it's their line, apparently.
The quote of the day:
Now is the time to act.
Running news:
None today.
This morning it took some doing to get them out of the house, but we finally got some breakfast. During breakfast we tried to decide what to do: without making a plan, we were going to do the default thing, which was return to the house and play Starcraft. But we wanted to avoid this, so instead we decided to go out to Malibu--the archetypal Southern California experience.
MITCH
We need a Frisbee®.
DIANE
Where can we get a Frisbee?
MITCH
At a Toys R Us.
Beat.
DIANE
Um...where else?
MITCH
Sports store.
DIANE
Oh dear. I don't know where to find
any of these places.
We drove over Malibu Canyon Road to Malibu and stopped at the Malibu Colony Mall (or whatever it's called). One interesting thing about this mall: the only chain shops I saw there were Sav-On and Hughes. Of course, this means there are plenty of things you can't find at this mall, but it's nice to see that not everywhere you go has a Starbucks.
We stopped in the Sav-On and picked up a Frisbee. Mitch knows from Frisbees--this was a cheap, not-very-good Frisbee, but rather than drive around and hope that Malibu had a Toys R Us someplace, we bought it.
I drove down the coast a little and parked in a pay parking lot for a beach. $5 for parking. I'm sure if we knew the area better we would have known to avoid this, but we don't so we didn't.
We walked down the beach some and Mitch and Scott started playing Frisbee. Mitch, who plays Ultimate quite a lot and so is the Frisbee expert, showed Scott how to throw forehand. Turns out most of us throw a Frisbee backhand, and forehand is quite a different matter. The key part is to get spin on the Frisbee--stuff like aim and distance come later.
"After the first 10,000 throws, you know how to do it," Mitch told us.
I threw a couple of times. The Frisbee flew a ways, then hit the dirt. "Yeah, yeah, I know," I said. "I throw like a girl."
I did not manage to get a picture of the couple who were, if not copulating, coming pretty damn close (any and all puns intended). I just stopped and stared for a while--I'm so inhibited that I can't imagine giving Darin a serious kiss in public, let alone doing this heavy duty full-body making out.
We drove up Highway 1 for a while (and found a beach where we wouldn't have had to pay--sigh), but then Darin wasn't feeling well, so we went home. I went to bed, and the three of them played some Unreal and then Starcraft.
Our big plan for the evening was to see a taping of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the American version of the British improvisation game show. The American version is hosted by Drew Carey and features Ryan Stiles, whom Darin and I really liked from the British version (and who's now a featured player on The Drew Carey Show).
We drove out to Hollywood and got in the long line. To make a long story short, we didn't get in; they broke off the line one group in front of us.
Oh, brother.
So we piled back in the car and wondered what we should do now, since no one was hungry.
We drove over to the Laemmle 5, the arthouse multiplex in Hollywood. The parking lot was a nightmare--all parking lots in Los Angeles are terribly designed, for some reason, and when there are a lot of cars in said parking lots, they turn into medieval torture chambers--but we eventually found parking down on the bottom, empty level.
It turned out luck was with us--The Impostors was starting 10 minutes after we got there, so we bought tickets and found seats in the almost full theater (!).
Verdict: pretty good. Not very deep--it's a 30s farce made in the 90s, with two leading men named Stanley (Tucci) and Oliver (Platt). The pace gets so frenetic at times that the cast seems to be saying, "We're having fun! Look at how much fun we're having! Oh boy, this is fun!" But there were some things in it that were so hilarious I had to say, "Thumbs up." The bit with the subtitles is pretty darn funny; Campbell Scott is a hoot as the Nazi in charge of the cruise ship; Tucci and Platt work pretty well together. Even the end credits are amusing.
After the movie we went to eat at the Great Greek. Then Mitch, Scott, and Darin...yes, played more Starcraft. I thought I'd never fall asleep the way they were yelling at one another--okay, the way Darin was yelling at them. But eventually the melatonin kicked in.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com