When Lauren's Away... (Guest Post)

Hola blog readers! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Courtney, Lauren's other half and bff from way back when. I still live in Milwaukee (where I am an art student at MIAD) and since it was getting pretty effing cold out there, I decided to hop on a plane and come visit the west coast for awhile. Or something. While Lauren is doing the whole class thing, she thought it might be a good idea for me to update you all on what we've been doing since I got here in Saturday - so get ready for a lot of pictures.

I got to the CSUN area early Saturday afternoon and was totally psyched to see Lauren. I hadn't seen my bff since summertime, and the last time I had seen her I had been about to go to a Britney Spears concert (read: in no shape to see anyone). We decided that we should take Saturday pretty easy: my head was spinning from the two hour time change and I was STARVING after a meal of ginger ale and small cookies on the airplane, so we headed to a place near campus called Emle's. They serve breakfast for the better part of the day, so we ate a ton of food and then made the educated decision to spend a sleepy night in drinking Franzia, watching movies, and being girls. This was overall a pretty great decision, because it let us be super classy (see picture of Lauren, right) and let me pass out mid conversation with minimal embarrassment.

The next day we got a pretty early start, which is necessary because everything in El Lay is SUPER SPREAD APART. The big cities I've spent the most time with are the complete opposite - everything is crammed together and real estate is pretty hard to come by - so it was kind of shocking that everything is a) under five stories in the areas we've been and b) far enough apart to have lots and lots of pine trees. It's kind of nice to have space, but it's not so nice to have to travel through that space in the chilly rain. Which is what we did. We managed two buses and a train to Hollywood sharing one umbrella, and eventually made it to Madame Tussaud's with the hope that we could kill enough time until it stopped raining. Alas, this wish was not to come true, but we still had a lot of fun in the museum. All of the figures are SUPER life like, and it's really surreal when you first go in and realize you can't tell which is the person posing for the picture and which is a wax statue (we later learned the eerie realness of them is called 'uncanny canyon'). My blurry cell phone pictures don't do it justice, but we promise we have others, complete with us posing.

As we left Madame Tussaud's, we swung through the gift shop where I snagged an umbrella, which upon opening it I realized was meant for kids and has a funny monster face painted on it (with ears sewn to the top). It made things a little bit better, but by this time our feet were pretty soggy and we were feeling really hungry, cold, miserable, and unwilling to go very far. Luckily, there's a mall thing on Hollywood & Highland with a few restaurants in it, and we happened to stumble upon one that specialized in 'Shabu Shabu.' Shabu Shabu is kind of the Asian version of fondue: each person has a pot of boiling water in front of them, and you get a plate of uncooked vegetables/meats/whatever. You cook 'em yourselves and them dip them in these really awesome sauces that they give you and eat them with rice, noodles whatever. It was super awesome and warm and filling and was just what we needed to go back to adventure.

After we left, we got a little distracted in the mall area looking for souvenirs and also at some cute boutique shops. We found a really great one called Koromo Shop that had a huge jewelery selection for a pretty reasonable price, and we both picked up some funky rings. After a quick glimpse at the Kodak and Chinese Theaters (and some silly walk of fame feet pictures) we snagged a bus and headed to the LACMA. We were already pretty drained, so we didn't spend a whole lot of time there, but we did go through the entire contemporary art building. We explored the Richard Serra sculpture on the first floor, and then we headed up to a pretty sweet Glenn Ligon exhibit. On the top floor, there was a whole room devoted to Baldessari (cool), Andy Warhol (alright), and Jeff Koons (blech). I'm not really a fan of Jeff Koons' art (although he might be the most brilliant marketing mind of our time), but Lauren thought his balloon animal sculpture was pretty funny - not to mention the pool toy ones. After a quick buzz through the modern art wing, we headed back to Hollywood and Highland to buzz through a few more souvenir shops and then head home.

Little did we know, heading home would be the coldest, longest trip ever. As it turns out, the bus that takes us from Reseda back to CSUN does not run very often. Like, every 30-40ish minutes-not-very-often. Unfortunately, we must have gotten to the stop right after one left, so we had a loonnnggg cold wait, and the only place that offered any shelter was an ice cream shop. Needless to say, we did not seek shelter in the ice cream shop. Instead, we shivered it out in The Coldest Weather Ever (read: 50 degrees, give or take) in our still slightly soggy shoes. When we finally got home, we treated ourselves to some Hot Cocoa and Peppermint Schnapps and left over pizza, all of which was perfect.

I'm here until Thursday morning and we still have a lot of adventuring to do - today we're heading down to the Universal Studios/City Walk area to explore and do some quality day drinking, so stay tuned for more updates - and hopefully more pictures. See y'all soon!

(Check the photostream above for more pictures)