Intern In LA

Katie officially started her internship at Paramount today. I couldn't drive on to the lot to drop her off, I had to let her out on the street so she could walk through the security booth. I figured I would wait for her to call me to make sure she got in OK. While I was waiting, a guy approached me and told me he used to live in Madeira Beach and that he knew a lot about living in LA that he wanted to tell me about, and gave me his phone number and told me not to call until after midnight because he was"extremely busy" during the day. He went on to tell me that he was a red belt in five different martial arts disciplines, and that he knew how the Chinese were going to take over America. Yeah, see they have a plan and the technology to imprint their thoughts and feelings on to Americans. Yup, these new beings were called doppelgangers, and he knew all about them because they are all around him where he lived, and his job, according to the government, was to keep an eye on them. His name was Lucky by the way, so if you're in south LA and need help with doppelganger detection or removal, look him up!

Later I saw a Lotus Elise and a Ferrari Scaglietti, both of which made me happy. I also took Katie's car to be washed. Apparently, no where in this city do they have the sort of car wash where you do it yourself. This surprised me because Sheryl Crow sang out watching a car wash from a bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. I have driven a large section of Santa Monica Blvd. and there is no such car was/bar combo. Instead I had to pay someone else to do it, and was over charged I think. The wash cost $16 and they didn't even get to bug off that we collected on the trip from Florida. I hope the place we eventually move in to has its own car washing facility.

Katie and I decided to go out to celebrate her first day of internship, so we went to a nice place called Maggianos in The Grove. I think a sign that you are in a fancy restaurant around here is that the waiters absolutely ignore you, and no one is dressed like they are actually in a nice restaurant. I also learned the value of parking validation. To park a car in this city will run you somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 for every 20 minutes or fraction thereof. Nice, huh? That works out to about $145 per 24 hours, which is more than this hotel we are staying at is costing. Oh well, such is life in the big city. At least they have parking lots here, and not just parallel street parking like in New York and everyone ends up with messed up bumpers. I guess I'll just have to learn better to get my parking validated.

Oh, by the way, I saw my first motorcycle cop today, and I am positive it is one of the guys from "CHiPs."