I’m finally catching up.

• I hate Jennifer Schecter. I’ve hated her since the beginning of the series, and now that she’s a neurotic psycho hose beast, I hate her even more
• It’s still weird for me to see such blatant nudity and sex on TV. I’m not used to pay channels, man. I sure like watching Shane go at it though.
• I can’t believe they had Bette sign the old word for transgender. What’s the point?
• I kind of like Marlee Matlin using her voice. See, for her, I don’t consider it offensive. It’s just Marlee, it’s who she is, and she’s not afraid to communicate how she wants to. I’m sure if she didn’t want to speak for herself, she would tell the producers that. I don’t think she’s hurting the Deaf community or anything - she’s making her own decision for herself, and if she wants to talk, who has the right to say she shouldn’t? Besides, she has a very definite accent, and Bette is always signing in response, so it’s not like anybody is going to forget she’s Deaf.
• Pam Grier walking down the jail hallway was just so rad. Takes a girl back.
• I’ve always hated Jenny, but Helena doesn’t bother me nearly as much as she used to when she first joined the show. Her new girlfriend, the gambling addict, though…ew.
• I always wonder how the actors feel about making out with each other. As far as I know, Leisha Hailey is the only gay star, but nobody else seems to mind constantly rubbing all over each other either.

I could go on, but those are my recent thoughts anyway.

I am backdating this slightly because I have had connectivity issues and browser issues, and if they hadn’t happened I would have posted before midnight. Also, I am a little fuzzy because I am finishing off the last of the Drunken Egg Cream. It’s a drink of my wife’s creation - chocolate vodka, chocolate milk, and club soda. It’s good. Also, pictures will have to wait, because I am too woozy to operate the camera and upload them.

A let me sleep late this morning because I didn’t get to yesterday - I had to take her to training on my actual birthday, so I got to sleep late today! (I can’t believe I’m 27.) Once I was finally ready, we went to the Farmer’s Market and got crêpes. There were plenty of interesting places to look around, but we vowed to come back for dinner and tore ourselves away. We had been planning to take a bus tour of the city, but instead we decided to drive it ourselves; next we went over to the La Brea Tar Pits. They don’t look like much; I was kind of surprised how small they are. In fact, while growing up, I’d always thought they were huge pits on the outskirts of town, instead they are little blobs in the heart of the city! Most of them are contained behind fences, but we saw at least two that were bubbling up in the middle of everything; people seemed to enjoy poking at them with sticks. We didn’t bother with the Page Museum because it cost money, and we mostly just wanted to see the pits themselves.

After that, we wanted to go to the Chinese Theater. I took us on a rather roundabout route to get there, though - down Wilshire all the way to Western and then back along Hollywood Boulevard. It probably could have been done more directly, but I enjoyed our trip through Koreatown, Little Armenia, and all the other interesting places we saw. The trip along Hollywood Blvd was rather boring though - it was a long sequence of tattoo parlor, smoke shop, souvenir shop…tattoo parlor, smoke shop, souvenir shop…sometimes one was combined with the other, as with the tattoo parlor combined with the smoke shop. I can just picture the tattoo artist saying “whoa dude…lemme smoke another joint…okay gimme your arm” and it doesn’t sound pretty! At any rate, parking was a total pain in the ass. We finally managed to get parking outside a Famima!! store, which I found terribly amusing. Famima!! is based on Japan’s FamilyMart convenience stores, which - I’ve heard - are based on American convenience stores like 7-11. So it’s all a big circle. Soon there will be Japanese stores based on Famima!! stores, which are based on…you get the picture!

From Famima!! we walked to the Chinese Theater; I took pictures of a few stars along the way. I was astonished by how many street shows and buskers there were along Hollywood Blvd. We had been rather surprised to see Jack Sparrow eating sushi as we drove along the street…later we spotted him posing for pictures with tourists, which I assume he got paid tips for! It was hard to get any pictures at the theater itself, because the courtyard was so crowded - I had to say “excuse me” several times in order to get a decent photo. After that we went up the stairs to the Hollywood & Highland Center to take pictures of the Hollywood sign; next we went to the Disney Soda Fountain across the street where I bought way too many pins! I’m still not sure what the purpose is of the Disney Soda Fountain, but they have their own special pins, so there you go. Next we got back in the car and went to the Farmer’s Market. After struggling to find parking, we went to Lotería for dinner. We did a little shopping, and then we finally saw Sweeney Todd at the on-site movie theater. After that we came back to the hotel!

Our flight is at 11:00am tomorrow so we are waking up at 8:00am. So I am going to go to bed so I can try to get a little bit of sleep. I definitely had fun in Hollywood today, and I’m glad we drove ourselves rather than taking some dumb bus tour. It was much better that way!