Alphabetical Movie – L.A. Story

I’ve been to a lot of places on vacation and almost every single one of them is a place I’d love to see again.

L.A. isn’t one of those places.  For a city filled with movie stars, it just didn’t really feel all that interesting to me.  Maybe I went to the wrong parts.

Actually, we were mostly there to spend time at Disneyland.  I liked Disneyland.  But Disneyland is in Anaheim.  Actually, it isn’t really in Anaheim.  It is in “magical Disney place” and has nothing to do with Anaheim, L.A. or the real world.  While there, though, we took the time to drive into L.A for a day.

And it just didn’t capture us.  All of the “must see” attractions didn’t appeal to us.  Or they weren’t what we expected.  Grumman’s Chinese Theatre has a bunch of people dressed up as movie stars who want you to pay them to pose in pictures.

I mean, fine.  OK.  That’s what they are doing to earn a few bucks.

But it meant there was a big damned crowd of people standing around and all I wanted to do was look at the hand prints.   I couldn’t do it without someone dressed like Marylin Monroe trying to get me to take a picture with her.

Look, lady, unlike some of the tourists who get their picture with you, I actually know Monroe is dead.  I don’t need a picture of someone in a blonde wig and a white dress and I’m sure not going to pay $5.00 for it.

I was puzzled by my disinterest in the city.  I’ve been to San Francisco many times and I love it.  I feel the same about San Diego.  L.A, though, just filled me with ambivalence.

Maybe it is just the idea that L.A./Hollywood is so glamorous when it really isn’t.  You look at stars on the Hollywood walk of fame and that’s kind of cool until you look up and see that you are standing next to a concrete parking garage.

The biggest bill of goods the movie industry has ever sold us is the idea that the place they make movies is somehow a wonderous place that is different from the rest of the world.

Well I don’t know, maybe I could end up in a restaurant at a table near George Clooney.  Probably not, though.

Then again, maybe it isn’t the fault of L.A.  There was a lot of disappointment in that trip.  When we were there, they were experiencing one of the worst cold snaps ever.  The weather in L.A. was colder than the weather in Minnesota.  In February.

We’d booked a trip to Channel Islands National Park, which is a pretty tough national park to see, and the weather resulted in cancelled boat ride.  I still have no idea when I’ll have another chance to see that park.  The missed opportunity still makes me mad.

Disneyland is pretty cool and very different from Disney World.  But Disney’s California Adventure was almost completely unworthy of the name Disney.

And L.A. was…just a city with shitty traffic.  Maybe if I’d gotten a map of the stars’ homes I would have enjoyed it more.  Maybe if we’d done a little more research and gone to filming locations for some of our favorite films we would have gotten more out of the experience.

As it is, L.A. is one of those places that is on the bottom of my “must see again” list.

Which makes me want to go back.  Because I’m positive I missed something.