Ciao Ciao again, Los Angeles!

**soundtrack to this post: - Wilson Phillips, Hold On in honor of Bridesmaids - right click & open in new tab **

After an amazing week in Bellevue full of kayaking through houseboats, making fun of bikers at Red Hook Brewery, learning how to play quarters and befriending 11-year-olds who were creepily interested in my dating history it is GOOD to be home!

And look what I came home to **drum roll please**.... LA MAGAZINE's 10 GREAT WALKS ISSUE!  Only the perfect compilation of ideas for future blog entries and neighborhoods to explore.  Challenge accepted, LA mag...challenge accepted.

Which is why I woke up this morning on a mission to visit the Venice canals!  They'd actually been on my mind prior to my reading LA Mag since they were featured in the travel channel premiere of "Off Limits."  While in Seattle I watched back to back travel channel shows pretty much all weekend and kept seeing trailers for this show and the first city featured was Los Angeles.  Obviously I DVR'd it and learned all about the LA river, LA aqueduct and this hidden Nazi hideout in the Hollywood Hills.  Outrageous.

Anyway, I always like being in the Marina Del Rey / Venice area of LA since I lived in Marina Del Rey when I first moved here **memories**.  Back in the day I could never go out without inevitably coming back to my apt with 20 bags from the local Venice whole foods (aka the most AMAZING whole foods!)  but I haven't been back there ever since I heard they do "adopt-a-thon" puppy events.  I don't trust myself.  Instead, today I got a picnic brunch at my fave Santa Monica hotspot Huckleberry!  Resisted the temptation of the amazing baked goodies and got quinoa with peas, carrots & scrambled eggs.  So nommy!

Picnic bag in hand, I hopped back in Debbie and drove aimlessly towards Venice.  Rumor had it that street parking around the canals is notoriously shitty on the weekends but once I got my bearings I found a spot on Ocean Ave & Linnie no sweat! Oh, and FYI I'm a parallel parking master now.

So, what's so great about the Venice Canals?  Well Venice, CA was founded by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney back in 1905 as a beach resort town.  Name sound familiar?  That's because Abbot Kinney is the super popular street in Venice named after its founder where first Fridays and art walks are held.  But back to the canals -- Kinney had dug several miles of canals by 1905 to drain the marshes in the area so residences could be built and he turned the town into a Disneyland-esque amusement center ("Venice of America").  Unfortunately, a fire burning down the amusement pier and prohibition affecting the town's tax revenue meant that by 1925 Venice's roads, water and sewage systems were a mess and it was proposed that Venice be annexed to Los Angeles.  Venice became part of LA in November of that year and the city felt the town needed more streets, not canals, so many of them were paved in 1929.  By 1940 the remaining canals were in disrepair and it was not until over 50 years later, in 1992, that they were finally renovated with the canals being drained and new sidewalks and walls. The canals re-opened in 1993 and have become a desirable and expensive residential section of the city.

Pretty neat place, right?  Took that pic above on my picnic-stroll.  A mini-Italy complete with palm trees right here in Los Angeles!  And for you film buffs out there -  remember all those scenes in "Valentine's Day" where Ashton Kutcher's character is standing on a bridge all melancholy and with Mario Lopez or Jennifer Garner?  That was filmed at the Venice Canals!  CHECK!

In other news, I also saw Kylie Minogue at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend - but what happens at the bowl, stays at the Bowl *wink wink*

CTOWN OUT!

Apollo! Apollo!

**soundtrack to this post: The Head and the Heart - Lost in My Mind  -- right click & open in new tab **


**note: this was in fact last week's entry which I decided to postpone posting until I watched Apollo! Apollo! again or finished reading Bossypants.  About halfway through Bossypants...so....**

Not a 30 rock fan?  Let me start by saying get your life together - buy a Netflix subscription with instant viewing and figure it out.  You can thank me later.

Now that that's out of the way...exciting news!  This past week, I spontaneously attended a "Talk with Tina Fey and Steve Martin" promoting Tina Fey's new book - Bossypants.

To those of you in California interested in buying said book, be forewarned that Borders has pretty much died across our great state because as of the beginning of last week, nobody had given ME the memo!  The night before the "talk" I typed Borders into my GPS and drove to three separate abandoned buildings in sketchy neighborhoods (Compton, I'm looking at you) and slowly came to the realization at the third building that it couldn't be a coincidence all these GPS Borders locations were dead-ends...

My powers of deduction amaze even me sometimes.

So that's how I ended up at Nokia Theatre Tuesday night bookless while surrounded by 4,999 other fans who had the foresight to not only buy but READ Tina's new book.  I was looking pretty lame with my copy of Anne Lamot's Bird by Bird that I bought after my high school graduation because Tina Fey praised it non-stop.  That's right all you fans who think you're better than me!  She was my graduation speaker and that's a bond that goes deep! BAM!

But I'll get back to that....  As for the main event - it was great!  Reminded me of when I went with my mom to an event at Radio City Music Hall a few years back where John Irving, Stephen King, and JK Rowling all read excerpts of their work...pretty amazing.  Just fun to be in a space like that with readers ... what I'd like to think of as a special type of fan.  

Read what LA times had to say on the event HERE.

Then there was the audience Q&A session at the end of Steve & Tina's witty banter where one fan asked the inevitable question of what Tina's favorite 30 Rock episode is.  I swear to god as soon as I heard the question  all I could think was "Apollo! Apollo!" Am I psychic?  Well, Tina Fey stating Apollo! Apollo! is her favorite episode 5 seconds later would suggest so, so YES!  I am definitively psychic. 

So why Apollo! Apollo! ?  It is not my favorite episode despite it having the typical crazy ties to my life which keep me watching 30 rock -- friendcest, 24 references, Liz failing to take up running... But having said that, the episode is great in that it's arc focuses around Alec Baldwin's character throwing a 50th birthday bash for himself and finding an old video of himself opening birthday presents as a boy and getting so excited over his birthday gift that he vomits.  Determined to find out what the gift is, buy it, and be that happy again he has experts come in to decipher the video and it's finally a deaf woman who identifies what Jack's saying as "Apollo! Apollo!" (Click here for proof I'm not lying) See, the gift was a Apollo rocket ship figurine.

Boring plot summary aside, I do love this episode in it's own way because it's about recapturing the wonder and joy you had as a child.  Now...I have an AMAZING photo of myself on the steps of the MET wedged between my sister Steele and best friend at the time Emily Baldwin where I must be about 6 or 7 and have this REDICULOUS look on my face like I'm so excited I'm going to vomit (or start "lizzing").  That has never in fact happened to me but I think it's the closest I ever came to it.  So while I couldn't find THAT photo for this blog, dear readers, the below photo - my favorite family portrait - is a close second:

This is the one photo I have framed in my apt that I take with me wherever I go whenever I travel.  I have NO idea what Steele and I are doing (other than totally rocking our hipster p-jam matching sets)  but it's amazing.  I also love this photo because it proves that I'm a natural blonde.

Rewatching Apollo! Apollo! reminded me of the things which still keep me this happy and connected to my younger self through the years.  Between re-watching the episode and reading my amazing signed copy of Bossypants (that Tina signed post-the event) and bonding with Steele over it (she finished the book in like a day and has already given away all the funny parts)  I have felt pretty content this past week.

Thank you new iphone and your LiveNation app for finding that Nokia Theatre event for me.  I love you now more than ever even if I still don't quite know how to use you as an actual phone.

CTOWN OUT!