West Side

Yeah, not much posting activity last week. Sorry about that. I was in LA for work last week. Actually, I was only there for a day, but I needed a few days to recover after flying out Wednesday morning at 6am, sitting through 8 hours of due diligence meeting with 6 lawyers in a conference room that could only be described as a "fun vacuum," getting drunk, and then getting on a red-eye flight home that night.

A few observations about LA, though:

• I wasn't actually in LA. I was in Long Beach, I think. Of course, I kept calling it "Long Island" until someone in our party corrected me.
• I hadn't been to LA/Long Beach before, but it was EXACTLY how I pictured it. That is, the neighborhoods we drove through (we got a bit lost) look exactly as they're depicted in every single Ice Cube music video/movie I've watched. I felt like I knew the place. I even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp. (I was disappointed that it wasn't advertising the sexual prowess of Ice Cube.)
• On average, people in LA are better looking than people on the east coast. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's a fact. Whoever says otherwise either (1) is lying, (2) hasn't been to LA, or (3) prefers to mate with objectively unattractive people.
• People in LA talk about Wolfgang Puck as if he's God's gift to cuisine. And although I've never personally met him, I'm sure he's a nice man and all. But you know what? I've eaten at many of his contrived chain nouveau-fusion-whatever restaurants, and they're not that good. And those who know me know that I don't have the most dsicerning palate in the world. (Basically, I'll eat anything.) I'm not a food critic or anything, but I'd be willing to bet we have better restaurants here in DC, and I'd bet my car that there are much better restaurants in New York. (And that last comment also gives me an excuse to link to this photo gallery of tricked-out Ford Festivas.)

Hopefully I'll have more time this week to seek and pass along useless yet entertaining tidbits of information, such as this article about Tony Blair's son trying to light a table at Madam's Organ on fire. Good show, chap.