Today, Monday, was a hell of a Monday. Meetings starting at 8:30am in DTLA, traveling to Gardena for meetings, then back to DTLA, over to Koreatown for a block of more meetings, then back to DTLA for some fun at Spire 73 atop the Grand Wilshire Intercontinental (or whatever it’s called). It was kinda crazy. But I did enjoy the view up top and this time, I got to see the view as it overlooked the PwC building. Pretty pretty cool.
Capturing the entirety of the building
Can see the helicopter pad in this one
Looking over towards the US Bank building
The panorama shot isn’t my best
Looking north towards Glendale
Me and Ari
The old First Interstate building
After this, I walked over to the Ace Hotel and met up with Doug and Sloan, with Doug being one of Larry’s college friends and coworkers. They’re out in town for work and we were able to meet up for dinner tonight with them and their adorable toddler son, Silas. Ended up going to Perch and having a great time – very fun to catch up and also get to go to Perch as I’d been wanting to go there for a long time. Got a pretty cool set of couches to sit on. Fun times!
I’m just wanting to get a post out with some assorted pictures and neat stuff I’d noticed before the weekend begins in earnest, as I’m sure it’ll be fun to recount the stuff from Fran & Joel’s visit out. But first, we had dinner with them last night:
They flew in from Phoenix yesterday after attending the same conference they went to last year, which was when we met up with them in Vegas. It was nice to take them to one of the many neat restaurants here in Glendale, this time Bacari.
On Monday, Larry & I went out on a school night to see a show at the Largo – this was where we had previously seen “How Did This Get Made?” last year; this time the show was “Hanging with Paul Scheer” and it was hilarious and the guests were Nicole Byer – who is hilarious and who I first fell in love with from her appearance on “Gay of Thrones” below:
Bye, Bitch!!!! ALSO, Maria Bamford and Fred Armisen were guests, so yeah, it was hilarious. I ended up taking the bus from DTLA as I was downtown that day, and while waiting, I took some downtown pics:
The previous weekend, we finally got to hang with Rekha and belatedly celebrate birthday fun with her. Nicki chose a cool place, Cafe Stella, down in Silver Lake on the Sunset section. Very trendy bar and restaurant with many attractive people everywhere. Ah, hip Los Angeles. Larry & I bailed after the restaurant but we heard the fun certainly continued through the rest of the day/night!
Outside Cafe Stella
The secret door of Cafe Stella
Rekha
Nicki & Rekha
Us
The group
And then the weekend before that, I dragged Larry to go out and see The Last Jedi ONE MORE TIME. It was my fourth time, his third. We went to the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood and while it was an experience, the presentation of the movie at Universal was way better. But there was a fun organist playing tunes before the show and a cheesy laser show too! And a cool costume display from the movie that we visited. Anyway, the movie still rocks and I can’t wait to see it again…on Blu Ray.
One last time
The outdoor lobby area of the El Capitan
With Stormtroopers
BB-8!
A live organist playing classic film favorites
Praetorian Guards observe the proceedings
Enjoying ourselves
Costumes from the movie
Rey!
Kylo
Leia…
Looking across Hollywood Blvd at Hollywood & Highland
The Dolby Theater
Looking towards the Chinese
We also did go and see Phantom Thread this past weekend…I’ll give the movie that it was beautiful and well-directed, but this was a movie that I was okay with until the last 10 minutes, and then I was done with it. What a waste of time. I hope it loses in every Oscar category it was nominated in.
In totally unrelated stuff, Rebels Season 4 comes back soon, and if you love Star Wars, this animated series is a must watch. The final half of the last season is airing and by the looks of this preview, a whole lot of stuff is gonna happen – and the Emperor makes an appearance!!!!:
I also saw this in one of my favorite sites – These timelapses of Seattle are pretty mesmerizing especially to see how quickly the city is building up:
And that leaves us to where we are now. I’ve failed on my Amazing Race updates, but I’m still watching as it’s amazing. And the cast of Celebrity Big Brother was announced…and it’s gonna be hard for me to choose to watch with Omarosa on it. Seriously, wtf.
It’s been a rough month or so for me in terms of work. Basically been nonstop in order to try to stay ahead or keep up (it changes, depending on the day), and for quite a few weekends, I would take Saturday off for my sanity but be working from home on Sunday to keep getting shit done. What have I been doing? Making myself invaluable in the world of COBOL apparently:
Take a gander at that article. That’s been my life, getting to know the client’s COBOL programs and decipher them into readable pseudocode. What’s amusing to me is that I honestly might be learning this skill that keeps me gainfully employed; it’s not sexy by any means, but so much still runs on a COBOL backbone and industry is just not really ready to ignore the ol’ adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Anyway, the 3-4 weeks of intensity has managed to finally get lessened due to that hard work. So that’s been great. It’s still busy during the week of course, but I have been able to take a full weekend both this one and the last. Yay!
So, what else has been going on? Let’s go through some of the pictures, shall we?
Twin Peaks
OH MAN. So much excitement with Season 3 coming up in like a month. I have to keep expectations in check, but it’s so exciting to realize we’ll get some answers one way or another so soon.
A few weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly released 3 covers that all had to do with Twin Peaks. If you lined them all together, you could see they all formed one “last supper”-ish picture of major components of the cast. When I realized this was happening, I managed to finally get to Barnes & Noble and snag 2 of the 3 covers, but of course the ‘good’ cover was the one I couldn’t find, which was the one with David Lynch, Cooper, Laura and Audrey. Of course. I held out one piece of hope though – that Larry’s subscription issue would come with that cover, and happily enough, that turned out to be the case. All 3 covers were MINE.
I am so freakin’ excited for this.
Here are some more official photos of the covers in their full glory:
In the midst of all my geekery, I went back to Welcome To Twin Peaks and looked at their video links. One of them was to what has been thus far an amazing analysis series that covers the entirety of the show, and while it leaves a lot of the charming and esoteric details for when watching the show, you can watch this analysis and get a pretty great sense of what has happened in advance of Season 3:
I’d just managed to finish watching through to the recap of winding down from solving the Laura Palmer mystery, and am interested in how it deals with the Windom Earle plot as well as Miss Twin Peaks and the dive into the Black Lodge. And of course, the frustrating then-“series” finale which is no longer the bane of the show’s existence. “How’s Annie?”, indeed.
Fun @ WeHo’s Flaming Saddles
This guy is ridiculously hot, and I barely remember it at this point due to the alcohol consumption.
Yeah, so when you make it to one of WeHo’s very festive gay bars, you can rest assured eventually some hot mofo will be dancing around for you to ogle. And sure enough, a weekend ago, Larry & I got to enjoy that pastime. Greta was celebrating her birthday and her girlfriend Stacey invited us out to Flaming Saddles, a WeHo outpost of a place we’d also visited in NYC many years back. Anyway, we had a blast. After a few pitchers of beer, how could you not have fun? Drag queens, gays, hot guys dancing around….yeah, you tell me how you can’t have fun. Well, I can actually tell you the best way to fuck it all up: add shots. Larry & I had been drinking $13 pitchers of beer for a while, but of course when it’s a birthday party, people always think you need to add shots. OOF. Larry wisely and by necessity passed, but I was like SURE. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Yeah, I entered the zone of blackout drunk and a 36-hour hangover period. Day drinking is a fun thing, but it’s not a right. And you can easily fuck that up if you’re not careful. Anyway, still a blast, and something I’d love to do again. Just don’t mix.
If you get the chance to visit some place like Flaming Saddles or the Abbey, I highly recommend it. What’s not to love?
Work Goes to the Standard Rooftop in DTLA
The new partner overseeing the national practice that I work in came to visit our humble Los Angeles office and meet us. It was a good day and all of us were in the area so why not have an after-work happy hour atop the Standard Rooftop? It’s just a block away from where we work, the weather was stunning, and the view was great.
See for yourself!
So that brings us to this weekend. I’m obviously skipping a lot, but I’ll have to make up that differential with some more posts, like movies we’ve seen, etc. In the meantime, it’s getting close to bed time and today has been a long one, with our Griffith Park run kicking it off and then a lot of work doing laundry, ironing, watching TV, and well, getting mentally prepared for another week. Le sigh.
Hope all is going well out there for everyone else in this nutso time we live in.
….it did start out educational as we saw the Space Shuttle, but then it became pretty much an exercise in drinking around downtown LA. It was awesome.
So today was a bit random, as I just proposed going downtown to the Skyspace experience on a whim. I didn’t want to sit home and there were no good movies out, and after proposing it, Larry agreed, and off we went.
The OUE Skyspace LA attraction is basically the long-awaited Observation Deck that Downtown LA should have had since the U.S. Bank building was built in 1990. But DTLA wasn’t really a tourist destination for the longest time, but now with the Staples Center, LA Live, and a whole host of people living down there now, DTLA is much different. And I think finally it made sense to keep expanding what there was to do, so last year the top deck of the building was built to make this observation deck a reality. Not content to be just a view, they also built a glass slide that drops you from the 69th floor to the 68th – outside of the building. It’s a very short ride, but it is quite a thrill nonetheless.
Anyway, I get ahead of myself. You first make your way into the lobby of the building, process through, and then go up to the 58th floor. Up there are a few neat interactive exhibits like giant video screens showing various LA cityscapes at different times of day, a very cool peak down a very deep hole lit up like a disco, and some other random stuff. I guess it’s to justify the cost of the ticket?
About to head up to the top
Independence Day, anyone
At the entry point
Inside there is a cool large video of LA scenery
There’s apparently a disco infinity pit here
Jump on the steps and interact with the wall
Fun random stuff to do on the 58th floor
As you can see, the magic chasm was pretty fun to play around with in pictures. After you walk through all this excitement, you take another elevator up to the observation deck on 69 – and it’s pretty damn awesome. A nice job has been done making a very clean, open space with quite clean windows to look out and take pictures through. I do hate when observation platforms don’t bother to keep the windows clean as you’re kind of beholden to them for pictures. Anyway, I digress – we did take a lap around the enclosed 69th floor to get a sense of what the views were, but held off on taking too many pictures as I wanted to be outside to get those.
Up on the 69th floor – the Skyslide awaits
Here’s a view of the slide from inside
Unfortunately I’m not the greatest at getting my camera to cooperate
Looking southwest
Out that way is Glendale
Here you can see up Brand Blvd
And there’s Central
There’s an open air terrace the next floor down
The entrance to the slide
I’m sure nothing will ever go wrong
But you don’t take the stairs to go down to the level below…you take the SKYSLIDE.
Yeah, it’s kind of awesome. Brief, but awesome. Some more from the Skyslide experience:
Larry caught me as I made it down the slide
Alright, the remaining pictures are a lot. I couldn’t help myself though as there’s just so much to take in.
Initial Looks:
Looking up at the top of the US Bank building
And now down and east
The end point of the slide
Planes
It’s a comfy scene up top
Handsome Larry with a Pacific Ocean in the distance
View of the Oviatt Penthouse!
Our wedding place – the Oviatt Penthouse
It looks almost small – but man, what a great time it was
Clearly the tent is up with the way our weather has been lately
Alright, a whole lot of pictures of DTLA:
Panorama east
Panorama east and down
Looking into the City Center
Where I’m at
The new Grand Wilshire – only the spire makes it taller than U.S. Bank
A long way down – but what a view
For quite a while, the Aon (formerly First Interstate) building was the tallest in LA
We almost moved into one of the penthouses here
In fact, it was the one on the far left corner here where those people are sitting
We think this is where Redbird restaurant is
Pershing Square in its basicness
Getting some selfies in
Wondering what’s in the fin of the new Grand Wilshire
These terraces are going to be lounges
Looking down into the Standard’s rooftop
Comfy and modern
Lots of great modern furniture arranged around the perimeter
I was just having lunch down in the City National plaza there
Helicopter
Staples Center is visible in the distance
Union Bank
Bonaventure Hotel
LA Center Studios – who knew something like that was so close to downtown
I’m sure a clearer day would have a nicer shot
Hello PwC
The wondrous Eastern building
Closer in
Glendale again
110 freeway – busy as usual
Can see the side of the US Bank sign
LA City Hall
With LA Metro and Union Station behind it
LA Union Station closeup
The Music Hall stretch
Still need to go into the Walt Disney Hall
Dodger Stadium
It’s kind of hard to see the stadium as the parking conceals it, and apparently it’s also kinda sunken
The Bradbury Building from above – more on that later
Griffith Observatory
Okay, I then tried to capture LAX in the distance…
Wanted to see if LAX was visible
Yep
LAX and the ocean
Effort to capture DTLA and LAX together
And some last pics before we went back to the ground:
MacArthur Park
Interactive touch screen to help identify what’s what
Alright, so that was quite a cool experience. I’d like the opportunity to go up closer to a sunset and get those kinds of colors too, but that can be for another time.
Once we got on the ground, we were right outside the Central Library of Los Angeles, which is itself quite a stunning building. So we went in to take a look, and also we both got a library card. It’s my first one in what feels like forever.
Central Library, Inside and Out
The Central Library is across the street
Larry
We went over and got library cards!
It’s an impressive building – and has been the tallest this side of the Mississippi for a long time
The hall inside the library
Very cool chandelier
We didn’t check out any books today, but maybe one day soon? I was getting hangry, so we then started walking towards Bottega Louie but a block before getting there, we ran across Karl Strauss Brewery. Love the place from its Citywalk location, and that felt a little more relaxed than going to Bottega Louie. So that’s what we did – perfect fit, getting beer and grub. After that, we then walked our way over to the Bradbury Building. Why? Well, Larry had figured out where it was while we were up top and we figured if we’re down here, let’s go take a look. It’s well known for having quite the dramatic and unique interior and also for having quite iconic films set within it – notably Blade Runner. My pictures here didn’t come out quite as clear as I’d hoped, but you get the gist.
Food, Broadway, and the Bradbury Building
A late lunch at Karl Strauss Brewery in DTLA
Then we walked to the Bradbury Building
Looking back along Broadway – quite a lively street
Marty in VR
Bradbury Bldg
Inside this striking and unique building
Inside has been used for many films, but Blade Runner is the most notable
Million Dollar Theater across the street
Then it was a walk back to where we parked, and along the way, caught one last glimpse of the US Bank building and the Skyslide:
We were up there
There’s the slide from way down below
And now we’re back home after a fun afternoon. Still figuring out where to eat having had a fairly late lunch.
When I say “our”, I of course mean the royal “our” with regards to PwC. You can just see our petite building behind this new upstart, the Grand Wilshire. Pretty glassy, eh? Also LA’s tallest structure with the spire factored in. LA is going crazy with all the construction, let me tell ya.
Anyway, off to Vegas for the weekend – don’t let the world get destroyed while we’re away. I’m kind of fond of it. It’ll be wonderful to see Fran and Joel, as well as Michancy. Haven’t been to Vegas in quite a while, so I’m excited to get back to the tables!!!!!!! 🙂
