A Weekend In L.A.

My son's flag football team had an 8:00 A.M. game last Saturday in Pasadena. Reasoning that waking him up at 5:00 to make it to the game on time probably wasn't a good idea (much less waking my wife at such a god-forsaken hour), we decided to spend the weekend at my father-in-law's condo in L.A.'s Westside District, which would shorten our drive to the game by at least a half hour.

My son's team lost on a last-second touchdown by Pasadena, ruining our hopes for an undefeated season. After the game, we drove back to the condo to unwind, and then made our way to Westwood Village to take in the shops. I remembered the Village from my younger days as a wonderfully eclectic mix of quirky and unique shops. Today, the Village has been completely corporatized. Instead of the one-of-a-kind eateries that once populated the area, you now have Quizno's and Subway and the ubiquitous Starbucks. About the only unique shop left in the Village is film director Kevin Smith's comic book shop, and it's about to close because Smith can't find someone to run it for him.

As an aside, my wife and I noticed a difference between the homeless people we saw in Westwood and those we see elsewhere: they are electronically outfitted better than we are. We saw one guy sporting a brand-new Ipod Nano, and another with a Blackberry. It begs the questions: how does a homeless person go about downloading music to his Ipod? Where does Verizon send his bill for his PDA? Also, every homeless person we saw was pushing his cans and bottles in identical black carts. Are these government issue? Does West L.A. have some sort of program to make sure its homeless are homogeneous?

Anyway, after our disappointing shopping experience we decided to take our son to see The Rock's new film, Game Plan, at the historic El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. What should have been a twenty minute trip from Westwood took an hour and fifteen minutes, thanks to an immense traffic jam on the Golden State Freeway.

As an outside salesman I drive for a living. I deal with Southern California traffic on a daily basis, so I'm largely immune to traffic rage. I accept traffic for what it is: a pain in the rear about which I really can't do anything. My wife, on the other hand, has a ten-minute commute along surface streets to an office building. She doesn't do traffic. About five minutes in she started with the "hurrumpfs," then the heavy sighs, and then proceeded to have a near melt-down as we inched along. It was not the most enjoyable trip I've ever endured.

Anyway, we finally made it to Hollywood, and all I can say is that, despite the creeping corporatization of the area, it is just as delightfully weird as ever. A couple hundred people were in front of the Kodak Theater, protesting the plight of the Burmese people. Interspersed with them were Spiderman, Cinderella, Darth Vader, an Imperial stormtrooper, Davy Jones, Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, and no fewer than three Captain Jack Sparrows. Indeed, only a drunken, drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson was needed to complete the entire Johnny Depp filmography.

Here's a short review of Game Plan: If you have a six or seven year-old boy or girl, go see it. There's enough slapstick to keep the boys laughing, and it's cute enough to keep the girls smiling. In fact (and I never thought I would write this about any vehicle starring The Rock), it was not an altogether painful way to waste two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Sunday, we made our way to the La Brea tar pits. My son's at an age that skeletons fascinate him, so the walk through the museum was enjoyable for all of us. We got to see the paleontologists pull a real sloth femur from Pit 91. Then, as we walked past one of the pits no longer being explored, we caught a bit of realism: a small sparrow vainly struggling to extricate itself from the bubbling asphalt. This was a bit much for the wife, who didn't exactly come here to see the tar pits in action. My son, on the other hand, was enthralled, and declared we needed to come back in a couple of weeks to "see if we can find the bird's skull." I told you, skeletons fascinate him.

So all in all, it was a successful excursion for the family, although by the end of the weekend my wife had had enough of L.A. We want to go back to take in the Natural History museum, but I think she needs a bit of L.A. detox before again venturing into the City of Angels.