Name:Larry Country:United States State:California Metro:Los Angeles Gender:Male
Interests:Music, Movies, Pop Culture, Politics, leftism, Berkeley, International Relations, Running, Current Events, NPR, KCRW, China, Great Britain, zhong wen, pop art, andy warhol, roy lichtenstein, impressionism, photography, british culture, International Travel, major metropolitan areas like, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, a good cup of tea, good food, cooking, walking in LA, biking in LA, Urban hiking and exploring, public transit. Expertise:I know nothing. Occupation:Administrative Industry:Entertainment
I have some more time now, as I'm waiting for people to come to look at the apartment. I'm going to update with the rest.
July
At the beginning of the month, we got the Thursday and Friday after the 4th of July off. This year's independence day celebration paled in comparison to last year's (NYC, Belle and Sebastian, free food and booze at an unimpeded view at the waterfront in the South Street Seaport mall, etc). Then again, I think last year has been the best so far, with the time in DC under the Washington Monument a close second (that one didn't have Belle and Sebastian). Me, Nelson, and one of Nelson's co-workers went to the Marina Del Rey fireworks display. It was just ok.
The Thursday after, I did my last training run for the San Francisco Marathon - 20 miles. I started at about 6 AM in the morning, and got back at around 9:30 AM, inclusive of stopping at stop lights. My route was along Westwood Blvd. up to Wilshire, along Wilshire until La Cienega, La Cienega to Pico Blvd, Pico Blvd. to the beach, the beach to Arizona Ave. back to West LA/Westwood. I was told by friends to not go further with long distance training runs in the last month of training, and to taper off, though maintain. So after this one, I only did about 10 mile runs after.
The first weekend of July, I also went to Dallas, TX for my cousin's wedding. It was interesting for me, as I had never been to Texas, outside of the airport. It was actually kind of nice, though a little strange for me, culturally. It was also really hot and humid. Friday, the first night in, I met up with my other cousin and my sister and brother-in-law. We went to my brother-in-law's friend's place and hung out and had some drinks. After that, we went back to the hotel. Saturday, we ate at some small road-side diner for breakfast, which was huge. I had steak and eggs, and biscuits with gravy. So good, but so bad for you. Then again, I had run 20 miles the few days earlier, so I could handle it.
From there, we went to downtown Dallas and saw the Kennedy memorial and Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot. We also went to the grassy knoll. It was a bit strange though, to know that the main attraction of Dallas, aside from the sporting teams, was the fact that a president was shot in the city. In contrast, LA just bulldozed the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was shot; the only reminder of that site is a city sign on the median.
Another strange thing about Dallas was the fact that you can carry concealed firearms much more freely than in California. If shops didn't want you to hold them, they had signs on the outside that said "No Firearms." The 6th floor museum at the former Texas Book Depository had one such sign, to which my cousin ironically responded, "they're about 44 years too late with that."
After seeing the plaza and the memorial site, we walked around the area for a little bit, but it was too hot, and we all had food coma, so we ended up back at the hotel until the wedding/dinner. The dinner was at the City Center, which is the tallest building in Dallas. The reception was buffet style, and was on the 69th floor, so you could get a good view of Dallas. The wedding and ceremony were lovely, and it was good to see family in a place other than home. Since the wedding and reception were over by 10 PM, we went to a bar uptown, and again met up with Seth's law school friend.
Sunday morning, the cousin that I shared a room with had an early flight out, so he left. My sister and Seth had a mid-afternoon flight, so we gathered all the other cousins except for the cousin that got married and his family, and had breakfast at Breadwinners, a great little breakfast spot with unlimited bread. Their bread was pretty great, mainly the sweet bread. From there, my sister and Seth departed Dallas, and I went with my other remaining cousins to the Dallas World Aquarium. We spent a good several hours there because there were multiple levels. It was also interesting because there were all sorts of signs asking people not to touch anything, but then, in the cafeterias of the aquarium, they served alcohol, which just seems like a recipe for disaster; hard liquor too, not just wine and beer. After the aquarium, we went to get some Texas BBQ before I headed back to the airport and headed back home to LA.
All in all, a good weekend and a fun experience.
The weekend after, it was my birthday. We first met up at the 3rd Stop, across the way from Cedar's Sinai hospital. It's like the "Father's Office" of mid-town - great beer selection, and pretty decent food selection. I had a personal pizza, not a burger, but that pizza was pretty excellent. And nothing was too pricey, either. From there, we went to the Spaceland to check out The Rentals. It was so good. The new songs are pretty good, a careful balance of the synth songs of the first album, but the acoustic tracks of the second. After the concert was over, I started talking to Sara Radle, the new guitarist/vocalist of the Rentals, and the topic of running came up; she's running the Long Beach Half Marathon in October, and I had mentioned that I was running San Francisco. She also expressed interest in running the LA marathon, something that I was also interested in. We kind of said that it'd be fun to go running together, since we'd both have to train again. I don't know if anything will happen out of this, but maybe I just made running buddies with one of the Rentals!
Third weekend in July, Andrea came down to visit, and we went to dinner at the Palms Thai restaurant, home of Thai Elvis, and then caught another show of the Rentals' July Spaceland residency. Again, great set. Andrea made the observation that she never thought she'd actually see those songs played live. I have to say that I particularly like the new swingier version of "The Cruise."
Two acoustic versions of some of the Rentals' new songs
Finally, the last weekend of July was crazy busy. Friday night, I went to see Maximo Park at the El Rey Theater. My flight Saturday was at 7:15 AM, so I had to get to the airport with enough time to pass through security and all that. I initially wanted to take the 5AM Westwood shuttle, but because of the early hour of my flight, I was reluctant to leave from that site given the lack of other options to go to the airport (if I left later, I would have been able to take a Big Blue Bus, but at 5AM, I'd have to call a taxi if I screwed up). I called the van service, and the pick up was 4:30 AM. Ridiculous! Then, at 3:00 AM, they called me to tell me that the pick up was in an hour. Grouchy, I expressed my annoyance to the driver. I mean, I understand that there are other people to pick up, so I asked, "how many other people do you have to pick up?" The guy said one other person. I was irate.
I got about another hour of sleep at the airport, and then got on the plane to head up to San Francisco. I BARTed from the Airport to Justin Herman Plaza to pick up my race packet information. After walking around the expo and getting my free samples of various goodies, I headed over to Berkeley to drop my stuff off at Kevin's, and meet up with Harish and Anna for Cheeseboard Pizza. We ate on the grassy section of the median; it was a great time. From there, I went back to Berkeley, and had some coffee because of the late night/lack of sleep. Then, I met up with Andrea and Dan, and Dan's friend to get some food on College Avenue. I headed back after dinner to try and sleep, but I couldn't sleep until 11 PM or so because of the coffee, and the film production in Kevin's common room (Kevin's roommate is a film maker).
At 4AM, I woke up to get ready for the race. Jessica, Andrea's former roommate picked me up with her friends, and headed off. I was supposed to leave with Wave 5, but ended up in Wave 6, which started at 6:05 AM. The first part of the race was pretty calm. I felt really slow because I was used to running much faster, but was advised by many friends to run slower in the beginning. I had kept a pace of about 9 minutes per mile until we reached the Golden Gate Bridge, which had a huge bottleneck because they couldn't shut down the entire bridge, only 3 lanes, and there were so many people that you couldn't easily speed ahead. After I got to San Francisco, there were the roughly 6 miles in Golden Gate Park. That was tough because it was kind of hilly, and you didn't feel like you were going anywhere. I finally left the park, there was a huge half-mile downhill part around mile 19-20ish, which I felt I needed to make up for lost time with, so I sprinted down the hill, only to feel it during mile 22 to 23; that's when I started getting the first of many cramps. The last part of the race was around the ball park, and then to the finish line at Cupid's Arrow. I finished my race in 4 hours, 3 minutes, and 45 seconds, an average of 9:18 per mile. Not bad for my first marathon, and for San Francisco, given the hills.
There were a few memorable moments. When I was running up one of the major hills around Hayes Valley, there was this one half-marathoner that was running full speed up the hill. She made the comment, "This is *so* easy! I don't know why people think this is hard!" to which I replied, "maybe you should run a full marathon next time." When I was running around the ball park, the music station was playing James Brown's "I Feel Good." This also irked me, as I was NOT feeling good at that point. Lastly, we passed by Bottom of the Hill in Potrero Hill, a venue I used to frequent in my days of Northern California. When we passed it, I was thinking, "oh cool! Bottom of the Hill!" And then I started thinking of the hill that Bottom of the Hill was on the bottom of, and how, prior to that portion of the race, I had thought that it was all flat or downhill. This thought was a tad intimidating, but obviously, I was able to make it.
Some lessons for future marathons: 1) Better hydration and saline - during my training runs, I could get by on 20 ounces of Gatorade for 20 miles, but just barely. I knew this measurement because toward the end of my training runs, I'd always start to cramp up. But carrying a bottle of Gatorade is cumbersome for the race, so I figured I'd rely completely on the "Gatorade" that they supplied at the water stations. This is problematic because you don't know how much you're actually drinking. I think in the end, I probably had the equivalent of 1 bottle for all 26.2 miles, not good. 2) Watch the downhill speed - in efforts to boost my time, I sprinted down Haight during the downhill sections. This caused me to lose more in the long run because of the cramping in my muscles. On downhill sections of the race, I really need to watch my speed and how I run down hill so I don't screw up my knees or muscles. 3) Sleep! - I had very little sleep going into the race. I probably would have done much better had I been well rested. 4) Food - I didn't have *bad* food, per se, but I didn't have as good food as I could have had. Better eating would have made the race better.
After the race was over, we headed back to Berkeley, where I stretched out at Kevin's place, and showered. Jessica was having a post-marathon BBQ, so I went to her old apartment to hang out for a bit with Anna, Andrea, Dan, Jessica, and Eric, one of their friends from grad school. From there, I went back down to BART, and headed to Oakland to go to my cousin's California Wedding Banquet (see Dallas wedding - the same cousin had a California banquet for the family that couldn't go out to Texas).
Monday, since Harish and Anna were in the area, and it's not often that we're all back in one place, we all met up and went to El Farolito in the Mission District. We also went to another random Mexi restaurant and had some margaritas. Then we headed back home. I would have had dinner with Kevin, that night, but then he ended up in bed because of a bed sore, so I ended up getting a take-away crepe from Crepes-a-go-go, and eating it on the plane.
I finally got back to LA, and rested a bit.
August
For August, it was also quite busy. The third weekend of August, I went to Las Vegas for one of my co-worker's bachelor party. It was fun, but I'm definitely not a Vegas person. I think if people were to say "hey, let's go to Vegas," I'd entertain the idea and potentially go, depending on the situation. But I would never be the one to say, "hey, let's go to Vegas." If I were to fly, I would prefer to save up the money to go somewhere else, like the east coast. And if I were to drive, I'd prefer to spend that drive time to end up in the bay area where I'd have friends and family.
Fourth weekend, my dad came down from northern California to stay with me for a week. Given that I don't get along well with my dad, it was kind of a train wreck. My mom said that I wouldn't have to entertain him that much, but it didn't work out that way at all. Just getting a meal was tough because he's extremely picky, and also because he's extremely cheap. There's a brand new pizza place around the corner from the apartment, but it was too much for my dad; he only wanted to go if there was a coupon. That Sunday, I gave him a Lego store tour of Southern California (he's gotten really into Lego toys now that he has way too much time on his hands). We drove all the way to Carlsbad to go to Legoland, not because he actually wanted to go to the theme park, but because he wanted to spend an hour in the store inside the theme park. Then, on the way back, we stopped off in Downtown Disney in Anaheim to go to the Lego store there too.
Monday and Tuesday were tough, but Wednesday, I was out with Kate and Kristen, and to get my hair cut in Silverlake, and Thursday, I went back up North because my sister was in town.
Labor day weekend, I went back up to Northern California. Friday, I had lunch with my sister, Seth, my sister's friend Emily, and my mom. Then I met up with Scott and walked around Downtown Palo Alto for a bit. After, dinner was with my cousin and my sister. Saturday, I headed up to Berkeley, and had lunch with Kevin, and then headed to the Tennessee-Cal game with Patty and Seth, and then have some Thai food after. Sunday, I had lunch with my mom, and then headed home to LA, where I had to give my dad a ride to the bus station to go back up north on Monday morning, bright and early at 6AM.
I guess having my dad stay with me for a week wasn't too bad, but it's just really frustrating. He can't hear right, so every conversation is shouting match, and every public conversation is a spectacle or a scene. I was also pretty pissed off because I had spent several hours late on Sunday night preparing a bus primer for him to use in his site seeing of LA, and he asked me to re-do it. I felt it was very thorough, with words describing how to get places and snapshot google maps print outs, and legends to point out what things were on the map. After a shouting match of about 10 minutes, he understood the maps. So was the shouting match, and the re-do request really that necessary? I guess I put up with it because I'm sure that when I was a kid there were all sorts of things he didn't want to do, but he took me to. But I guess the difference is that he's an adult with the capacity to think through things and figure out directions on maps and use wordy supplements to orient himself, so it annoys me that after spending all that time to do all that stuff, he nonchalantly asked me to re-do it. Anyway, that's over now, so it's fine.
That's about it. The apartment showing is over now, so I'll hit "post" and be done with it!
I suppose I should update this thing more frequently instead of doing it all in one go. more regular basis. And I guess it's good because it consolidates things, so you just get the outcomes instead of having to read it as I'm going through it. Then again, thoughts at a particular point in time are also of certain value. But I guess the past few months have been pretty hectic and have prevented me from doing it on a regular basis, so I'll bring this up to date. But only from Coachella to June because I'm doing this before going out to a friend's going away party.
LATE APRIL I went to Coachella. It was pretty amazing, mainly because of Jarvis Cocker, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and several other bands that I really wanted to see. I took the Friday off to do it, and Scott and Kim drove down from Northern California to go. I ended up knowing a lot of different groups out there. Susie from Berkeley with several friends also went, as did my friend Wendy from UCLA. I also ended up running into Ian, Meriza, and their friends, as well as another old acquaintance from Berkeley, Melissa Tom, who worked at Tower Records across the street from my old apartment. It turned out that Cheryl, Sung, and Bryan also were there too. It was pretty intense. As was the heat. But again, totally worth it. To recap....
On the first day, I didn't get to see Interpol because it was on the main stage at the same time that Jarvis Cocker was on. Considering I've seen Interpol live before (you're not missing much...they just stand there), and how influential Pulp/Jarvis Cocker was to my musical tastes, it was no contest - Jarvis Cocker wins. It was a little bad because it was a festival set, but Coachella was his "LA" tour date, so there was no other opportunity to see him. Bjork was pretty cool too - there was some device that manipulated her vocal tracks between the microphone and the speakers. Aside from that, Arctic Monkeys were also surprising. I say that because, despite the buzz around that band from before, I was never really into them. I have to say that their live show totally won me over, and I really need to pick up both their albums. Jesus and Mary Chain were good, but they just seemed tired and old. Sadly, it made me want to see BRMC. haha. That'd be like going to a Beatles concert (obviously not possible, but hypothetically, of course) and wanting to see Oasis.
On the second day, we got there after having lunch in Palm Springs. I was debating between Fountains of Wayne and the Fratellis, but opted for the latter, since Brit bands tend not to tour, and I've seen the Fountains of Wayne several times, while I've never seen the Fratellis. They were pretty fun. After that, I headed over to the beer garden for some shade (didn't have any alcohol during the entire event...needed to stay hydrated). After keeping cool for a little, I headed over to the main stage to catch Travis, and stay through the Arcade Fire, moving closer and closer. Travis was pretty great. Watching them play reminded me of so many memories watching them play outside (them opening for Dido, them playing Golden Gate Park, them playing the Metreon, etc) in the 2000-2002 era. Such good memories (unlike 12 memories). After Travis were the Kings of Leon, which were ok, but the crowd was getting increasingly rowdy. By the time the Arcade Fire was on, I was about 20 feet back from the front of the stage, but had to get out after three songs because the pit was just too intense. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were on immediately after the Arcade Fire, so all those ass-head fans were up in our business saying things like - "hey, you like that stupid accordion band! haha!" It was pretty lame. I saw them from afar, but figured I'd head up to Berkeley to see them anyway, so I opted out. After the Arcade Fire, I headed over to catch Blonde Redhead, LCD Soundsystem, and the Gotan Project in waiting for The Good The Bad and The Queen. I made it to the front of the barrier for the last band. It was pretty amazing. I've never seen anyone play bass like Paul Simonin. He holds it like a shotgun, with each pluck a pull of the trigger. Damon was pretty subdued compared to me watching him in Blur, but I guess that happens with age. Plus, the songs aren't as active anyway. Because of that, I have to say Jarvis was way better, and way more engaging of the audience. Particularly with the sing-along during "Running the World."
The last day of Coachella, security was stepped up because of the "RAGE" virus that was sweeping the audience, and the "Battle of Coachella." Not being a huge rage fan, and having work at 7AM the next day, I opted to only catch a few songs before heading off. I have no idea who won the battle; I draft-dodged to my car. Earlier, I saw the last few songs of the Kooks, then headed over to the side stage outside to see Against Me! from the back, while slowly moving forward to get to the front for the Kaiser Chiefs. The efforts paid off, and I was up about 5 people from the front. The Kaiser Chiefs put on a pretty great live show, with lots of jumping around, and pomposity. I like it when Ricky Wilson shouted, "We are the world famous Kaiser Chiefs! Not everyone has heard of the world famous Kaiser Chiefs!" After that, I saw some of Placebo and then moved to the main stage for the Crowded House reunion. I'm not the biggest Crowded House fan, but I figured if they were reuniting, it'd be worth seeing. It was a little sad though - when they played "Don't Dream it's Over," either they really did have mic problems, or they were trying to play it off as a botched "sing-along" where people forgot the words after "hey now, hey now don't dream it's over." Either way, it looked really bad. Then I headed back to the side stage for Air who went on really late, and only played 45 minutes despite having a later time slot. But that was ok, because then I ran over one of the rave tents to see the Happy Mondays before heading off. All in all, a great weekend. I went to work like a zombie the next day, but it was totally worth it.
Photos later - I don't have time to upload anything right off.
MAY
The month of May was pretty busy too. I ended up in Alabama for work to tour the factory facilities of where we manufacture/ship our DVDs from. Aside from that, I also moved out of the apartment to a condo my parents purchased for investment property. It's pretty nice. I have to start looking for roommates pretty soon. The move out was kind of intense at the end with the move-in date continuing to be pushed back. I finally moved in during the first week of June, and have since been acquiring the various things needed for a proper apartment that I didn't have before because I lived with roommates.
JUNE
The first weekend of June, I went up to Berkeley to see the Arcade Fire with a bunch of friends. Talking to Ian and Meriza at Coachella, I figured out that they were also going to the Berkeley Greek Theater concert, so I planned to meet up with them. My friend Nelson also went up, and so did Andrea, Andrea's boyfriend Dan, and Andrea's roommate Jessica, who I also found out was running the San Francisco Marathon as well. After getting back, I also saw the Kaiser Chiefs at the Henry Fonda Theater, which was also great because it was a full set. And lastly of note, I saw the Pipettes who are just awesome - cute British girls from Brighton singing catchy Phil Spectre 1960's wall-of-sound girl pop.
Aside from the concerts, I also felt overwhelmed because or my leisure time. Specifically, outside of work, I was trying to juggle three major things - being social, marathon training, and setting up the apartment. Because the marathon was coming up, and could potentially injure me without proper training, I opted to focus more on that, and just do the others if time permitted. After that decision, I ended up increasing my miles to 18 by the end of June. My time for that was still pretty decent - about 2 hours and 45 minutes. I was also relatively social, and got a few things of the apartment done. Things got much easier to manage in July after I tapered off of my distance running to go back to maintenance runs.
More to come for the month of July, and photos, on another date. I'm off to see my old supervisor from my temping days off. He's leaving for Ohio to start school for physical therapy or dentistry (he hasn't decided completely yet).
P.S. - this is coming off of just memory. I may end up looking through my planner from work (where I also write down personal stuff too), to add to this if I've forgotten anything major, so check back evrey once in a while. This is just a preliminary update since I haven't done it for so long.
I just completed my 16 mile training run. I'm pretty exhausted, but I finally did it. After talking to some people in Alabama about marathoning (long story short, I had a business trip to Alabama), and they flipped out when they heard me say that when I'd do my training runs, all I'd do is just start running. Kind of like Barney, of How I Met Your Mother - "You don't train for a marathon! You just run it!" But in doing that, I noticed that around mile 14, I'd start cramping up really badly, which would lead me to walk the rest of the way. Not very conducive to training...
Talking to those Alabamans, they said that I should probably drink and/or eat something in the middle of my run to prevent that. In reading up about marathoning, it turns out that, contrary to popular belief, you're not supposed to drink water because it dilutes the salt concentration in your body and gives you even more cramps. Further, if you drink too much, it can really be damaging to your system. So I picked up a bottle of Gatorade from the store, and a Cliff bar to run with, and was able to finally break the 16 mile barrier. I had experimented last week with a 15 mile run around the Los Altos, Mountain View, and Palo Alto tri-city area at my parents house, and that seemed to work well, so I expanded. This time, I ran from Westwood to Beverly Hills, to the border of West Hollywood, down back to West LA, then to Santa Monica on Pico, and back to Westwood via Arizona/Texas.
And now, I'm really tired. So I'll leave you with my Gmap-pedometer map. Enjoy!
I would have liked to make it to mile 15 at Wilshire and Veteran, however, it just wasn't going to happen. I didn't have enough energy to complete it, and by mile 14, despite everything being downhill, my legs were just freezing up. I guess I hit "the wall" early, but that would make sense given that I didn't have that much to eat today before starting (I had a bowl of granola, some tea, and an egg custard tart...mainly because yesterday I had a diddy reese and random other late night snacking). Plus, while mapping out my 15 miles, I didn't factor in terrain or hills. The hills part should be more of a concern for me because San Francisco is going to be crazy. But the terrain should be relatively stable, since they are closing down the streets for this. In contrast, the area around Sunset Blvd between 26th street and 405 freeway is terrible to run on. The pavement is all uneven, and it's also very hilly. So maybe I should re-think this 15 mile route for more accomodating terrain. It doesn't even have to be grass - it just has to be even, so my feet don't get killed on running on gravel and other random cracked pavement. boo.
Still, 14 miles is an improvement over the 13.1 I did on Wednesday, and have been doing since going up to the bay area. But my exhaustion today makes me a little concerned about 26 miles, and being able to finish in a timely manner. Maybe I should learn about pacing.
It's official! I've signed up for the San Francisco Marathon, on Sunday, July 29, 2007. Whoo! Track my progress, if you're up early enough. I'll be bib# 3690.
I've also bought my plane ticket back up north, leaving Saturday July 28, coming back on Monday, July 30, so I can hang out with Harish and Anna in the Bay Area while they're up there too.
Fun times ahead. I still have to figure out the 15 mile route I want to run tomorrow. I think I want it relatively flat, so I'm not totally screwed in the longer distance.
Anyway, off to the Volunteer Income Tax Association's hours at the Ocean Park Library in Santa Monica.
