We've been so unbelievably busy since arriving here in Los Angeles that the blog has shamefully fallen somewhat by the wayside, so our sincere apologies must go to the multitude of readers who have been anxiously refreshing the page every few minutes for the last week. We promise to get our act together. Suffice it to say that the remainder of the train journey across the Mojave Desert was superb, and we pulled into tinseltown without any problems; indeed, we arrived over an hour early (can you imagine that happening on Virgin trains!?). Tony and Erica, the family friends who have incredibly generously been putting us up this week, met us at the station, and since then have been showing us round this curious city.
LA is the prime location for experiencing what our guide book pithily describes as the 'delicious shock of the familiar' - the city is saturated with landmarks that are pillars of global pop culture, which makes sightseeing here a slightly odd activity because, in a way, you've seen it all already. Seeing in the metaphorical flesh something like the Hollywood sign, for
example, is bizarre; it's just so iconic that it almost shouldn't be real. The backlot tour at Universal Studios is similarly strange (though brilliant) - the bus drives up Wisteria Lane, the practical set of Desperate Housewives, and past sets used in movies as diverse as 'The Grinch', 'King Kong', and 'The Great Outdoors', which, if you remember, featured the comedic dream team of John Candy and Dan Akroyd. Good film. Wisteria Lane, in particular, looks far more realistic on screen than it does up close, reinforcing my growing belief that the only 'real' America is the America of popular culture.
We did a whistlestop tour of the famous Getty Center (the best way to see art galleries, in my opinion, is 'within 45 minutes'), and got a good view of almost the whole metropolis from its hilltop location. It's quite unlike Tokyo, New York and Chicago, the three other cities we've seen from a great height recently. 'Los Angeles' is really just an umbrella term for a ragtag assortment of diverse minicities, each with their own geographical and social identity, from the gleaming ostentation of Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, to South Central which is, well, the opposite. The only connections between these self-contained communities are provided by the sprawling spaghetti of the perennially clogged-up freeways. It sounds like a nightmare, but from up high it's also noticeably greener and, thanks to the Great Pacific, bluer than the other cities we've been to - there are only a few heavily urbanised parts, all of which are quite small. I like that.
What else have we done? As I mentioned, we went to Universal Studios, which was predictably cool, and also, because we can't get enough of theme parks, to Six Flags Magic Mountain, where we became, in the words of the advertising poster, 'gladiators in the coliseum of thrill'. Genuinely. There were some quite extraordinary rollercoasters, including 'X2', on which the seats rotate independently of the car, which is as crazy as it sounds. All the while the signs around the park announced that 'we hope you have a Six Flags day!', which was nice of them.
Tonight we went to a comedy club where, excitingly, 'Tonight Show' host Jay Leno was performing. Apparently he uses the gig to experiment with material for the coming week's shows; based on his performance, it should be a hell of a
week, because he was very funny. He looks even more like a cartoon character in person than he does on screen, if you can believe that. I reckon that if he had his caricature done, the artist would just do a portrait of his face exactly as it is.
Well that's about all for now. Sadly there have been no sightings of Tom Hanks doing laundry, or Julia Roberts out jogging, as I was led to believe there would be, but there you go, can't have it all I suppose. We're picking up the car tomorrow and heading off on Highway 1, which hugs the coast all the way up to San Francisco and beyond. Hopefully we'll be able to fill you in on what we get up to, as well as some of the other things we've done in Los Angeles. At some point I'll have to file a report on the baseball game we went to see the other night.
Take care y'all
- Adam
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