It happened. Finally, I'm on a plane to Los Angeles and having a whale of a time! Okay, the day started at about 6am when my alarm clock went off. Around 7am, Dad and I caught a train to Heathrow 3. Signal failures along the Piccadilly meant interchanging at Hammersmith and Acton Town but I arrived with plenty of time to spare. Dad was trying to be ever so off-hand but I could tell he was worried. I don't blame him really. I know that I'm quite capable of looking after myself but for someone going abroad for the first time, on a plane for the first time, and alone, he has reason to worry. I'm writing on the plane and we have this simulator thingy in front of every seat. You can watch movies and stuff but inbetween, I'm watching the course of the plane. We're over Greenland at the moment - lotsa ice! 7 hours to go... But flying is a cool experience. Some people make such a fuss about flying and others just breeze through it. The take-off is probably the best bit about flying and I'm sure many would agree with me. I'm travelling by Virgin Atlantic (or Shaglantic, if you prefer - Mike Myers is advertising it in America). Never thought I'd support something of Richard Branson's... The in-flight movies are cool - The Matrix, Shakespeare In Love, Hideous Kinky and some weird flick called Out of Towners... (I found out on the 23rd August that it hadn't been screened yet in the UK!) I watched the first three. The woman in front of me is annoying and has no regard for anyone... well, not me anyway. Right at the beginning of the flight, she pushed her seat back so far it crushed my legs. I asked her if she could please not push her seat so far back? "I have to put my seat back!" she retorted but grudgingly put it in a position where it was more bearable. Now the seat is practically in my lap! She's pushed it further and further back as the flight's gone on. Granted, she has a baby with her but she could at least have some sort of sympathy for the my-long-legs-get-crushed-if-you-recline-the-seat-more-than-45º syndrome. Ahh... 4 hours to go now. I feel like I've been on this plane for yonks. But then again, the TV screen and my writing manages to while away most of the time. There's a nice steward here though and he's just succeeded in chucking water over me. Female hormones on the rampage methinks. Hell, I'm tired, whaddya expect??? What I want to know is why people ask specifically for window seats when they spend the majority of the journey asleep with the shutter down. Mad...
Right, must finish off yesterday's journal first. I was too tired to continue last night. Okay, so I arrived at the airport and realised that Gary Olsen (of 2 Point 4 Children fame) was on the same plane as me - cool! Either that, or it was someone who bears a very strong resemblance to him. I stood next to one of his kids at the luggage carousel, hoping I would recognise my own suitcase. After surviving the customs check (bringing food into the US isn't as bad as they make it out to be) I saw Jenny and Melissa again for the first time since we all separated a year and five days ago, 4th July 1998. I also met Jenny's parents who were quite cool really. I experienced the whole drive-on-the-right-hand-side-of-the-road thing which was scary the first few days because as we turned corners, I was like, "You're going to overbite the corner... Oh no you're not, you drive the other side of the road... I'm fine, I'm okay now..." *sigh* Now, being a Brit, I'm used to rain and lush greenery, so when I saw a palm tree, my mouth was hanging. I mean, I knew they had palm trees and I've seen them before on TV, but seeing one for real is weird. And, it hardly spat with rain and everyone slowed down 15 mph on the roads. Apparently, Californians can't drive in rain. Rain? You call this rain?! Later, we went shopping for ice-cream and Hooch (alcoholic carbonated drink). It didn't taste the same although it claimed it was made according to the British recipe. Label-scrutiny later showed that it was bottled in Texas, of all places. Finally, I hit the sack after being up for 27 hours. I think I'm handling this jetlag lark pretty well.
Today... up at 6:45am. Hmm, not bad. Jenny left a couple of hours ago. She had to go back to Camp Scherman for a few more days. I'm sure Melissa and I will be able to do stuff without her. It won't be the same though... Pancakes for breakfast. Cool. And I was offered tea. I guess they think that I drink a lot of tea because I'm English. It was Earl Grey though, and I'm not keen on the stuff. I couldn't find any coffee though so tea would have to do. (It grew on me as the days went by.) We trundled off to the famed Wal-Mart, which have just taken over Asda in England actually. Mel said it was the first of many steps to eventual world-wide takeover. Then Bill Gates has to buy the business and plague everyone with Microsoft things, including the Bill Gates doll, which exclaims, "I'm the richest working man in the world, sucker!" We also went to this really cool craft store. I love these places. Mel and I walked around the shop, picking up everything from the shelves and saying, "I've always wanted one of these!" I like fiddling with all the sequins and feathers they have. I'm weird like that, I guess... The afternoon consisted of playing Disney Trivial Pursuit in which I failed miserably. In defence, I must say that this is partly due to the fact that half the questions had nothing to do with Disney, but the easy questions had gone walkies. Damn. Yes, we didn't do much, partly because nobody knew what sort of mess I'd be in. Boredom drove us towards the nearest Blockbuster store and we hired out a handfull of vids. We watched Practical Magic and A Simple Plan. The second I'd never heard of and it was kinda harrowing. Not something I want to watch again!
Mel and I went to Seal Beach but I honestly couldn't tell you where it is exactly. The city I could see in the distance could have been Los Angeles, but then again, I think it might have been Long Beach. Who knows? All the cities look the same. Planes crossed the skies frequently by the coast, each advertising free-phone stuff or a store nearby. Everywhere you looked in America, there was advertising of some description. Not that we don't have advertising in Britain, but America pile it on by the truckload. Programmes are interrupted every 5-10 mins for adverts which last almost as long as the sections of programme that you watch. Think ITV but more annoying. Anyway, the beach was lovely, a lot nicer than some British beaches, although you can't really beat Weymouth. It was very warm and there were cute lifeguards patroling the beach. There's one thing you don't see regularly enough in Britian - lifeguards on beaches. Palm trees again - and lots of them! They line the beach all the way down the freeway (See? I didn't call it the 'motorway'). I got sunburnt but then, I deserved it really. I should have got a higher factor suncream. I was going towards the SPF25 stuff and my father said that I could get along nicely with my ordinary SPF8 cream, just so long as I stayed out of the midday sun. Thanks to his philosophy, I was in pain with burnt shoulders and legs. Ouch! I also managed to find something perfectly plausible to complain about - America's tax system. In Britian, something says it's £3.50. You pay £3.50. In America, something is $3.50. You pay $3.77. Confused? They add the tax on the prices at the till so you never know how much you are expected to pay unless you have a head for figures - I don't. Mel said that it was about 7-10¢ for every dollar. Oh-kay... We also whiled away the time drawing one of Melissa's infamous Bob Stickguy pictures. We watched The Imposters later in the evening and I cheerfully went to bed, tired and sunburnt.
Ouch! Sunburn still hurt today, probably worse than yesterday because it all came to surface during the night. Melissa wasn't very conversational over breakfast this morning. She just read a book and hardly acknowledged my existence. She might already have been tired of my company. But at least I had time to update my journal. We went to the mall today. Yes, everything is open on a Sunday all day. Malls are really cool places. They are open-air complexes and music blares out from the speakers as you walk around. It made Brent Cross Shopping Centre (my favourite place to shop) look like a prison. And it appears that America has been plagued with Teletubbies - poor Yanks. I feel deeply for them. Michael Parkinson failed in getting them into Room 101. But I did manage to make some purchases - a T-shirt and trainers. Cool. Mel bought a Kansas license plate keyring with my name on it. It's cheesy but I like it loads. One thing that was weird about the mall was that everyone was so friendly! You walk in and they say, "Hi how are you do you need help looking for anything?" Yes, all in one breath! At first I was like, "Hey, I've just walked in! Leave me alone!" But I got used to it in the end and, when I went home, I thought the British shopkeepers rude when they didn't do the same! It's actually quite nice because it makes the staff seem interested in the customers and you feel wanted. I now realise why Melissa talked to everyone we met in Canterbury last year - she was used to striking up conversations with total strangers. We hit a Chinese restuarant for lunch. It was a really nice place and the portions were larger than I expected. Shopping is tiring though, so we went back home almost straight after that, having missed a showing of Star Wars by 10 minutes or so. Anyway, we thought Jenny might want to see it with us. Another Bob Stickguy picture took up the afternoon, only this one had a string of Roman jokes in it. It was one of those silly moments. FOX were showing The X-Files - Dreamland so we watched that, but I must yet again complain about the ads. They are put in every 10 minutes and I keep losing the plotline! Argh!! Back home to the BBC and I'll be able to watch one 45 min episode completely uninterrupted - bliss! Early bed tonight though because tomorrow is... Disneyland! Wahey! Woo-hoo! Yeah! Cool! I'm excited... Does it show?
Today - Disneyland! It was awfully hot and I was wearing dark coloured jeans - argh! My sunburn wasn't quite ready for re-exposure so I had to suffer. My camera also 'died' on me right from the beginning. I (well, Jenny really) realised afterwards (eight days afterwards, actually) that Melissa had switched on the 'ten second' timer by mistake while trying to open the camera window. Oops! Anyway, I got a disposable which was okay but stopped me from taking inside shots. First thing we did was head straight for the Indiana Jones ride. It was like a rollercoaster only it stopped and jerked around a bit. It even had these little Harry robots. We then went into this kiddie show which had lots of singing birds. It was a bit surreal. During lunch, this little kid kept talking to us, marvelling at the birds zooming in and out of the canopy. Melissa humoured him - I ignored him. I'm not always like that but the heat was making me irritable. Well, that's my excuse... I can't remember much of the other stuff. I know we went on the Mountain Railroad and that queuing for it was awful because it was about 2pm, the worst time to be out in the sun. Space Mountain was inside and probably the best inside coaster I've been on since Space Station Zero. (The latter is now non-existant and has a carousel put in its place.) The much-hyped Star Tours ride (a simulator reliving the space battle in Star Wars: A New Hope) was pretty lame but Melissa enjoyed it. The Haunted Mansion was like every other ghost train, only it did stop halfway through the ride, and we were stuck next to this pulsating door, which was pretty weird. The Rocket Rods was a four-seat car on a monorail-type construction, with everyone sitting one-behind-the-other. I was at the front and it went very fast! It completely knocked the breath out in me and rated as my favourite ride, even though it had the worst queue of the lot. The great thing about Disneyland was that you don't notice the queuing time so much because the lines are interesting. The queue goes through sets and you watch videos while you wait for the ride. There are water fountains along the lines and all over the park as well as water sprays being fixed along the canopies. The Americans are pretty sussed when it comes to cooling down on a hot day. We managed to miss the parade twice but we did see the fireworks at night. However, the highlight of the day was the purchase of my very own Tigger toy. It's one of those things I always wanted as a child and could never have one because it was so expensive. $16 is a bargain and I'm so happy now. I also bought some pens for the family. They'll only complain that I didn't buy them anything interesting otherwise.
Jenny's birthday! But she's not here. I sang 'Happy Birthday' anyway. We saw a rather bad boy band on the Regis & Kathie Lee Show called Lyte Funky Ones (I prefer the Big Breakfast but they don't pick up C4). I hope England don't get plagued by them. (We did two months later. Oh hell...) Now if only I could recall what they were called... N'Sync have just invaded and they are doing quite well, much to my chagrin. Every boy band looks and sings the flipping same!! Maybe I'm finally growing up... This afternoon, I made my TV screen debut. Okay, okay, so it wasn't quite like that, but all the same... I was in the audience for the CBS show Politically Incorrect. For those who don't know (I certainly didn't!), it's basically a show where the host (Bill Maher) and four panelists talk about various current issues. We watched two screenings which would be played throughout the week. It was cool, even though I only recognised Morgan Fairchild and Paul Rodrigues(sp?). We had this rather annoying and L-O-U-D guy talking... no, shouting... to us in-between breaks, saying how we should keep faking laughter and clapping enthusiastically during filming. After an hour of doing this, you get pretty tired. Especially when you fake everything because you don't understand any of the jokes at all. On the way home, we stopped off at Denny's. Jenny had kept raving on about the wonderfulness of the place so I had to go there. It's basically Little Chef with more choice and it's open 24 hours. By the time we got home, I only had enough energy to watch fifteen minutes of Octopussy. With ads cropping up every five minutes, I was losing the plotline anyway. Damn ads...
Melissa and I spent the morning doing a new comic strip for Bob Stickguy. It was called 'Bob Visits London' so I helped with details. Jenny came home today (yay!!) and I met her friend Stacey. We all trundled off to the cinema to see An Ideal Husband, the film I originally wanted to see on my own birthday. (I was eventually dragged off to see Message In A Bottle, which wasn't all that bad, but I would have prefered to see Rupert Everett. And, yes, I know he's gay. Geez...) Anyway, the film was really cool and I was glad to get the chance to see it, as it had finished screening in Britain at the time. When we got home, we played the American version of Monopoly and drank Hooch. I failed miserably at Monopoly, being used to the British version. Oh, bed, bed, bed! (Sleepwalking Clare)
I was tired this morning... and the date rings a bell but I can't remember why. Oh well... Jenny went out for a job interview this morning so Mel and I finished the Bob Stickguy script. Jenny came back with the job practically hers so we went to Taco Bell to celebrate - the cheapest restuarant ever! Lunch cost just $3. After playing two games of Scrabble (which is fun in itself with British and American spellings dotting the board), Jenny's dad begged a game. I won all of the games... but the ever-weird Yanks said that whoever finished the game won, not the person with the most points. So Jenny's dad won... apparently. In any case, he let Jenny take the convertible out so it worked out okay in the end! Cool!! We went to a 'British' pub called King Arthur's. It was almost empty save a few middle-aged men playing darts. It was kinda creepy. And I wasn't supposed to be in there because the US drinking laws begin at 21. Even though it's 18 in Britain, you can still sit in the bar at 14. Anyway, I had to finish Mel's wine off. She said it was strong - I gulped it down! It wasn't all that strong at all, really... I'm a true Brit!! We then drove around looking for ice-cream. We finally pulled up outside a 24hr cafe which was so small, there was only seating space for eight. Coming home was cool though, dashing along the highway with the top down and the radio blasting. The only thing was that it was rather cramped.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace comes out in the UK today and I still haven't seen it! Damn... Anyway, we drove down to Hollywood today. We strolled down Hollywood Boulevard, otherwise known as the Street of Stars. We also passed Mann's Chinese Theatre, where they are advertising the (so far) controversial Kubrick film, Eyes Wide Shut. We posed by Harrison Ford's foot and hand prints! And I saw the wonderful Gene Kelly's foot and hand prints. He was pretty small! Melissa pleaded to go into the Hollywood museum so we took a tour of the prop, costume and sound departments. The E.L.F. machine from Dante's Peak was there, as was the costumes from the Star Trek films and Ben Hur. I think the tour guide was a Trekkie - he seemed pretty enthusiastic about the film set. Mel sat in Kirk's chair - the highlight of her day!! We went around loads of tourist shops which had the usual plethora of tacky magnets, postcards, T-shirts and memorablia. I had trouble trying to find un-tacky postcards. I think I succeeded... Jenny couldn't find Chinatown though, so she drove to her friend's apartment so they could take us. Annalise is Jenny's ex-roommate and is shorter than Jenny! Jenny was the tall one (!!!). Ken (Annalise's boyf) was also around so all five of us trundled off to Chinatown. Ken and Annalise are Asian so it meant that we would be treated a bit better than normal. It's not racist, but it helps to have Asians with you. Ken is totally out of this world. You really need a warning before you meet him, and I didn't!! And Annalise was very nice, asking loads of questions, including the plans for the Millenium Dome. I just had to shrug. Even as I speak now (late September) they still haven't completed the Jubilee line to Greenwich (they've just made it Canada Water Station) and the Millenium Wheel has been delayed by four weeks. Anyway, the restuarant was very cool and it was the best Chinese food ever!! The 'tea' was a bit icky though... It was 9pm when we reached home and I was totally exhausted. I woke up very quickly though at the discovery of a rather large cockroach making its way along Jenny's wardrobe door. Jenny picked up my shoe and proceeded to try and kill it. I was scared stiff... and asked to sleep in Tricia's room. Apparently, Melissa was only sleeping alone because she snores... And the lucky shoe, used as a prop in the murder of the cockroach, was washed as soon as I got home, to rid any traces of evidence...
I woke up still tired... what is wrong with me? I slept for 12 hours solid! I think too many late nights and early mornings - Melissa says it's delayed jet-lag. Oh, whatever!! Too tired to argue! We went out in search of shopping malls but only went to one. We also found a miniture golf course and played one round, in which yours truly failed terribly. Too tired to concentrate properly.... The golf course and the entrance were bridged by a corridor of video and arcade games. You play the games and win tickets which then get you a prize. We manage to salvage 30 for a butterfly clip each. Lunch was mid-afternoon at Jack in the Box, a sort of crossover between McDonalds and Taco Bell. Denny's was for ice-cream. As the evening crept upon us, we decided that we'd go to the cinema. $7 later, I was watching The Phantom Menace. Yes, it was a very cool film but not a lot really happened. Thinking about it, not a lot happened in any of the films, actually... This sparked a plan to have a Harry marathon, so we watched A New Hope and played the Star Wars drinking game. Nothing like the original film, methinks...
Our plans for Universal Studios has been put aside until tomorrow so we can continue our Harry marathon. Monday is probably a better day to go anyway, because people work Mondays. We squeezed in both Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Temple of Doom before lunch, both of which I hadn't seen completely all the way through. We then had a break (before our heads exploded) by doing some work on a story that Mel and Jenny are writing between them. The marathon ended with The Last Crusade, just in time to watch The X-Files afterwards. It was Dreamland II - I love this episode! "If you weren't so damn ugly, I'd kiss you." Dana Scully proving that looks really do matter. Oh well...
Today - Universal Studios, Hollywood. I'm now down to my last $80 - hope I last out until Saturday. Universal Studios was really cool. We went on all the rides but Backdraft. Jenny said that you would be able to feel the heat of the fire and Melissa wasn't too keen on that. We also managed to see all the shows except for Beetlejuice. The Jurassic Park ride was brilliant although we got drenched after falling about 500 feet into water! The Waterworld show was pretty good and the 3D Terminator show was the best thing ever!J You have these sequences where the liquid metal seems to go right into your face. I kept flinching, even though I was trying to convince myself that it was only on the screen. At one point, they freeze the metal and then shoot it, and it goes spraying into the audience - so they put the sprinklers on for effect! We also had a tour around the sets and saw tricks of the trade. The queues were bad though. I think they should create 'entertainment areas' like Disneyland. It was really good though and I bought a brilliant keyring. I'm keyring mad!
On with the adventures!!!Back to Athene19 Visits...Back to Athene19's Ancient Myths and Modern Cult
Get your own