Premier Night!

Last Night Katie and I were invited to attend an advanced screening of CBS's new shows "Ghost Whisperer" and "Threshold" in, of all places, a cemetery. Specifically the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which is the final resting place of such famous people as Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille, and Johnny Ramone, to name a few. I actually saw Ramone's monument, I just heard about the others. But in any case, what a perfect place to premier two spooky shows! It was labeled as kind of a picnic and premier, and I did feel a little awkward carrying an ice chest into a cemetery, but on the list of weird things that go on in this town, I guess that was pretty far down. "Ghost Whisperer" is Jennifer Love Hewitt's new show, which is CBS's answer to NBC's "Medium" and is, shall we say, not good. It's not bad, I just don't see it going places. "Threshold" on the other hand, is very good indeed. It features Brent Spiner, who played Data on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and Peter Dinklage, who was Miles Finch (he's an angry elf!) in the movie Elf. The show has it's scary moments, it's about an alien invasion sort of, and it also has its funny moments. I won't spoil it for you, but Peter Dinklage has a very funny scene in the first part of the show that is still making me chuckle. As an added bonus, the stars of both shows were on hand, so I get to see them all in person. For the record, this was the second time I have been in the same vicinity as Jennifer Love Hewitt. The first time was at Halloween Horror Nights many years back. I don't think she remembers me from then, either.

Today, after some delicious pancakes, Katie and I went to see "40 Year Old Virgin" which was pretty hilarious. Not quite as good as "Wedding Crashers" but still well worth the inflated admission, especially the ending. After that we went looking for a TV to put in our room, and some way to move our wireless router to increase the reliability of our sometimes spotty Internet connection in our cave. I am sad to say that we failed on both missions. We also need a stand of some kind on which to set a TV should we ever get one, so if you're in the LA area and have a spare TV and stand, we would greatly appreciate it. I also got to see my first ever Lamborghini Murcielago, something of a treat indeed. I heard it before I saw it; it was hiding behind a Ford pick-up truck, and I thought 'there's no way that truck is making all that noise.' Sure enough, the truck moved out of the way, and there was a perfect yellow specimen. I maintain that only Lamborghinis, Corvettes, and certain Ferraris have any business being yellow. Every other yellow car out there is just fooling itself. Man I miss my car...

I do have two gripes about this city that have surfaced recently. First, I am tired of paying for parking. Or at least tired of only getting 1 free hour of parking for if my ticket is validated. It makes it impossible to go anywhere and shop for stuff. I don't know if this is some plot to get Californians to stop driving everywhere or just blatant greed, but it is so annoying to have to make a purposeful trip somewhere just so you can justify parking you car. The other thing is that no one seems to know how to make Italian bread out here. You can't turn your head without being offered some sort of 94 grain all-natural organic hand-kneaded brick oven baked back to nature bread for $18 a loaf. But if you want Italian, they look at you like you ordered bread made from shoe leather. I suppose that is one thing New York has over this place: a true appreciation for a variety of bread. And tomatoes, now that I think about it. At home, there was always at least 10 different kinds of tomatoes to choose from, here they have 3. But plenty of avocado! They are darn proud of their ability to grow avocados around here. I bet I could ask for it on my ice cream and no one would bat an eye. Ah well, such is life, I suppose.

PS- I did actually find a do-it-yourself car wash, and it was in fact located on Santa Monica Boulevard. Sheryl Crow knows what she's talking about after all.