoffman, considering his incredible body of work over the years.  The film was fun (we learned that we were the first audience to see it in it's completed form, which is also special) and then afterwards we were invited to go to the after party at the Roosevelt Hotel.  The Roosevelt is one of the oldest and most prestigious hotels in Hollywood, has an iconic large neon red-lettered sign above it, and can seen from pretty much anywhere in town.  All in all there were 8 of us: JP, Bryan, Pete, myself (one of the rare and fun times all four of us have been able to do something together) plus Casey, Rachel, Katie, and L.A., four girls we know and are good friends with out here.  In order to get to the Roosevelt which is located on Hollywood Blvd, we had to hop in an AFI Fest 15 passenger shuttle/van and be taken there from the Cinerama dome, which is on Sunset Blvd.  

Between Hollywood and Sunset Blvd, which both run parallel to each other, the majority of what many people think of as "Hollywood" can be found.  If Grauman's Chinese theater makes up the top left corner of the area known as Hollywood, then the Arclight makes up the bottom right corner.  Not sure is this word picture is working or not, but suffice it to say it's like a giant rectangle with large theaters at either end.  It's a good 5 or 6 blocks down Sunset Blvd and then up one or two blocks to get to Grauman's Chinese and the Roosevelt Hotel, so we hoped in one of the vans and began our trip.  That's when we noticed the helicopters.  

Let me back up for a second... for those unaware, this night was the night of November the 8th.  It's the Saturday night following the week of the election, and just four days earlier on the 4th, the good people of the state of California elected to pass Proposition 8, which defines marriage as being a relationship between a man and a woman.  It was a close vote, only like 51 to 49 percent in favor of it, and the gay rights people were not pleased.  Within 24 hours of the vote, they all starting marching up and down major boulevards and avenues with signs saying "vote no on Prop 8" or "Proposition Hate" and other such slogans... I'll refrain from an all-out discussion of the proposition and the views concerning homosexual marriage at this time, I believe most of you can guess with some ease where I stand personally on the issue of gay marriage.  Anyway, in the immediate days following the election, the gay community and those sympathetic to their cause have begun marching and demonstrating in anger over the outcome of the vote, which essentially nullifies their marriages that have been legal over the past few months and bans all future gay marriages as well for the time being at least.  They've been targeting the Mormon and Catholic church primarily because they blame those churches with carrying out the bulk of the attack and opposition to their vote and cause.  

Back to where we were with our van on Sunset Blvd... well we look up and see news helicopters.  Lots of 'em, swarming the skies.  We notice crowds of people everywhere and a ton of police cars.  Our van driver informs us that she can take us as far as the In-N-Out at the corner of Sunset and Orange, we'll have to walk to the Roosevelt hotel.  We learn the reason for this is because Hollywood Blvd has been absolutely shut down by the LAPD... and I mean boy did they shut it down!  The entire street was completely blocked off and lined with over 50 patrol cars, at least 40 motorcycles, and policemen standing at alert attention.  I've seen less fanfare for visiting Presidents.  The reason for this blockade of Hollywood Blvd?  It turns out over 10,000 gay rights advocates, angry about the Prop 8 outcome, had decided to gather in Silver Lake (about a mile from where I live in Echo Park) and march all the way to Hollywood Blvd.  It was like the calm before the storm, the police were not going to let them come down Hollywood Blvd, so they blocked off the street entirely and put on an impressive display of force there, and while we could never see the gay marchers, we found out they were diverted down a side street and contained therein.  We could however see all the police presence and sense the eeriness of the entire situation, and could gage from where the helicopters were just how close the marchers were getting.  

Our view was made even more impressive by getting to go up on the roof of the Roosevelt hotel, something that will probably never happen again anytime soon at least.  Thanks to JP again, we all got armbands and admission into the upper floor wrap party, where we all hung out and were given free drinks - save me of course, many of you know my aversion to alcohol, and tonight was no exception.  In fact, it was almost humorous as I approached the bar ("Hi, how ya doing?  Listen man, what have you got that's NON alcoholic?")  His list of options was slim (water, Sierra Mist, etc) so I took him up on a free Sierra Mist and enjoyed my soda.  After a few minutes, JP scored us an even better position getting us into the real VIP lounge upstairs and eventually we were able to use our clout all the way to get to the rooftop itself.  There we were, outside high above the city, looking down at the massive army of LAPD officers preparing for an onslaught of homosexuals, all reflecting on how we'd only been in LA for a few months and already had climbed higher up the ladder and been given more opportunities than we anticipated at this point.    It was an odd night of adventure and intrigue, from the movies we saw at the festival to the real-life gay version of Cloverfield that felt like it was taking place on our street, to the penthouses of the Roosevelt itself.  Needless to say we snapped a bunch of pictures in front of the media wall (you know, those white backdrops covered in sponsor ads that every celebrity gets photographed in front of) and had a very memorable evening all around, getting a taste of the Hollywood life and the current cultural mood of the city as well.  In retrospect, it was a sobering experience to once again realize we were no longer in Kansas, so to speak, and instead are standing on the edge of a precipice on the cutting edge of media and culture, and amongst us swarm all the agendas and worldviews that come with it.