Greg's Visit

After going to the Stanford alumni brunch, I spent yesterday working on my ER outline. Darin and Greg went off and did stuff. They had breakfast in Pasadena, hung out there some, then went to the Boys.

I phoned them when I got really hungry for dinner and we went to Taverna Tony out in Malibu. The food was good, but I steered us on to the wrong road out to Malibu, taking Topanga Canyon Rd. instead of Malibu Canyon Rd. It took us way too long to get out there.

After dinner, we tried to go to the Universal CityWalk, because Darin really loves showing that to out-of-towners. No such luck: complete gridlock. We managed to swing out of there and get on the freeway. We decided to go to downtown Burbank and try to find a movie.

We decided upon Gattaca, which we all pretty much agreed sucked. I guessed a plot element way before Darin or Greg did. It was a dull movie.

Sunday

The three of us went to Schatzi on Main in Santa Monica for brunch. Once again we did not see Ah-nuld, but we like their brunch.

We dropped Darin off at a business meeting, the other reason we were in Santa Monica. I couldn't believe that anyone had scheduled a meeting for Sunday afternoon; Darin couldn't believe he was charging them his usual rate and not time-and-a-half.

So I drove off with Greg and took him to Beverly Hills, where we gawked at the houses and discussed the meaning of the word being skywritten overhead.

"Be?"

"Be here now?"

"No...Bea."

"Aha! The Bea Arthur Fan Club."

"No...wait, there's another letter."

"Bean!"

Yes, it was an ad for Bean, a movie Darin and Greg are looking forward to and I am looking forward to sending them to. After the pilot got finished, the B had mostly disappeared...so he found a new section of sky and started over.

We drove to Westwood and began the Great Drink Quest, because Saturday was quite warm. We started at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which makes my New Favorite Drink: the Vanilla Ice Blended. Then we started walking around Westwood, which I pointed out was just like Palo Alto except the university is right there.

We passed a couple of Japanese tourists watching the skywriting. "Should I spoil it for them?" I asked.

We walked past a bunch of t-shirt shops, which had South Park shirts (Darin and Greg love South Park; it makes me ill) and shirts that read, "You can't spell SUCK without USC."

Greg asked if that was a popular shirt back at USC.

"You know, I don't remember seeing an anti-UCLA shirt at USC," I said. "It's kind of like Berkeley-Stanford. Berkeleyites take the rivalry very seriously and denigrate Stanford at every opportunity. Stanfordites say, 'Berkeley is a good school.' There's no question who's feeling secure."

We walked onto UCLA and talked about the liquid diet everyone we know is on. I'm considering going on it down here. We headed for the Student Center where we got Drinks Part Two: water and (for Greg) Mountain Dew. Greg threatened to buy a UCLA sweatshirt.

I was having none of that. We drove to USC. Greg didn't like the School of Cinema/TV sweatshirts, so we went over to the bookstore and he found a nice mostly cotton sweatshirt that read "SC." (Why he wanted a sweatshirt when it was some ungodly temperature out, I have no idea.) I showed him the Lucas Film Building and the Cinema/TV library. I pointed to the Starbucks but we didn't get drinks, having already gotten Drinks Part Three at the USC Student Center.

It was now 3pm and Darin said he'd be done around 4 or 5. "Now what do we do?" I said. Going home and napping was sounding pretty good to me.

"We could go to see the ocean," Greg suggested. "I haven't seen that yet."

Right, right. I drove us back to Santa Monica and got us onto the Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu.

Darin called on my cell phone and Greg tried to talk to him. No connection. I pulled off of PCH and tried to find a high place (up in Pacific Palisades) in case Darin called again. It took a while before he called the car phone -- he said later he'd tried to call my phone and the car phone several times before finally getting through. Highly annoying -- Darin wants me to get a PCS phone when they come out.

We picked up Darin and went to dinner at Jake & Annie's in Santa Monica. They make great fried chicken. I had a bite of Darin's.

We drove home and watched the early showing (via satellite) of The X-Files. My verdict? Not enough voiceover. Basically, Chris Carter should never write another episode of the show -- it's like most desserts: the episodes look great but have no taste and just kind of sit in your stomach.

We dropped Greg off at the airport and went home. I immediately went to sleep.