Walking in LA

Only a nobody walks in LA. (here's a video to refresh your memory...)

Alas, my time in LA did NOT afford me a visit to the Dresden Room: We got in a bit too late, and met our team at the hotel bar instead. I'm staying right around the corner from the Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater, and Scientology Ground Zero. There's a Beard Papa a half block away which I've visited... so delicious.

Yesterday was an odd day: Trapped in a car with a co-worker who is QUITE CONSERVATIVE who likes to toss out little "questions" like "do you think that America should be STRONG or WEAK economically?" These black and white things, which it only makes sense to answer with "it depends on how you define it..." He was telling me that he listens to conservative radio because he listened to some Air America last year and they were so shrill and unbalanced... yet admits he hasn't listened to NPR for 8 years.

Basically he's a guy who needs to be assured that there is right and wrong in the world, and that his side is right. So it was a very long hour drive to the conference... and an even longer 2 hour drive BACK from the conference (love that LA traffic).

Fortunately it was possible to divert to work talk, movie talk, TV talk, high school and college shenanigans talk, band geek talk, and kid talk, so I didn't have to murder anyone. Actually some of that background info was very helpful: I pretty much know the kid he was and how he got to this point... not that it helps when he decides to grind the ideological axe, but I at least have more dimensions to work with.

At the conference, it was one of those boondoggles where there are 200 people there, 170 of them are vendors and only 30 are civilian "targets" that we're all trying to get casual conversations started with. Plus I had to/got to disappear for 2 hours for conference calls with... wait for it... people in Minneapolis.

But as I did my conference calls, I was strolling up and down Sepulveda Blvd, noticing that EVERYTHING is very far from everything else, and that this is really not a pedestrian city in any way... and that Missing Persons song just kept playing in my head.

I'll be in LA a bit more frequently as I take over the accounts from my conservative colleague, and am trying to understand the rhythm of it: There's nothing happening early AM - the city wakes around 9 or 10am, but stores and restaurants are ghost towns by 8-9pm. Apparently in Hollywood, things go to sleep from 8-11, and then wakes up from Midnight - 4am, which I would have missed since I'm a human who needs sleep. I'll get the hang of it, however.

Have some meetings soon, and then a late flight home - I'll sneak in around 10pm, and gaze lovingly at my sleeping children (and most likely sleeping wife...)