Tron

On Friday night, Nicole and I drove up from San Diego to the Nuart Theater in Santa Monica. We arrived in plenty of time for the midnight showing of “Tron” but they didn’t start admitting people until about 12:30 a.m.

I wore the costume of the hero’s father in my super 8 film “The Skulls”: Boba Fett helmet, KISS t-shirt & green shorts. Nicole took a picture of me standing outside the lobby. I showed the picture to my grandma the next morning and she said, “That’s one of those helmets that the Asians wear in the sun so that they don’t get wrinkles?”

It was very crowded in the theater when they let us in. Nicole and I got a couple of aisle seats. The manager stood in front and told of the exciting midnight programs that are coming soon to the Nuart. Then they had a theater ticket raffle for two “lousy” movie posters (“Click” and “Over the Hedge” or something) and a $15 gift certificate to Café 50’s in West L.A. My ticket was only *one* number off and for some reason I grimaced in frustration. Then Nicole showed me that she had the winning ticket and I went up to collect the posters and gift certificate.

When the movie started I tried to snap a picture of the spinning title, but I was slightly late. It was great fun to watch “Tron” with a midnight crowd. Nicole didn’t really fall asleep before the movie started; she just had her eyes closed when I snapped her picture. But when we finally got to bed at 3 a.m. even I was tired out.

The Bahooka

While looking for pictures of the Bahooka on the internet, I’ve enjoyed discovering a number of Tiki websites and blogs. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, supposedly, some scenes in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” were filmed in the Bahooka.

N. and I went to the Bahooka for dinner last Friday night. It was the first time I’d been there since my bachelor party in June, and the first time I’d eaten there in about ten years. I ate ham. There was so much I had to bring it home. They brought us warm little wet towels to wipe ourselves down with, just like in Bali.

The enthusiasm about moving back to L.A. is really beginning to rouse itself, build and take form. I hope I can go to Trader Vic’s somehow; is it closed yet? This year I’ll be on hand to go with my grandma to the little market to buy yards of tripe for her New Year’s Day menudo (I never eat it, I just like going to buy the tripe). I’ll be able to resume work on my Super 8 film “The Skulls”.

But a real bummer is Florendo’s departure for Boston. It’s terrifying to imagine all the fun that I’ll miss out on in L.A. without his tips and suggestions. But if he wasn’t splitting then I couldn’t have his job and I’d still be in San Diego.

warm weather

Since our return from the honeymoon, San Diego has been hot. And humid. Our wedding cake melted. We bought a 10,000 BTU air conditioner. It manages to keep the bedroom comfortable. Fortunately, Nicole’s tolerance of the heat lasts longer than mine. If she were exhibiting signs of suffering I’d die of guilt. We’ve been spending a lot of time camping out in the bedroom, watching movies, and even eating our meals on the bed. I’m not looking forward to the electric bill. Will we never be delivered from this dreadful weather?

Honeymoon, pt. three

On our last night in Las Vegas we finally visited The Strip. The shuttle ride from the South Coast to The Strip was unbearable. It was hotter inside the shuttle than outside. The other passengers were annoying vacationers, loud kids too young to take their own cars or non-gambling, rubber-necking rubes. As usual, Nicole’s patience lasted longer than mine.

The shuttle dropped us off at the Barbary Coast. We had originally attempted to reserve a room there when we were planning our honeymoon. I’m so glad we failed, it’s a ghastly place. Dark, low-ceilinged, claustrophobia-inducing casino. Smelled horribly of old cigarettes.

On the sidewalk, the hot evening weather was oppressive to me. Even walking under the misters at the bar outside Caesar’s Palace provided no relief.

Inside Caesar’s Palace I was disappointed that I couldn’t find any cocktail waitresses wearing the elaborate Roman handmaiden outfits that I remember from years ago. I had told N. about the outfits and when we finally saw a cocktail waitress her outfit had no kitsch.

But the air conditioning made me happy to be there. I enjoyed being at Caesar’s Palace more than anywhere else we went that night - it’s an intriguing place to walk around. Or it may have seemed thus because we hadn’t done much walking yet. In retrospect I think we should have spent more time at Caesar’s Palace and less time at other places, but that’s hindsight for you.

I had the bizarre notion that a string of casino/hotels (beginning with Caesar’s Palace) were connected by a long indoor thoroughfare. In my memory, the last time I was there I spent the whole last evening looking for the people in my group, wandering from one casino to the next, never going outdoors, and that I ended up at the Luxor. I led Nicole from one end of the Appian Way to the other in Caesar’s Palace, insisting that if we kept walking we’d end up at the Luxor.

We eventually gave up and we went outside to look for the art gallery at the Bellagio. It was sheer luck that we ended up at the Bellagio gallery, because the place that I meant to take her to (I now understand) was the gallery at the Wynn.

Nicole had her first-ever gelato at the Bellagio and I told her that we were going to see the hotel’s “permanent art collection”. It turned out to be a temporary exhibit of Ansel Adams photographs. Nevertheless, the exhibit was more interesting that the “Prairie Home Companion” movie that we had watched at the South Coast theater earlier.

Afterwards we went outside to wait for the water fountains to shoot up out of the Bellagio lake. We got tired of waiting and left without seeing the fountains but it was a nice view of the water, the Eiffel tower, the other casinos, and the air was cooling off.

The rest of our evening on the Strip is not noteworthy news. Conveyor belt sidewalk, long walk on real sidewalk trying to get to the Luxor, lost in Mandelay Bay looking for the shark tank, getting lost in the Excalibur parking lot trying to get back to the sidewalk.

In the end we took a cab (without seatbelts) back to the South Coast and were very relieved and grateful to be back. I think I might have treated myself to another ice bucket of Mountain Dew.

At lunch Nicole had noticed that the South Coast's cafe offered after-midnight "graveyard shift" meals for $1.99. After midnight we ventured down and ordered two meals each. We could barely finish one and took the others to-go. And at a nearby table I counted at least two "little pretty girls" in make-up and black tights.

Honeymoon, pt. two

Traffic was pretty light on the drive to Las Vegas. Nicole and I listened to the abridged book-on-tape of Lolita read by James Mason. The desert was surprisingly green, I had told Nicole that it would look like Mars.

In the early evening we arrived at the brand new South Coast hotel and casino (it opened December 22, 2005). Outside it was almost night but the weather was like an oven! The South Coast is located on Las Vegas Boulevard about fifteen minutes south of The Strip. I wondered if I’d feel left out not staying in the heart of The Strip, but I definitely didn’t mind.

Nicole and I stayed at the South Coast for three nights. We almost never went outside the place. Nicole remarked that the casino/lobby (80,000 square feet) was noisy but not from people talking. The noise was just sounds of machines and the perpetual slot machine murmur of “whooooop, whooooop…!” We didn’t gamble a dime, one of the reasons being that we didn’t know how – even the slot machines accepted “cards” and, if you won, apparently paid in “tickets”. Yeah, okay.

Our room was colored orange and yellow-gold. The style said “neo-‘70s glamour” to me, down to the shape of the chair. It was the type of hotel room that characters on “Columbo” or “Hawaii Five-O” would have dreamed of staying at in 1973. Big and roomy with the all-important powerful air-conditioning. And there was a big plasma television stuck on the wall with sockets for Nicole’s DVD player.

I remember the hallway outside our room was very, very long. Nearby there was an ice machine. I couldn’t help filling our ice bucket with ice and then filling that up with Mountain Dew from a liter bottle I brought. I simply wanted it and I was on my honeymoon. Nicole took a couple pictures of this with her cell phone, but we haven’t the technology to download them from the camera.

A memorable aspect of every excursion outside of our room was that the South Coast was teeming with “little pretty girls”. The hotel was sponsoring a convention or competition for ice skater girls. At literally all hours of the night you couldn’t hardly sneeze without knocking down a clutch of pre-teen little girls in full make-up and black tights.

For this reason it seemed like the perfect environment for a child molester on his honeymoon -- he’s struggling to go straight, he’s made it through the wedding, and then *this* happens. I imagined that the infernal forces which had tried to stop my marriage with a bomb threat were now trying to ruin me with temptation. But they were thwarted by a clerical blunder in Hell. Somewhere there was a vacationing child molester surrounded by domineering Russian women.

Honeymoon, pt. one

In the chaos of getting married I forgot to bring my camera to the honeymoon. When we go back to the hotels for our anniversary I’ll take pictures, but until then you’ll have to imagine it.

At the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena somehow the room we reserved was upgraded to a suite. I don’t know how this was managed but I’m very grateful to whatever entity made this happen. I had wanted to stay in the main building, but when we got to our suite I didn’t care.

Just inside there was a little hallway and a lovely bedroom with a huge bathroom. The bathroom reminded me of the hotel room at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Down the hallway there was another little bathroom, a huge living room with a fireplace, a couch, a dining table a big t.v. cabinet (with surround sound), a desk and a doorway to a big wooden patio with a umbrella table and chairs. Perfect plush pale yellow and white décor, and I’m frustrated that I don’t live there. There was even a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and a "congratulations!" card from the staff.

We tried out the t.v. and surround sound by watching the first five minutes of my “Alien 3” DVD. I am wanting surround sound at home now.

The next morning our breakfast arrived at the room. We ate it out on the patio and it was shockingly good. I was stunned by the quality of the English muffins alone. The weather was nice, the trees were nice, and I’ve got to move back to the San Gabriel valley.

After breakfast Nicole took a shower and I tried to hook up my laptop to the hotel internet. Before I had even balked at the connection fee, through the window I saw a squirrel run onto our patio. I ran to the patio door in time to see him escape through the railing with my last English muffin. He turned to me, gave me a look of uncomprehending displeasure, and was suddenly gone with my muffin.

Wedding!

For the entire engagement, every step of the wedding planning was simple, dreamy and effortless. The last twenty-four hours before the wedding were a nightmare of impossible obstacles.

We arrived in Los Angeles too late the day before the wedding to get the license. We couldn’t get married without a license. After my bachelor party we drove back to San Diego to get a license on Saturday.

Saturday morning we were in the middle of filling out the license at the records office when there was a bomb threat. The building was evacuated, the police said, “Who knows when the office will be back open. Better try again another day.”

We drove to a 24-7 “jail O.K.” wedding and chapel service to get a license. In the middle of filling out the paperwork the notary witness said, “Sorry, that license won’t be good in Los Angeles, only San Diego.”

Driving back to L.A. we decided to see how the bomb threat was progressing. The building was back open, we finished filling out the paperwork, and fifteen minutes later we were driving to Pasadena for the wedding.

We were an hour late, but we got married.

My memory of the reception is a little blurry; it’ll probably come into focus with some therapy. I could hear some violin music somewhere. Kept getting ambushed to pose for pictures. Very grateful every time I got to sit down and eat food or cake. Nicole and I didn’t even change before we left the reception, we arrived at the Ritz-Carlton in our wedding clothes.