Tonya Plank's Blog, page 12

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

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I always like to use a photo of Alvin Ailey's Revelations for my happy holiday post but I saw this one, of Hope Boykin in Mauro Bigonzetti's Festa Barocca (photo by Steve Vaccariello), and decided it was bright and festive. Change is always good, right…

I can't believe it but this was the first year I've missed Alvin Ailey's City Center season in many years – as long as I can remember. The last few months were such a whirlwind for me though it doesn't really seem like Christmas. It's probably also the weather: it's supposed to be 75 degrees in L.A. tomorrow- by far the warmest Christmas I've had since I left Phoenix two decades ago.

Anyway, happy holidays, everyone! And thank you so much for continuing to read my blog despite the sometimes rather huge gaps between posts due to my move

RedCat, Ohad Naharin, and the Beauty of Downtown L.A.

Last Friday night, my friend Debra Levine invited me to a winter dance concert by students of CalArts (California Institute of the Arts, a prestigious arts college here), at  the RedCat in downtown L.A. For New Yorkers, the RedCat reminded me a lot of the BAM's smaller Harvey theater. It was about the same size, very low-key, and had a very similar, comfy cafe / bar off to the side.

There were four pieces on the program, all of them modern: Yes Is Not Passive, by Stephanie Nugent; The Sea, the Sea, by Colin Connor; and two by Ohad Naharin – Humus and Echad Mi Yodea. I'd never seen Echad Mi Yodea before – and it's one of the pieces Naharin's most known for. I don't know how I've missed it, but I do think I've seen excerpts. Anyway, it was by far my favorite piece on the program. Here's a version, performed by Israeli dancers. In the version I saw, everyone was dressed in full black suits, black shoes, and hats. They all stripped down to their underwear by the end, except for the dancer in the front right-side chair, who kept falling at the end of each line. I really loved this piece. So much energy and layered with meaning.

I also liked Yes Is Not Passive, the first piece. There were many different parts, but my favorite was a solo where one man – Jose Luis Trujillo – simply stood in front of the audience and shouted "Yes" so many times his voice became distorted and his contorted face nearly began to melt with sweat. It reminded me of William Forsythe or Pina Bausch. Captivating.

I was also captivated by the architecture of downtown L.A. This was the first time I'd been to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (an opera house where ballet and other kinds of dance performances take place), and the gorgeous Walt Disney Concert Hall (pictures below). So so so stunning!

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All of the buildings together were very much like Lincoln Center, except with that breathtaking architecture, far more magical. I was really truly blown away. I was also blown away by how dead it was. It really broke my heart that there were so few people out and about down there on a Friday night during holiday season when you'd expect there to be concerts and performing arts events galore. (Bill T. Jones' Fela! is playing in one of the buildings.) L.A. is definitely a very different town from N.Y. in so many respects.

Afterward, we went to a small, popular hole in the wall in Little Tokyo (also in downtown) where I had the best meal (salmon teriyaki) I've had since I moved here. And after that Debra drove me down the east side of Sunset (the only stretch of Sunset I hadn't been on) to the trendy neighborhoods on that side of town: Los Feliz, Echo Park, and Silver Lake. Echo Park looked pretty happening and like a place I wouldn't mind living. And it's very close to Dodger Stadium

Pasha Gets His Own Show!

With my move, I didn't have time to keep up with it, but this season Pasha Kovalev was a professional dancer on the British TV show Strictly Come Dancing (which our Dancing With the Stars is modeled on). He danced with British celeb Chelsea Healey (photo above).

It's just been announced that he and another pro dancer from that show, Katya Virshilas, will get their own tour this spring. They'll be performing in various theaters in England. Local dancers will join them, but they'll be the headliners. Hope it'll eventually come to the U.S.

Makes me so happy to know that Pasha's doing so well with his career. I wonder what Anya Garnis is up to these days. I don't know of Virshilas. Any of my ballroom peeps familiar with her?

Roberto Bolle's Fridge

In a recent issue of the Italian magazine Corriere della Serra, Roberto Bolle (along with several other celebrities) revealed the contents of his refrigerators – both the one he keeps in his New York home, and the one in his Milan kitchen. The blogger Gramilano has nicely translated. (Above photo from Gramilano as well.)

So, he's one of those dancers who's a real health nut. He eats seitan   Seriously though, I think seitan is actually quite good. But I'm not sure what he means by not being able to buy mineral water in the United States…

Don Mattingly's Lovely Mother Ginger

Ha – another instance of the intersection of my two favorite pastimes… Have you guys seen this yet? I just saw it on the news. It's Don Mattingly (former Yankee, current Dodgers manager), "dancing" the role of Mother Ginger in the Evansville Ballet's production of Nutz. (Evansville, Indiana is apparently where he grew up.) I love the part where he gives all the signals! And how cute is the little boy in the baseball uniform…

The Sunset Boulevard Gunman and More LA Traffic Distress

Did you all hear about this? Just wondering if the news made it out of California. It seems like unless a lot of people are killed these kinds of stories don't make national headlines. Anyway, Friday early afternoon a 26-year-old man – a hipster type from the looks of him on the news – stood in the middle of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street – a very crowded, touristy part of Hollywood – and began shooting a gun mostly at people driving through the intersection, but at some pedestrians as well. Several people were shot, and one man – a music industry executive driving a Mercedes – is in critical condition. The gunman was eventually shot and killed by the police. From his angry shouting and his failure to drop his weapon at police orders, it seemed to onlookers that it was a suicide, that he wanted police to shoot him.

I happened to be in that part of town right at that time. Yet I somehow missed all of it. When I first heard word of it I was sitting in a film processing shop a few blocks over on Sunset getting headshots I'd just had taken developed (I decided it would be fun and interesting to try to get some extra work while I'm here). I thought it was a joke it seemed so unreal. It also seemed like a crazy ridiculous metaphor of my experience that day, the worst I've had yet on LA streets that made me truly not understand how people can live and drive here for any length of time without seriously going nuts.

I'd answered a call for extras the day before. The casting agency decided to take me on. But I had no headshots so the agent referred me to a photographer in Hollywood (an excellent photog, by the way). So his studio was in a cottage, the second of two large cottages situated down a very long narrow driveway off a very busy street. He'd told me I could use the driveway to park in, but if I did, to drive in as far as I could. But the driveway was so long and narrow and there were two cars already parked there. I didn't know how they'd get out if I parked behind them. I was there early so I drove around and around and around trying to find a parking space on the street – on any street in the area. It was a residential area. Nothing, no spaces at all. So, finally I just decided to park behind the last car in the driveway, hoping the other cars wouldn't have to leave until evening. I no more than got out when a woman came running out of the first cottage. "Oh, I'm really sorry," she said, "but could you pull out so I can get out please. I'm so sorry!" I told her not to worry about it at all – I totally understood – then fumbled for my keys, got in my car and backed my Prius out the long long long narrow, narrow, narrow driveway, terrified I'd hit one of the cottages or the brick wall on the other side on the way out.

I made it down okay, miraculously, but then had to back out onto an insanely busy street. I tried to see around the cars parked on each side but couldn't really see well no matter how hard I tried. So, I just had to take a breath and go very slowly and hope if anyone was coming down the street they'd see me backing out and nicely stop. It worked out, amazingly, but when I drove out my front bumper crashed into the pavement because the driveway's incline was so high. Ugh… I find this everywhere too in LA – really steep inclines into driveways and parking lots that you can't help but crash your bumper on. Who designed them, owners of enormous jacked-up trucks?

So, the woman thanked me and pulled away, and in I went again. I'd just parked and gotten out of my car when the guy whose car was still parked in front of me came rushing out of the house next door asking if I could please just let him out before I went inside since he would have to leave in about 15 minutes. I laughed and he apologized. I don't know why drivers kept apologizing though. It seemed the person who should have been apologizing was the idiot who designed a driveway serving several residences on which only one car at a time could drive.

So, same thing – I tried to back up poker straight so as not to hit anything, risked my back bumper crashing into traffic I couldn't see, and crashed the front bumper into the steep entrance to the driveway. I drove down the street, got honked at for going too slow, had to go around the corner and come back up the street so as not to block traffic, leaving the guy who needed to back out waiting for me so he could park behind me…

All I could think about all throughout my photo session was how many people I'd have to search for in order to ask them to move their cars so I could get out.

Unbelievably, there were none when I left. My little car was the only one in the driveway. This time the photographer helped me back out. He tried to instruct me on how to turn the front tires just so so that I wouldn't bump the front again on the steep incline. But I just couldn't avoid doing that – especially because I was so nervous about backing out onto a crowded street lined with parked cars. This time there was a car coming down the street but he saw the photographer in the middle of the street with his palm up and stopped to wait for me. After that driver waved me on, I continued. But a driver behind him didn't feel like waiting, and so went to pass him. I guess that driver didn't realize I was backing out, which is why the guy behind me was waiting. I don't know what that driver was thinking. I guess he thought the car in front of him just felt like stopping for no reason. Anyway, that driver nearly smashed into me when he tried to pass the car in back of me. Of course another car was coming down the street in the other lane, in our direction, and the car who needed to badly to pass me and the guy in back of me nearly crashed into that car head-on. I really don't know how there aren't more car crashes here. I really don't.

So, after taking my pictures, the photographer had instructed me to take my film down the block on Sunset to have it developed, which I would then bring back to him so he'd help me select a headshot from the proofs. It took me about half an hour to find a parking spot in the shopping center. I even drove down the street to another shopping center – a Rite Aid – to try to find a space. But every parking lot here is just insanely designed. It's like the designers don't think of the possibility that every space might be filled and there may, just may be a car driving into the lot trying to park AND a parked car needing to back up out of its space and leave. I mean, unthinkable right, that two cars would be driving in the same parking lot at the same time. There is no room in these parking lots for more than one car to drive in when full. And then when you go to pull out of the lot onto the street, there are so many cars parked on the street, and the lanes are so narrow, and there are ALWAYS ALWAYS cars driving EACH way down these narrow narrow streets. So, you're going to have a total of four cars on a two lane street – one traveling in each direction, and one parked on each side. These are streets that were meant for two cars only. And then you need to pull out onto this street so you can leave the lot that was full that you couldn't park in. So, you have to pull out, and you're going to have a very hard time seeing around the parked cars, and when you finally think you can go because it's clear one way, of course the car coming the other way nearly smashes into you, often trying to pull into the full parking lot you're trying to pull out of.

I don't understand how people do this, I really don't. It's like LA is a parking lot in which there can fit 100 cars. But there are 500 cars that need to park. And there's nowhere else for the 400 extra cars to go. So what's that going to be like? Yes, nowhere to park, no space to drive around the parked cars. Major major congestion trying to get anywhere you need to go. And major major potholes, these streets are so overused.

Anyway, I remembered a friend's advice to park in shopping mall lots whenever possible since they're usually the cheapest (because they usually give you a few hours for free and / or validate for a few dollars off). So, I drove up to Hollywood Boulevard and drove down to Highland and parked in the Highland and Hollywood (H&H) mall. The mall was probably a good 3/4 of a mile from the film processing place. I then walked up and out of the deep bowels of the garage and walked all around, everywhere I needed to go: back to the film processing place to get my finished proofs, back to the photographer's studio to decide on the headshot, back to the film processing place to get the headshots made, then to the casting agency to deliver the headshots, then back to the mall to have dinner, get validated, and get my car and go home home home!

It was a hell of a lot of walking around – must've walked a good five miles in all. Probably more. But it was so worth it; I was so much happier having my Prius safely ensconced in its little space deep in the bowels of the mall. On my way to the casting agency I saw an accident and thought, of course. Of course of course of course. I mean, how not?

Then at the casting agency, headshots finally in hand, while waiting to see the agent, I collapsed onto a couch and nearly fell asleep. Until news of the gunman popped up on the TV and woke me up. And then I remembered the talk of a police shooting in the area at the film processing shop, and I realized, wow, that was for real. I phoned my mom immediately thinking she'd be out of her mind with worry, knowing I was to be in Hollywood that day. But she hadn't heard the story – she lives in North Carolina. Nor had my dad, who lives in Arizona. I still don't think anyone outside of CA, outside of LA heard of it.

After giving the agent my headshots, I walked back to the mall, found a nice restaurant for dinner, and sat in a dark corner trying hard to decompress. But it was difficult to do so because it was getting dark outside (ie: after 5) and I started to worry about it being dark and dangerous deep in the bowels of the garage. I tried to hurry and eat. Waiters in LA never rush you, interestingly. It's so the opposite of NY in that sense. And restaurants are rarely packed, also interestingly, because I always wonder where in the world all the drivers on the streets are going.

Anyway, for some happy reason the mall garage was full of security guards directing traffic. Weirdly, the mall parking lot wasn't full. There were lots of available spaces. I guess this is another reason why my friend told me to park in mall garages – because others don't. I thought how nice it would be if there were guards directing drivers searching desperately for parking out on the residential streets and the shopping center parking lots, like the one where I saw the accident. I was glad for their abundance in the mall lot because that meant I was safe.

The mall parking ended up costing me $10 – the maximum rate – even with validation from the restaurant because I was there for so long. But by that point cost was so unimportant. I just wanted to get home. It took me an hour and twenty minutes to drive the six miles back to my apartment because Sunset was blocked off due to the shooting.

This coming week I have at least two places to go during daytime, both of which, thankfully I can take a bus and a bus / subway to. But I have a third thing I want to do as well – and that I may well have to drive to, which I'm kind of dreading. I could take a combination of three buses, which gets expensive because they don't have transfers here. So, you have to pay $1.50 each time you board, even if three of the rides are going in the same direction, en route to the same destination. And buses most only run once or twice an hour, and most don't run after 8 pm. The subway runs much more frequently and is pretty good for the areas it serves, but stops on most of the subway lines are few and far between, so you usually need to take a subway / bus combination. And the trains don't run all night either.

There are things I love about LA. I actually really love Sunset Boulevard – it goes from the east side of LA all the way to Pacific Palisades, to the ocean. I always try to drive home on that street, even when my GPS insists I should take Santa Monica or Wilshire. It's like the A train in NYC, passing through practically every neighborhood in the city. It has history and soul. It's a microcosm of the city. I saw a book the other day in the shop of the ArcLight Hollywood cinema (which is at the corner of Sunset and Vine, right where the gunman was). Each chapter was devoted to celebrating one stretch of Sunset Blvd and highlighting some of the ever so engaging characters who live in its neighborhoods.

I don't know. I guess I'll get used to the driving and parking insanity. Maybe. I do desperately wish they'd improve the public transportation system though.

Los Angeles Ballet's NUTCRACKER, and More Settling Into LA Angst

Last night was the opening of Los Angeles Ballet's Nutcracker. Above photo – of my favorite dance – taken from LA Mommy Poppins.) It had its premiere at the Alex Theater in Glendale, and will be showing again there tonight. Then, it'll travel to UCLA's Royce Hall in mid December, and will end at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center at the end of the month. I find it interesting how the productions here seem to travel around the city, in contrast to those of the NY companies.

Anyway, my new Twitter friend, the wonderful Christopher McDaniel, a dancer in the company, generously invited me. And I'm so glad he did because I was worried I would miss getting my Nutz fix this year. The production was fun. This company is much smaller and you can tell has far less of a budget than the two big New York companies. So no live music, no ginormous trees magically shooting through the roof, no Stella McCarthy-designed costumes. But it was a sweet production, and the theater was really packed – mainly with families, I assume from the suburbs. And the audience really seemed to enjoy it. This ballet is all about pleasing children anyway.

The Alex Theater is quite small and every seat is pretty close to the stage, which is nice for a change from the huge NY houses. I think that up close feeling, the feeling that you're part of the action compensates for theatrics like NYCB's magic tree.

Here is my extremely crappy night-taken iphone photo of the entrance, which I loved and found gloriously West Coast with its Art Deco-y design and bright sparkling lights noticeable from quite far away

The choreography (by artistic directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary) wasn't as clever and intricately detailed as Ratmansky's but it was still very lovely classical ballet. My favorite overall was the Arabian (pictured above). The couple entered the stage with the man holding the woman high above his head in a beautifully snaky overhead lift. The female dancer, Julia Cinquemani, was really flexible and long-limbed and she did an excellent job with the part. She also had terrific stage presence, and I'm not the only one who thought so – they got huge applause at the end.

Of course I loved the Russian dance, as I always do. And Christopher was in that one so it was all the more special! There was no Tea / Chinese dance, which I found refreshing because that one always seems to end up embarrassing me with its ridiculous stereotypes.

I found the mouse costumes splendidly creepy – it's just that those tails reminded me of an appendage to a costume that I saw recently on an episode of the HBO series Bored to Death and, well, eeeek. And when the mice died they did so with their little legs bent and up in air – so real looking, it made me laugh! Mother Ginger was danced by a man, as in NYCB's, but here he wore an actual gingerbread house as a costume, his head coming up through the chimney. And little children came out of the house and danced. They were very popular, those kids! I think they had lots of family members in the audience No ornery little mouse, as in Ratmasky's.

My friend was impressed with the boy who played Clara's little brother, Fritz – Aidan Merchel-Zoric. She thought he was a very good young actor.

All in all, I really enjoyed the production and am so glad I went.

But I think for a while going out is going to be a bit fraught with angst for me, until I get used to things more… So, the performance began at 7:30. At 5:00 my friend who I'd invited, who lives in a beach city, called on her cell phone. She sounded a bit frantic. "Tonya?!" she said when I answered.

"Uh huh?" I answered.

"Um, I'm really sorry and I don't understand this at all and I really don't know what's going on, but I'm in my car and I'm getting ready to leave, and I just typed the address of the theater into the GPS, and it's telling me my estimated arrival time is 8:20 pm?!"

"Three and a half hours? What?" I was as astonished as she. "I'd think you'd be in Palm Springs in three and a half hours."

"I'd think I'd be in Arizona in three and a half hours!" she shrieked.

Glendale is in northeastern LA, up over the Hollywood Hills, and so on the reverse edge of town from the beach cities. But come on, it's like 25 miles. It really shouldn't have surprised me that much. I spent several days this week driving to UCLA, which is diagonally across town for me, and is about 20 miles away, and I've spent about three to four hours per day in my car going to and from. Anyway, she told me she'd try to be there as soon as possible, she'd go on back roads and avoid freeways to save time, but she'd perhaps have to pick up her ticket during intermission. I said no worries, but did worry about her sanity after spending a total of seven hours in her car in one day – which is longer than it takes me to get to Phoenix…

Anyway, she drove through town, avoiding the freeways, and got there in two hours, thankfully.

Then, afterward, we had planned to go to a newish cocktail lounge nearby with this supposedly up and coming mixologist. The cocktail lounge was close but not close enough to walk to. But when we looked it up online it seemed like there was only street parking, which may have been a real pain. We'd each be in our separate cars and it might take me a while to get out of the crowded garage near the theater that I'd parked in, and what if there were no parking spaces there, and I didn't have any quarters for the meters anyway, etc. etc. We ended up deciding to go to the bar of a chain restaurant down the street, that we could easily walk to. And that bar was all nice and good, and we ended up meeting some movie industry people (I'm starting to realize you meet them everywhere) and discussing various flavored ciders and new caloric menu listings now required by law and how horrid it was for the government to require restaurants to shove in our faces just how much we were consuming, and all manner of interesting things … But it still bothered me that parking angst prevented us from going where we'd originally planned to go – the more interesting, newish place with the supposedly brilliant cocktail mixologist, rather than the chain. That never would have happened in New York (my friend happens to be from NY as well, though she's been here a lot longer than I have).

We were chatting so, we forgot the time and soon it was well after midnight. When we left the restaurant the street was deserted. We agreed to walk together to the parking garage she'd parked in, then she'd drive me to my car in the garage I'd parked in because I was freaking out a bit about walking through a dark garage alone. It all came out okay, but it made me think, what if each of us were covering the performance on our own – or the opening of the new cocktail bar with a supposedly brilliant mixologist – and had to be out late and had to go to our cars alone…

I don't know, I guess it'll take me a while to get used to this new life…

James Wolcott on Deborah Jowitt in the Seventies

I've been reading James Wolcott's memoir, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York (photo above taken at the ArcLight Hollywood Cafe). It's about his life as a writer in New York and his years working at the Village Voice in the magazine's early days. (He got a job there after sending Norman Mailer a copy of an essay he wrote about Mailer's appearance on a TV show for his school newspaper and Mailer went wild over it. It's so hard to believe there was a time in NY when careers were based on talent and not on pedigree and Ivy League schools…)

Anyway, at the beginning, Wolcott describes several of the writers who worked at the Voice back then. Of course I was very intrigued by his words about the magazine's now legendary dance critic:

"The dance critic Deborah Jowitt had the fine-boned fortitude of a frontier settler with eyes forever fixed on future horizons; her merciful consideration of even the most flailing effort and her descriptive set pieces suitable for framing set her apart from the tomahawk throwers."

Apart from his brilliant writing (those metaphors, and adjectives!) I found this interesting because it seems that the "tomahawk throwing" form of criticism is so in vogue these days. I guess because in the internet age, incendiary writing begets comments which beget more readers, or ROI or what have you… I've had several people (mostly writers) tell me the problem with my blog has always been that I'm not critical enough – I could never be a "real" critic because I'm too nice, and forgiving of crappy art. Those same people are also critical of other, professional critics for the same. But what's wrong with "merciful consideration" and rich description? Sometimes it's far harder to try and find the value in something – to try to figure out what exactly the artist is trying to do and to place that attempt in context and describe why it's worthy than it is to ridicule it or tear it apart. And description – especially of a largely abstract art form – is damn hard.

I feel Wolcott's words describe Edwin Denby as well, and when I read his small pieces about dance in the forties and fifties, read together in book form one article right after the other, it's like they tell a story of that era. I wonder if that sense of narrative would be lost in writing that focuses more on attack than on giving the reader an overall picture of what happened.

Anyway, it's a really good book – Wolcott's that is – and makes me miss New York – even though that's not the New York I know, unfortunately.

Now off to a Michael Connelly reading at a Barnes and Noble that is thankfully more centrally located than blasted Santa Monica (even though I love Santa Monica). I still have to drive though. Am still so not used to driving everywhere. Every time I go out I'm still so inclined to walk or take the subway or bus. You just can't though. They run infrequently or not at all at night and walking is impossible unless the event you're going to happens to be right in the same neighborhood – and then you still may be walking a mile or so.

Settling into LA II: Santa Monica, Rose Bowl Flea Market, NoHo Arts Festival, and Universal Studios

Here are some more of my recent LA photos. I guess before really settling in, there's a period where you just have to be a tourist

Most of my friends seem to live near Santa Monica, so I've been spending a good amount of time out there. Above is the Pier, where Route 66 officially ends.

It's a bit Coney Island-esque with the ferris wheel and all (which is lit up at night). Not nearly as fascinatingly cheesy though And no Nathan's hot dogs.

The Pier's very touristy – mainly filled with souvenir shops and restaurants like this one, called Bubba Gump, and named after the movie, Forrest Gump, and specializing in seafood of course.

Here's the beach.

And here's the Third Street Promenade (so named because its cobblestoned street, which goes on for three blocks, is vehicle-free), which is also pretty touristy, with lots of chain stores like Banana Republic and Barnes and Noble and Starbucks.

In places though it kind of reminded me of Vienna, with little cafes and wine bars in the middle of the street.

There were also some street musicians.

And a Christmas tree.

I went to Barnes and Noble for a discussion of LA Noir by three novelists of the genre: Denise Hamilton, Hector Tobar, and Scott O'Connor. It was really pretty interesting and made me feel that LA and NY have more in common than not. It made me feel at home, like readings often do, and made me want to pick up where I left off several weeks ago now with my own writing project.

I picked up one of the short story compilations that the writers contributed to, Los Angeles Noir, and also James Wolcott's new memoir, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York, which I've been meaning to get since I first heard about its release. Unbelievably, I hadn't been in a bookstore since Borders closed a couple months ago.

I have to say, visiting bookstores used to be one of my favorite things to do. They've always made me feel safe and warm and un-alone, if I was feeling lonely. But they just don't make me feel that way anymore. This one was pretty empty, sadly, even on an event night – empty both of people and books. It was also pretty dimly lit – making it hard to find the books you're looking for; it was as if the salespeople just wanted everyone to leave so they could close and go home. I don't know, this bookstore actually depressed me.

But hopefully cafes and bars will take over in celebrating and spreading literary culture. Here's a lively poetry reading at a coffee shop called Priscilla's back in my hood.

Here are a few photos of my trip to the NoHo Arts Festival last weekend. NoHo (North Hollywood) is kind of a bohemian area that, to New Yorkers, I'd liken to Bushwick. There are lots of dance studios (mainly teaching hip hop and jazz, some ballet), acting studios, very small theaters (as in off, off-Broadway), and a few galleries. For the festival, they had these little stations around town where all passersby could contribute to a work of art.

One of the galleries, showcasing art by those working in theater, and some photojournalism.

Here's a hip hop singer, Brooklyn J., performing on the mainstage with several female backup dancers.

Here's a band. Music seemed to be mainly punk and grunge.

The arts festival coincided with a little farmers market, which I guess happens every Saturday near the subway. I was particularly intrigued by this vendor, Homeboy Bakery, who has several lines of products (bread, desserts, tortilla chips and salsa, etc.) for sale at both farmers markets and in local groceries, and whose mission is to help young people from troubled backgrounds stay out of trouble by keeping them employed with creative jobs.

I spent Veteran's Day at Universal Studios. I'm such a tourist! I couldn't help it. I hadn't been there in over thirty years. I think the only parts of the studio tour that are still in existence from then are the Jaws and Psycho exhibits!

I couldn't get a good shot of the phony shark coming up to attack the tour trolley. In this photo, he's just set off some explosive device and is now coming for us.

On the ride, they show you via the overhead monitors what the scenes that were shot on the sites you're visiting looked like in the finished movie. Here's a photo of the actor from Jaws messing about with the mechanical shark.

Here's the Bates Motel, where they have an actor playing Norman come out, drag his mother's body about, and eventually threaten guests on the ride.

Here's part of a set from a plane crash. I forgot the movie… but this is from an actual plane.

I also sat in on a little demo on how they train animals to "act" in the movies. These animals – dogs, cats (cats are the hardest of animals to train because of their independent nature), birds, an adorable little fox, a little monkey, and a chimpanzee, were so sweet and amazingly well-behaved; kind of made me want to be a trainer…

And on Sunday, I went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, which takes place on the second Sunday of every month. I'd read a lot about this, so just had to check it out. Plus, I needed to get a few things for the apartment.

The amount of crazy stuff there – it was a hoot! Like these old fire hydrants…

And this piece of furniture that looks like it once sat in a museum, or maybe a hotel lobby.

And all these signs. A couple behind me became quite excited over the Jack Daniels one.

I badly wanted one of these Sixties era yellow lounge chairs! But nowhere to put them…

Or this Freudian-looking burgundy couch.

I needed a couple of end tables, so ended up getting this very art deco-looking piece (whose scent Rhea has approved),

and, though I really have no idea what it is, this piece. All I know is it's small and has an ornate top handle for carrying that matches its legs, and it has a little door that opens up and provides a little container for books, or in my case a CD player and old CDs. I thought it was fun and very very old.

Finally, back in Burbank, here are some cars at the antique car show held in the Bob's Big Boy parking lot every Friday night.

Okay, that's all for now. Next, I hope to visit Hollywood Hills… hopefully to see Stravinsky's house (see Ballet Lover's comment on my last post!) And on Sunday, I'll be going to a dance performance – an actual ballet performance – finally! I'll be the guest of LA Times writer (and Arts Meme blogger) Debra Levine for the live-streaming of the Bolshoi's Sleeping Beauty starring our David Hallberg. Can't wait!

Finally, Settling into L.A.

Yes – I finally have a decent, stable internet connection and can blog! It's weird but here you have to kind of figure out what internet speed you need and pay your cable company accordingly. In New York I remember there being only one speed. Weird. Anyway, I think I'm okay to blog now, but I'm still kind of settling in and haven't seen much in the way of performing arts. I'm hoping that will change this weekend.

Here are some photos I've taken so far. I moved out of New York at the end of September, stayed with relatives in Phoenix for about three weeks, then moved to Los Angeles in late October. I've been here two weeks now. I really love it. The weather is wonderful: it's generally warm and sunny with a rainy day thrown in here or there. Temperatures right now are actually low for the season – and highs are in the 60s!

LA is definitely very spread out but it's not that hard to make your way around – especially with a car. People say New Yorkers take the subway and Los Angelenos (I think that's the noun) drive everywhere. But I've found that's not necessarily true. I've taken the subway twice now, and the buses many times. (In LA the whole transportation system is called the metro, like in DC or Paris). The buses don't run that often, so if you rely on them you're probably going to double or triple your commuting time. The subways – at least the red line, which is awesome – run much more frequently than the buses – about every fifteen minutes on weekdays, but they stop running around 11 at night. So you can't have a huge nightlife. Hopefully, if more people start taking public transportation, the people who run the metro will have incentive to extend the hours and frequency of service.

Anyway, here is the station at the top of the red line, in North Hollywood, or NoHo, as it's becoming known.

North Hollywood I guess used to be known as somewhat of a gangland, but it's becoming a burgeoning arts district. There are a few galleries, but it's mostly dance and acting studios, with some off-off-Broadway-type theaters. And there are some cool-looking clothing stores and cafes and restaurants. My photos of NoHo didn't come out very well because I went there on one of the grayest days since I've been here, but I'm hoping to take better pics over the weekend, when they're having … an arts fair!

If you take the red line subway south, you end up first in Universal City, which is where Universal Studios is located, then in Hollywood proper, probably the most touristy part of town, but for me important because it's where all the mainstage, Broadway-level theater is, like

the Pantages Theater, where Twyla Tharp's Come Fly With Me is currently showing.

And here are some more touristy photos:

You can kind of see the "Hollywood" sign in the background on the hill. I live right over that hill, in Burbank, where many of the studios, including Warner Bros., reside. In fact, I feel like Warner Brothers practically owns Burbank.

You see signs like this everywhere.

But it's good because you also see surveillance cameras everywhere, with signs warning against trespassers. I've been told Burbank is a very safe place, and I think this may be one reason why. Their police force is also supposed to be superb.

But back in Hollywood:

Here is the Grauman's Chinese Theater, at which many big movie premieres have taken place.

And here's the Walk of Fame, with all the star names, some of which – many of which – I admit I didn't recognize at all:

I love my neighborhood, and my building. Here's a view from my window:

Okay, not the ocean, but I'm very happy with a view of the pool and courtyard!

And I have so much within easy walking distance: my new favorite cafe, which serves a huge variety of coffee, tea and hot chocolate and where there are lots of people rapidly clicking away on keyboards (writing screenplays perhaps?); an even closer Starbucks filled with equally interesting people in case I don't want to walk that far; a nice Japanese take-out place whose walls are covered with pics of the owner posing with famous people and where I've already heard one young woman telling the owner about her new TV pilot in the works; two pet stores; two large grocery stores (I met a hip hop dancer in one of them); one big drug store and another smaller and more homey one; a shoe repair and dry cleaner; a bank; the requisite dive bar (this one with karaoke); the requisite (for me) Mexican restaurant; two theaters – one off-Broadway and one off-off; and countless charming eateries, including the oldest remaining Bob's Big Boy:

There were once many Bobs' out west but most of them were bought out by J.B.'s, which is what it was called when I worked there as a hostess as a teenager in Phoenix. But they've preserved this one pretty well, and even have a car hop out back (where I guess they serve you in your car, if you like – I haven't tried it), and they transform the parking lot into an antique car show on Friday nights.

Anyway, I have to go to sleep so I can get up early early early and hopefully avoid rush hour traffic to make my way to the west side for an appointment tomorrow morning. More soon!