Post 2971
- 12 years and 341 days since I started this blog -
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| December 1, 2022, at SYR Hancock Airport |
(written Dec 10-12, 2022)
Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 12 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent.
While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for food shots when I've eaten something interesting or pretty. And that's where we find ourselves now.
Thursday, December 1: My fantastic flight, which was going to be the quickest I had ever made between SYR and LAX, got derailed in the middle of the country, when an engine "burning a little oil" caused the flight to be diverted to Chicago. I finally arrived in LA five hours later than my original ETA.
So it goes.
I still managed to connect with Alex, my son, and Katie, his girlfriend that night, but it was quick and I was really, really tired.
That theme would be repeated over the next six days.
Unfortunately, Katie was dealing with a major workload, as she was changing jobs, and it limited the time we could spend together. But Alex was mostly free to spend time with me.
I don't think I ever got over being jet-lagged, including right now, here in Chiang Mai, where I'm catching up on my trip. It seems like this is the first time since I left Syracuse that I've had a chance to edit and curate my pics, as well as sit and write this post.
This was an unusually short visit to LA - the shortest in the last dozen years or so (which is when I first visited Alex after he moved here from North Carolina). Six days. It wasn't enough time for me to see everybody I wanted to, although I did manage to connect with a few of my friends. But I missed out on more. And I didn't come close to doing a lot that I usually do. This visit also marked the first time Alex and I didn't visit his favorite ice cream shops. Entirely the result of being short of time, no ice cream this visit!
I still managed to connect with Alex, my son, and Katie, his girlfriend that night, but it was quick and I was really, really tired.
That theme would be repeated over the next six days.
Unfortunately, Katie was dealing with a major workload, as she was changing jobs, and it limited the time we could spend together. But Alex was mostly free to spend time with me.
I don't think I ever got over being jet-lagged, including right now, here in Chiang Mai, where I'm catching up on my trip. It seems like this is the first time since I left Syracuse that I've had a chance to edit and curate my pics, as well as sit and write this post.
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| Alex has moved since the last time I was in LA. He now lives in the 'Mid-City' neighborhood, near LACMA, Museum Row and the Farmer's Market/Grove. It's only a few days past Thanksgiving, and LA is all lit up for Christmas. This is a shot of the Grove, a mall attached to the old Farmer's Market, all done up for Christmas. We stopped out for drinks and food and sights. |
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| Here we are, enjoying the crowds, and making our way to a vanilla cream beer, which was one of the weirdest things I've ever tasted (and I've eaten insects), then on to Nonna's Empañadas, which was a fantastic snack. |
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| The other landmark marking Alex's new residence is the Peterson Car Museum, fun in itself and so interesting architecturally. |
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| The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, always referred to as LACMA, is a place I always seem to find my way to, and now that I'm in the neighborhood when I see Alex and Katie, it was an easy call. |
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| For some reason, the video I have of Metropolis II, one of my favorite exhibits, won't upload. This pic is the best I can do, and it really doesn't do justice to this large-scale kinetic sculpture of a future cityscape. Metropolis II,has a lot of noise and motion, and there's no sense of that in this still. It's a favorite because it reminds me of the vision of the future I had as a child. It's fun. Thanks to memories of the somewhat similar, larger-scale GM exhibit at the NY World's Fair when I was fourteen, that image actually included flying cars, but apparently that's not to be. |
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| This is a view of the semi-connected Academy Museum, from one of the buildings at LACMA. The two museums share a campus on Museum Row. More about the Academy a little bit later. |
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| Alex on the Santa Monica Pier. That's Malibu in the background. |
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| The amusement park on Santa Monica Pier. I like the colors in this shot. |
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| I am Tourist. Alex is Tolerant. |
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| This last shot in Santa monica is of the Camera Obscura, on Ocean, where a little hole in the wall acts like a lens and projects a focused image of the seascape on the wall behind. I've included it because, almost exactly sixty-four years ago, on a road trip with some friends down from San Francisco, this was the very first stop we made on my very first visit to LA. |
Alex and I did go check out the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. It's new, neither of us had been. It turned into a great afternoon. The museum surpassed my low expectations easily. It was fascinating, educational (I am disabused of the idea that I am knowledgeable about motion pictures), fun, and, for me, frequently moving.
If you're in LA, and you have three or four hours to kill, the Academy Museum is highly recommended.
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| Me, in front of a backdrop, an actual backdrop, from the Alfred hitchcock movie North by Northwest. |
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| Alex, demonstrating the way it is supposed to look in the film. I found the parts about the technical part of moviemaking really interesting. And this one, the backdrop is the coup de grace for a through and entertaining explanation of how these developed up to CGI, was also fun. |
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| Alex posting the Academy's job description for Screenwriter. |
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| I had to take a picture with the actual slrd, Rosebud, from Citizen Kane. |
The night before I left, I had a special treat: A blues-harp-playing friend from Syracuse, who moved to Memphis six or seven years ago, had relocated to LA and was hosting an open mic. I got to jam in LA, and even lead one. Alex hadn't heard me play in person for about five years, Katie had never heard me play live, and I had some other friends in attendance who had also only heard about my playing, but never experienced it.
I had a great time at Matt Lomeo's open mic at the Irishman's 32 in Sherman Oaks, CA.
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| With Katie and Alex at Ireland's 32. |
Food Comment
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| Always a good breakfast at the wonderfully named Eggslut. Here, a gigantic bowl of coffee (no handles), and a couple of perfect breakfast sandwiches. |
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