2/19/2005 12:34:00 AM|||Jonthon|||

Saturday was a free day. We got up at around 9:30, washed up, and headed down the street to the Beverly Hills Breakfast Club. From there, we drove down Rodeo, and around the immediate area. Then we headed down to Grauman's Chinese Theater, and walked down Hollywood Blvd and looked at the stars. Lindsay was wearing sandals, and the rain made the marble streets like an ice rink for her. So I walked, observing stars, girl in arm, her skating down the street. =) It was a really funny scene.
Eventually, we got in the car and headed down to Melrose for the hard shopping. I basically went to girls clothing store after girls clothing sotre, reading the least feminine magazines available and people watching (which was actually quite rewarding on Melrose).
At some point in the trip, Katie, Laura, Lindsay and I got a call that the other group had a real problem. It turned out that someone on the trip with us had had a run-in with the law. I won't be pasting it up in the ultra-public forum that is the internet, but I assure you that it is quite a story! In fact, I ended up with the nickname "Jonason" semi-permanently. Unfortunately, it ended up making us late to our only appointment of the day, the alumni banquet being held for...us.
So we head down to Hollywood billiards, which is (you guessed it) on Sunset. By the time we get there, all the food is pretty much gone. The open bar thus inviting, I had my first shinerbock and chatted with the few people who seemed willing to converse. It was an awkward scenario, which I quickly figured out the dynamics of: everyone was there to see MU grad/reality TV founder John Murray, who didn't come. Their only interest in talking to others was if it benefitted their future, so the Missouri kids were kid of out. Other than the few students who had the gusto to just go sit down and enter a conversation, they talked to each other. After a while, Scott had the students come up and introduce themselves. When I came up, I mentioned that my life goal is to be a correspondent on the Daily Show. Plenty of people started talking to me after that. I meant an agnostic arch-republican, Bucky Fox, who was actually kind of cool, if not scary. I met some people outside who gave me all kinds of advice (that I took with a grain of salt), including that I should include the efforts I have done for NORML in brining about law reform. I head back in, and run into a guy named AJ, who I had just started a conversation with when I got called up to the podium. We started talking, and figured out that we were both in DSA, both knew Dave Wilson, and had a lot of other similarities. He called over his friend Liz, who had also been a DSAer. We started chatting, and he said that he was ready to go somewhere cool. He asked if there was anyone else I wanted to come, because I was the only cool one he had met so far. I tried to get my Varsity Squad, but they had ordered nachos and were not going anywhere. Their mistake!
So AJ, Liz and I head sown to a total dive bar called the Smog Cutter, run by Drunk Vietnamese women. Aj tells me that he is a producer/director, having made two documentaries and working on a third covering Kurt Kobain. He has also made a bunch of music videos. I later found out that Liz is a scriptwriter who had just left Paramount! So, the three of us drink, and start singing Karaoke. AJ sings an REM, and I was already signed up for Losing my religion." Liz played a game of pool, and talked a guy into purposely losing the game to her so she scould keep the table. The guy that beat her next round then held the table for about an hour. Anyway, the song Liz was signed up for got chosen by some other girl, so I stole the slip, and we regrouped. After much deliberation, we signed her up for "Friends in Low Places," which she said was a critical part of her script. AJ ducked out to go home to his wife and child, and Liz and I ended up signing the Garth Brooks hit pretty much solo - only two other people in the bar knew it to sing along. This is a critical point in her new script, and she was happy to be able to test it out in her first karaoke experience in LA. I was flabbergasted that no one there knew the song.
After Liz beat the guy who had beaten her and was running the table (it really seemed like she got lucky, but she did win), we started chatting with some of her friends that were there. They were a couple, and when the husband started playing pool I started talking to his ultra-liberal wife. They were both really cool. At the end of the night, Liz was nice enough to drive me all the way back to my hotel!
It was 3:30 in the morning I took a shower, packed my bag, and settled in for a quick nap that would have to consist for my regiment of sleep for the night.

|||110947520080156855|||To Live and Die in LA 4