Tag Archives: west hollywood

Another Week

Going through each week is definitely an up and down experience.  I’m blessed to have the friends I do, as they are happily keeping me engaged and doing stuff.   As you’ll see in these pictures, I do have fun.  And I can at times not think about Larry’s death, and I don’t feel bad about that, as I know it’s good to embrace life however I can.   There are points of each day though that still break my heart and I need a moment.  Like today.  I decided to do another little bit of cleaning.   Last week I worked on streamlining some of Larry’s stuff out of the bathroom cabinets.  I thought that would be the easiest to do, and it probably was, but it was still emotional, as there were still some medicines and things that he had to use during his cancer fight.   There was also stuff from before that, like LONG before that, that Larry should have thrown out years, if not decades ago.   So at least I could laugh at times.  Today though, I tackled the top of the dresser in our bedroom, as it was stacked with the clothes that he could wear at the end.   It hadn’t made any sense to try to organize the while he was alive and needed them, as sometimes it was necessary to grab a quick change of clothes to keep him clean.

The dresser before I finally went through and cleaned it up

Obviously, this was harder than cleaning his bathroom stuff.  I did clean it up, and decided which things really weren’t worth keeping, but I couldn’t get rid of it all yet.  I kept some things for myself, and some things I folded and put away.   Larry’s side was on the right in the dresser, and just opening those drawers up was painful and caused me to cry.  I really don’t know when I’ll be able to move to the phase of getting rid of his stuff.   There’s obviously no need for me to immediately, but I also recognize it has to happen some day.

I then was in the office trying to just straighten some stuff up down here as it’s admittedly a small mess here with a lot of paperwork and things kind of anywhere there is a flat surface.   I looked in his small drawers there and found a small Hallmark bag – apparently he had gone and bought a few cards for me, including a birthday card, a Valentine’s day card, and an anniversary card.   That did the trick, and I had a full-on meltdown.  The cards hadn’t been written in yet.   But it was nice.  Then of course at that moment, work called about some bullshit thing that just was like, thanks for reminding me I hate everything.  I’ll never get rid of some things, and those cards definitely aren’t going anywhere.   Glad I was able to see the Valentine’s day card today – yesterday sucked but it was never a holiday that Larry and I went crazy for, but still, a “holiday’ about loved ones still hurts a lot.

Anyway, I had a full week at work, although I only made it into the office once.   Had a few days where I just couldn’t make it out of bed early, which is not good.   One night I had a full on panic attack about everything going on, so yeah, couldn’t quite get the energy to go in.   But as I was getting to at the beginning of this post, my friends are really my rock and my strength at this point.   I don’t want to take advantage nor become solely dependent on their presence, but some days it’s just good to be with them.  I am on my own again at this point, and I am finding the strength to be okay with it.  I’m sad of course, as I don’t really see me finding anyone else with how I look and my age, but I can still find things to occupy my time and be happy with, especially with friends, and hopefully just find some kind of meaning or purpose until it’s time for me to die.

So here are some pics from the last week or so – there’s been some really fun stuff.   To start, here’s what I was doing last week with friends.  Rekha was celebrating her birthday in WeHo a little belatedly, but it was a blast.   Started at Rocco’s WeHo for a drag brunch, and it was flamazing.  A few hours later, we walked over to the Abbey to enjoy the ambience and fun.   Can’t deny by the end I was a little drunk and got melancholy, but my friends were there to help and support, understanding exactly what was happening.   Just miss Larry a lot.

Rekha’s WeHo Birthday Fun – February 7, 2020:

The next day, I was a bit dehydrated from Saturday’s activities!   Nicki and I had gone to dinner afterwards, so it wasn’t like I had been drinking until the late night, thank god.   But still, a lot of beer (which is what I focused on that day) has consequences.   Anyway, on Sunday, it was the Oscars, and Ken had invited me to his annual party.  It was a lot of fun and I got to see the whole family, of course.  Before then, I had been assembling my Lego Empire State Building (which is massive, btw) and making my world famous chocolate chip cookies for the party, while watching Arrival.   What a movie that is, and it keeps rising in my rankings.  It’s easily in my top 15?   Such an emotional movie, and even more so with how I’m feeling.   What a weird thing to contemplate – would you go through something having the knowledge of how it will go and end?  I know I would, and that’s why I know that the 11 years I had with Larry were magical and worth it all.   I wish the cancer hadn’t been part of his story, but that’s neither here nor there.

Oscars Sunday, February 9, 2020

I enjoyed the Academy Awards – very glad Parasite won.   Sveta and I watched that a few weeks ago and it blew us away.

This past week, work kept me busy and in the evenings, I did usually have somewhere to go, which was nice.

On Monday afternoon, I did go into DTLA for work, but mostly so I could have lunch with Barb.  We went to the Joey’s DTLA which is the same restaurant (but in Woodland Hills at the Warner Center) that Larry & I took Fran and Joel to one of the first times they stayed with us when we had moved in here at the Glen.  Always fun catching up and talking with Barb, and one of those people I’m so glad to have in my life.  You never know when a new addition to your friends is actually going to stick, and she has.

On Tuesday night, I met up with Nicki down at the Century City mall to eat at the Din Tai Fung there.   It’s huge!  We wisely got there early enough and found a seat in their bar area.  But it gets packed, even on a Tuesday night.   That mall is a trip too – so much money there.  And lots of attractive guys?

On Wednesday, Sveta came over and I had a puff too many on the weed and got pretty fucking high for a brief moment.   I braced for a NYE 2014 situation but happily the wave crested and I came back down.   I think if I was expecting and aiming for super-high, it would be fine, but I am really aiming for just chilling out.  So yeah, two puffs is my max in a session.   That gets me to a nice place.

On Thursday, I went to a PwC going-away for a cool associate, Danny.  It was at this Korean BBQ in a mall in Little Tokyo I’d never known about – it was a lot of fun.   We walked over to the Angel City Brewery and played an epically long game of Sorry, which really is a bitch of a game.   Very funny though.  Mel and I won, of course.   And I was out till like 12, on a school night!!!  WTF.   I can’t hang like that too much.  Was way tired on Friday.

And yesterday, on Friday aka Valentine’s Day, Nicki took me out.   It was very sweet, and I appreciated it, as it is a hard day to not be doing something, especially with it being so close to Larry’s death still.  We first went to dinner at El Coyote near her house on Beverly.  It tied together with the second part of the date, as we saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the New Beverly Theater, which is owned and run by Quentin Tarantino.  Kind of a cool thing.   Plus, in the movie Sharon Tate is shown having dinner with her friends at El Coyote (the real one) on that fateful night.  The movie also shows Cliff and Jake having dinner that same night at Casa Vega, which is also a place we’ve now been to.  I’m such a hipster.   It was a blast of a night and that movie does not get old, and if anything, it just gets better for me.   Still can’t get over how insanely violent that 10 minute section is.

Valentine’s Day with Nicki – Feb 14, 2020

Finally, to end this ridiculously long post, I’m sharing this video that makes me ridiculously happy and has motivated me to even buy the Just Dance 2020 game for my Switch, just so I can play this and learn the moves.   In the 2000s, some of you may remember how obsessed I got with Dance Dance Revolution – who knows if it’ll enter that level, but still, watch this video and be amazed at the dancing skill of the group and chuckle at how awesome the “Rasputin” song is!

You’re welcome.

A Quiet Place and Not So Quiet Places

We went and saw A Quiet Place yesterday.   Watch the trailer here:

Scary, right?  YES, SCARY.

At just about 90 minutes long, A Quiet Place is quite a thrilling movie and is the right length to keep you on the edge of your seat before.  Too much more than that and you’re gonna kill people.  As you see, this movie is intense.  Set in the near future, we find ourselves with a family surviving in the aftermath of a world in which a kind of creature has overrun the world and decimated the population.  The creatures are attracted by sound and WILL kill you if they hear you.  Because of that, this movie is unrelentingly quiet.  So much so that even when you’re eating snacks in the movie theater, it feels like EVERYONE can hear you.

Needless to say, the movie shows us this family (headed by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt) as they do their best to survive without getting slaughtered.  If you’re a fan of monster-ish movies (think, Cloverfield, which apparently was a momentary consideration at Paramount, but they decided to let it stay stand-alone) and can handle some high tension, this movie is for you.  It’s a thrill ride, but definitely keeps you nervous the entire time.  Whenever the sound drops out and no music is playing, you find yourself gripping your chair bracing for some fresh hell to occur.  And it does.  🙂

Anyway, it’s well worth seeing, especially in a theater when you kind of have to keep quiet too.  Go see it!

The Not So Quiet Places from my post headline is that last night we went out.  We hung out with Nicki and Rekha at the Largo Theater again, this time to see a 2-man improv show.   I think we may have hit a threshold of how much improv we want to see.  But it was funny, but $30/ticket funny?  Not so sure about that.  Regardless, I always love seeing friends and getting out of the house.   After the show, we walked from the theater over to West Hollywood, where Carey & Paras were celebrating Paras turning 30.   Ah, 30.  They were set up at Pump, a fun hotspot that is staffed by gorgeous folks, which of course is to be expected.   Had a lot of fun and managed to not get utterly shitfaced.  Yay me!

And now today, we went out and looked at furniture that we’d like to think about getting for the new house.  Went to the Living Spaces in Panorama City, which is a mile or so north of our future home.  It’s a pretty impressive store and we ended up finding a few things we’d certainly consider getting.   They have some interesting outdoor furniture for our roof deck, and we also saw some couches and a new bed frame that would be kinda perfect.  So we’ll see…quite a bit of time left and when we went and visited the GlenLA lot on our way home, one of the sales reps was indicating that our Phase is scheduled for September still but to be flexible as it could be longer.  Here’s hoping it’s not that much longer.

 

Air!

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:

The Inevitable Return of COBOL

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:

Journey Through Twin Peaks, A 4-Hour Video Essay Exploring The Series, The Film & More

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.