Living It Up in the City of Angels (Part 2 of 3)

I went to sleep around 1 AM Pacific time and tried claiming hardship over being awake for over 23 straight hours since getting up at 4:15 AM Eastern time. Always on the ball, my sister immediately shot that down reminding me of my naps on the plane and on her couch.

Whatever.

I was more or less awake for a long time and wasn't about to reclaim my lost sleep on Saturday.

We began the day driving to Santa Monica for an 8-mile run. I agreed to this to prove to my sister that I had in fact been training for the marathon (off and on) all these weeks. She agreed to this to remind me how much faster she runs. She was kind enough to run at my snail's pace for 7.5 miles until she said, "can we run at my pace now?" That was a low blow.

After noticing so many LA roadrunning groups on our path, I decided there must be gang turf wars between them. There has to be some bad blood between the LA Roadrunners (her group), LA Leggers, Santa Monica Running Group, and LA Roadrunning club. It's a sign that so many people in California can't help, but be healthy that they need many, many running groups.

We ran by muscle beach, but were fortunate to pass there before the meatheads arrived.


On the way back we apparently ran by Victor Jih, winner of the latest Amazing Race season. I guess that counts as my first celebrity run-in? How sad that he'd be considered a celebrity and it's all I've seen so far.


The multi-level Barney's in Beverly Hills was as nice as you'd expect.


And the brunch upstairs at Barney Greengrass was as great as you'd expect.


But the breadsticks were the stars of the meal, as you wouldn't expect. We had my sister, ahem, "grab" an extra bag and cream cheese. It was a great recovery after she stumbled asking the waiter for our 5th refill.


I bought my this dri-fit blue shirt as part of my official marathon clothing. I even purchased it at retail price in Beverly Hills no less! Actually, Niketown's prices were the same as the rest of the country.


We walked around the Grove before settling on dinner at the Farmer's Market. I destroyed a bowl of gumbo, though my sister's Brazilian meat dish was tasty too.


While lamenting that SoCal has open air malls while the left coast couldn't, we passed Daniel Dae Kim, aka Jin-Soo Kwon, from Lost. Too bad I couldn't appreciate the sight having never watched the show.


Nighttime entertainment came in the form of John Williams conducting the LA Symphony Orchestra at the Hollywood as it performed his great movie scores. A real LA moment. The Bowl's stack parking method is stupid, but I was with locals so we used our secret lot to get out quickly.


There was far too much Harry Potter and he didn't play Indiana Jones, the Olympics theme, or Jurassic Park, but listening to the full E.T. theme performed live, conducted by the composer, and watching the in sync film brought goosebumps. Sorry, but I cried at that movie.


Of course Superman and a few Star Wars songs were very cool. We didn't care for songs from Casablanca and Catch me if You Can. I didn't appreciate him coming out for four encore ovations only to have him come out the last time to say he was tired. Okay, enough complaining. The compilation of his and the music of others was nice.



The level of geekdom, dorkism, and nerd-alert went through the roof during every Star Wars song with way too many light sabers; however, they did make for a cool effect as Williams encouraged them. I thought he should have conducted with a light saber, but he is 77 after all. Note they move to the beat 40 seconds into the song.

Until the next day's recap. Same blog address. Possibly the same posting time.