Economy of Scale

Took the bus to Santa Monica pier today.

The bus seats here have strange patterns on them. I think it's to keep drug users away. It would just be too much.


Santa Monica pier is really the only pier in Los Angeles and as a result has stared in numerous Hollywood movies including Beverly Hills Cop III , The Net and Species. Wow, those are some great movies.


Along with the bikers ad roller-bladers, there were people playing some sort of magical hybrid of tennis and ping-pong. It's almost like you were shrunk down and placed right on the table.

I think I've actually dreamed this before.

Vegas on Acid

Drove out to Vegas for a few days and decided to stop in the tiny town of Baker for gas. It's at the confluence of Death Valley, the Mojave desert and Joshua tree national park. Everywhere you glance looks like an album cover.

With a permanent population of 65 and home to the world's largest thermometer I wasn't sure what to expect.

The thermometer was more of a tall billboard.


What it lacked in nightlife it more than made up for in creepy abandoned gas stations...




And jerky stores that sold either:


Jerky made from aliens
Jerky marketed to aliens
or Jerky marketed to people who like a little conspiracy with their dried beef.

By the time we got to Vegas I was just happy to see other people.


The Paris hotel has a replica of the Eiffel tower. It's just like the real Paris but smaller and cheaper. ..Awesome...

We saw this sign and thought it would be a good place the start.



Then we saw a midget dressed as a leprechaun pouring shots at the bar and decided this would be a good place to stay for a while.


So we did.

Soft Places

My annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles continues:

Yesterday we had breakfast at the house of one of my Dad's friends. On the way up we passed homes owned by Jim Carey, Cindy Crawford and Bill Cosby. Further up the road was Arnold Schwarzenegger's house. It's an Ok neighborhood.

One entire side of the house is glass. It looks out over Beverly Hills and the ocean. It's amazing.

The first place I wanted to go was the recently re-opened Getty Villa. Built by the estate of oil tycoon John Paul Getty, the Villa is an exact replica of a large Roman country house located on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79AD the entire city, its contents and inhabitants were freeze dried in ash and rock. 1700 years later the site was excavated and a perfect time capsule of the lives of the Romans was opened. Getty recreated the Villa in Malibu to house all the Roman antiquities that he had collected because he felt that they should be displayed in an environment of their time rather than in a museum. He was obsessive about every detail of the building.

The steep road up to the villa is paved in the same wide paving stones that wheels of Roman carts would have rolled on. It shook the car like an earthquake and made us slow to a crawl.

As we walked up the stairs to the Villa, a pair of WW2 fighter planes buzzed way too low over our heads. Logically, I know they must have been on their way to an air show but they still added to the strangeness of the place. It felt like we had come loose in time and were falling backwards.

The building an its contents were astounding. Frescoes, murals, statues, pottery, silver, gold and glass.















Leaving the Villa the car accelerated down the hill and over the cobblestones again. It shook louder and louder as we hopelessly tried to out run a wave of molten rock. The lava melted the tires and flowed over the car. I relaxed in my seat and looked up just as it melted through the roof.