Today in LA
"Today in LA" is the name of the morning newscast here. It's supposed to rhyme.
The day today in LA began with the sun rising over the Hollywood Hills, which I can see from my hotel room. My boss and I had breakfast (melon and cottage cheeses, also very LA) and then we headed over to the Beverly Hills Courthouse for our hearing. As many of you know, the Beverly Hills court has a rule against "bizarre dress." You can't wear anything "bizarre" or else they get mad. Being a woman, this caused no end of stress. Would East Coast attire be considered bizarre? Which is more bizarre, a pants suit (verboten in DC courts) or a skirt suit (so very not LA).
I decided to dress like Joan Crawford in her most intimidating and professional moments, except I concluded I should not wear a hat. So I wore a black fitted suit with white embroidery on the cuffs and lapels, a black pencil skirt (below the knee) black stockings and very 1940's looking black suede pumps. I already have black hair and white skin, so it was perfect. The only other women lawyers I saw in the couthouse were similarly attired (one was going for the Greta Garbo look, and one for Bette Davis, but the idea was the same), so I was QUITE pleased with myself. My boss didn't quite understand, but that's okay.
The hearing was a veritable Who's Who of corporate Hollywood lawyering. The procedural history of our case is very complicated, and we have been effectively consolidated with a bunch of other cases that involve virtually every network-affiliated television station in the United States. So lawyers for NBC, ABC, Universal Studios, Disney, etc., were all there, as well as lawyers for a number of media agencies and advertisers. Our local counsel spent most of the hearing huddled over my chair pointing out all the famous Hollywood insiders. Most of it went over my head.
After the hearing, my boss and I tried somewhat fruitlessly to get a cab back from the courthouse. Beverly Hills is not a big taxi part of town.
We stood out on the street in the sun for a while, looking at the fig trees and the blue sky, and the white Beverly Hills buildings. To our shock, a Beverly Hills motocycle policeman drove up and asked if we'd like him to call a cab for us. ! We said, "yeah!" So he talks into his shoulder the way cops do, and then he told us to walk up to a certain intersection. He followed us and said the cab com[any was going to call him back and tell him the ETA. We said, "Gee thanks!" The cop said -- "no problem, I told the cab company what you look like and what you're wearing, so just stay here and someone will be by shortly." I could not resist, of course, and asked the cop how he described us. I was wondering if he'd said "Joan Crawford and some tall guy." But he apparently all he said was that we were "a caucasian male and a caucasian female, in dark suits, outside the courthouse." That was accurate but disappointing.
On the way back to the hotel, my boss convinced me I was nuts to fly home on the redeye. He said I should stay the night because the hotel isn't THAT expensive and he said I could, anyway. So then we went and sat in the spa garden of the hotel, called back to DC to report about our Hollywood court appearance, and while sitting looking at the jacarandas and the palms and the sea figs and the giant sea pea plants, I decided he was right and went inside to make arrangements for staying over.
The afternoon was spent meeting with an expert. Our location was the top of a high rise in Century City. Our views were north up the Hollywood Hills, over the LA Country Club grounds, and down to the ocean. They sky was crystal clear. The view was extremely distracting. We could see the office where Ronald Reagan still has an office. High up above were dozens of traffic helicopeters, and jumbo jets from LAX that were dwarfed by the geography and looked like they were just inching across the sky. There is something soporific about watching jumbo jets come in across the Pacific ocean. I could've sat there watching them for hours. I recall the same feeling watching planes from our office in San Francisco.
After the end of the work day, I got in my rental car and drove down to Santa Monica to see the sunset and sit on the beach. I love Santa Monica. Amazingly, I found a parking spot one block from the ocean, on Wilshire Blvd., at a meter spot and the meter was already fully paid! If that isn't a sign that staying an extra night was the right thing to do....
My ultimate destination was the Third Street Promenade, a walking street in Santa Monica two blocks off the ocean. Everytime I've been in LA I've ended up on the Third Street Promenade. I love it. There are big stores like Pottery Barn and Banana Republic, but there are also about three independent bookstores, a Barnes & Noble, a whole bunch of places to eat, and at least three movie theatres. Movies are serious business here, and every theatre had lines around the block tonight. Part of it was the premier of Two Towers. But part of it was just LA movie culture. There are movies showing here that I've never even heard of before, and that I bet a million bucks will never make it to DC. My best LA movie moment was seeing Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett right here on the Third Street Promenade in 1998. I had come to town to go the opera with my best friend on Valentine's Day, because she'd recently split with her husband (a TV guy, as it happens) and didn't feel like going to the opera with him since he was on the outs, after all. We went to a matinee in a fancy Santa Monica movie house and ate LOTS of popcorn. It was fabulous. Cate Blanchett is my hero. After the movie we strolled on the beach and dabbled our toes in the ocean. Oh, and the opera was pretty good, too.
Tonight the Promenade was also decked out for Xmas. Under the jacarandas and the palm trees were Xmas carolers, a bagpipe person, a few pantomimes, a bunch of guitarists, and all kinds of Xmas decorations. The bagpipe person was playing Xmas carols, which you could hear EVERYWHERE, even inside the top floor of the Barnes & Noble. Bagpipe Xmas carols under jacaranda trees and palms is kind of weird, I thought. The promenade reminded me that perhaps one of hte reasons I prefer LA to SF is that there is more energy in LA -- probaby beacuse there are just so many more people. Something is ALWAYS going on here, and people are out an about pretty late into the evening. For example, the hotel staff have turned the entry way of my hotel into an ice skating rink. Isn't that enterprising? The advertising signs all say, "Mittens? I don't think so. Sunscreen? Definitely!" Anyway, the whole atmosphere on the Promenade was very festive, and busy, and small-townlike, with people Xmas shopping after work and kids on their way to Xmas pageants, etc. It was fun.
The weirdest thing I saw today was the Los Angeles Temple -- which is a very grand synogoue high on a hill above the Santa Monica Boulevard built in a very modern architectural style, surrounded by those extremely tall skinny palm trees and not much else. Just that image is jarring enough -- it's like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. But then, if you looked closely, you saw that someone had decorated all the trees on the temple property with red and green lights. Red and green are for Christmas. How do you suppose the rabbi feels about that?
A final note about palm trees. They are VERY tall, and they lean, and all the palm trees on a given road will tend to lean the same way. They appear to lean towards the ocean. They are the giraffes of the tree world.
posted by Anonymous @ 8:36 PM
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