Cinematic Geography of LA

As we adjust to and learn to love our new hometown, I'm still amazed by the extent to which LA really is a movie town. I certainly expected to have a movie culture--after all, we live just outside of Hollywood--but I was not prepared for the way that the movie industry and that the love of film has permeated the very fabric of the city. It's amazing how many people I know are or have been in the business--nothing like figuring out a co-worker was in a 1990s sitcom or realizing that seemingly everyone here is a card-carrying SAG member. It was really driven home when we went to the gym last night during what is normally a prime gym time--but which happened to be during the Oscars ceremony yesterday--and found it a complete ghost town.

The flips side is to start recognizing the city itself as a character in movies. That happened for the first time last week, when we were watching the more recent "The Italian Job" remake and spotted several locations just within a few blocks of our house.

With that in mind, I present to you these two short YouTube clips about LA appearing in its own movies:

Back at Largo: Watkins Family

Diana and I made it back to Largo last night for our second trip. The night's entertainment? The Watkins Family Hour (apologies for the MySpace Link--ugh!). For the Pomerantzes in our reading audience, I'll point out that this is not the Watkins you are thinking of: rather, this would be Sean and Sara Watkins of the band Nickel Creek. With Nickel Creek on hiatus, the band members are all kind of doing their own thing--and lucky for us, the Watkins siblings must live here in LA, as they seem to play every week or so, usually at Largo.

I had the chance to see Nickel Creek as a whole once (at Bonnaroo 2006), and it was quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. The band has a great dynamic--and it should, given that it features a brother/sister pair and their childhood friend. Chris Thile, the band leader, is an absolute phenom on the mandolin. If I recall correctly, the Watkins's dad joined them on stand-up bass for a portion of the show, and danced a little jig. And as if that weren't enough, they did a totally awesome cover of an absolutely wonderful pop song most famously recorded by one Britney Spears (this isn't my video, but I must have been standing about 10 feet away from the person who did film it):

Don't hate on "Toxic." Britney or no Britney, that's just a great song.

Anyway, the Watkins Family Hour show was a lot of fun, though it didn't live up to either the Nickel Creek show or the Welch / Rawlings set we'd seen two weeks earlier. A few highlights:

• The show was billed as the "Watkins Family Hour with Special Guests". The guests turned out to be Glen Phillips (formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket) and ... Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. What are the chances? The Welch/Rawlings part of the show was our favorite if for no other reason than it was great to see them playing the lighter, sillier stuff after a fairly somber set of their own.
  
• At some point after they introduced a song, there was a silent pause, and I yelled a supporting "Woo!" Sara then muttered something that I'm pretty sure was a Big Lebowski quote ("No, [like I said,] Woo peed on my rug!"). Awesome.
  
  
• Sean was sick, so only sang on one song, which was disappointing. The one song was pretty fun--a very short ditty called "Hello, Goodbye"--not the Beatles song. From a different performance:

• At some point, Gillian came out to inform Sean and Sara that she and David were tap dancing back stage.
  
  
• They ended the main set with a really fun version of "Hot Corn, Cold Corn"--just a fun ol' country bumpkin song.
  
  
• They ended the encore with probably my favorite song of the night, a cover of John Hartford's "Long Hot Summer Day." Just a great rendition of a really nice peice of music, and show's off the nicest parts of Sara's voice. I wish I had a recording with the full band (including Welch and Rawlings), but here's a good recording of just Sara:

All in all, a solid show. No very good videos of the Watkins Family Hour themselves on YouTube--this is the best I could find:

LA Experiences: Arclight and Largo

Although we've lived in Los Angeles for several months now, we really haven't spent much time out and about, doing "LA" kind of things. At first, we were focused on moving in; then there was a lot of travel; then there was recovering from the travel, et cetera. Our big chance to get out and start to explore the town was over the holiday / New Year's season--and while we did indeed see a good chunk of the town, getting sick really put a damper on those plans.

So starting this week, we finally started checking some things off on our "explore LA" list.

Since I started coming to LA for business, I've wanted to catch a concert at Largo. I first heard about it as sort of an artists' hang-out frequented by Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, and a number of others musicians like--I think I was reading about Fiona when I first heard the name. Evidently, Fiona Apple--who is notoriously uncomfortable on tour, will spontaneously take to the stage at Largo every now and again during Brion's regularly scheduled Friday sessions. But I never was able to get up there while on business, and even though Diana and I live fairly close by, we hadn't found the time to get there since making the move out here.


Well, we finally made it there on Thursday. We were there to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, the alt.country musicians who found some popular celebrity after Gillian was included on on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

Largo itself was a great venue. As I mentioned, it's quite close to our house. We met up after work and drove on over there in the rain (Southern California has, evidently, forgotten how to be Southern California, at least weather-wise). Largo is (now--it relocated a short while ago) housed in an old theatre called the Coronet, and definitely has that theatre-style set up, as you can see in the photo above. The audience members are seated in old wooden chairs, starting almost right at the foot of the stage. Whoever set up the audio did a fantastic job--the mics were perfectly placed, and you could hear every sound with crystal clarity.


The show itself was great, too. I'd never seen Welch and Rawlings before, at least not live and in person, but it was clear even to a first-timer that this concert was a bit different than their usual fare. For the evenings show, they were not even billed as "Gillian Welch and David Rawlings," in fact--instead, they were listed as the "David Rawlings Machine." Rawlings, who never gets enough credit for either his backing vocals or for his guitar picking, took lead for the night. It was great to see that role reversal, and to get to hear David a bit more--but regardless of who is playing lead, the killer thing about the pair is their minimalistic instrumentation, the great guitar work, and, above all, their harmony. Their voices are so in sync, and complement each other so well, it's just unfair. Just stunningly beautiful. Check out YouTube for some good examples like these.

They played mostly Rawlings tunes, weaving in a few better known Welch/Rawlings collaborations and some genre classics like "Jackson." For some songs, like a fun rendition of "Brand New Key," they brought up other musicians, adding (at one point) a piano, stand-up bass, another guitarist, another vocalist, a trumpet, and a percussion kit. It was really a lot of fun for both of us, even though Diana wasn't that familiar with their music before the evening started. But she sure did know this song they covered for their encore (not my video, not the best quality--but good sound):

Friday morning started early, with an X PRIZE breakfast for the attendees at TED--a lot of cool people in the audience. Having started so early, I was able to cut out a bit early with my coworker and friend Mike , who is in effect my resident LA cultural adviser. A musician, foodie, and movie buff, he's given me countless tips for fun events--and one suggestion I'd been waiting to to take was to catch a movie at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood--supposedly one of the best movie theatres in the country.


Arclight isof a different ilk than some of my other favorite theatres (the Uptown in Washington, DC; the Colombus in Providence): whereas those are old theatres with single, monolithic screens, the Arclight is a mutiplex full of high technology and modern comfort. We didn't make it to their big Cinerama Dome, but even in one of the smaller theatres, it was clear why movie buffs would enjoy Arclight. Great sound, good picture (well, we saw a 3D movie, so that may not be the best sample)--and you even got a bit of a welcoming speech from a staff member! Cool place, we'll definitely be going back.


The movie we saw, by the way, was Neil Gaiman's Coraline. Definitely a solid movie--we had some issues with the pacing in places, but the story is good and the visuals are stunning. Worth checking out!

After the movie, we went out a grabbed a meal at at Thai place called Palms. The food was good, but the Thai Elvis was great!

Birthday Tradition

Last year, a well timed business trip (presenting to a career fair panel at Harvard, among other things) helped Diana and I head up to Boston for the first weeked in February--a weekend that happened to include the Super Bowl, Andrea's birthday, and Diana's birthday. It was Diana's first time in Bean Town, so it was great to have an excuse to visit family, do some sight-seeing, and celebrate the birthdays. Taking advantage of the northerly clime and the Patriots / Super Bowl fever, Diana, Drew, and I snuck off to Wachusett Mountain to get in a half day of skiing (for Drew) and snowboarding (for Diana and me).

We had so much fun that we've now turned that into a birthday tradition. Although this year we weren't able to enjoy the company of the Wuss and the Wuss-in-law, we once again flew off to a winter wonderland to enjoy cold weather, "fresh pow," a variety of snowboarding-related bruises, and the big football game.

If the company wasn't as good, that was a least partly made up for by the fact that the Mountain was a whole lot better (no offense, Wachusett Mountain). You see, this year, we managed to swing a free trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, where we were put up in the Beaver Run Resort. Our hotel room window literally looked out on the ski lifts, and the walk from our hotel room door to the ski rental shop was well under five minutes. The weather did its part and cooperated--cold enough for great, natural snow, but warm enough that we dind't suffer too much for our lack of appropriate snowboarding gear.

The trip came courtesy of the American Astronautical Society, who asked me to be one of the keynote speakers at their 32nd annual Guidance, Navigation, and Control conference. The conference--colloquially known as GNSki--always happens in Breckenridge on Super Bowl weekend, and always features a dinner speaker that's a bit more family-friendly than the highly technical talks that fill up the day (or, at least, the portions of the day not reserved for skiing). Luckily for me, I got tapped to give that talk this year, and got the travel expenses comped as part of that.

So, we flew out to Denver, and drove to Breckenridge--a gorgeous city that really looked like something out of a fairy tale. We snowboarded half a day, we relaxed, we had some good food, we did a little reading (Diana mainly working her way through wedding planning books, me polishing off Hot, Flat, and Crowded), and we checked out the exhibits from the World Snow Sculpting Championship. But on Sunday, we had a special treat: dog sledding!

Yes, that's right, I said dog sledding. And if you don't believe me, I have the photos to prove it. Check this out:



See? I told you so! (I'll upload more pictures when I'm on a faster internet connection) (Update: Done! see below. -W).

The dog sledding was a ton of fun--the scenery was beautiful, the dogs themselves adorable, and the ride was fast and exciting. Our fellow passengers were a little less adventurous than we--and were kind enough to take photos for us--so we get to handle the more advanced sections of the course, including some really fun moguls. It was a blast.

Diana headed out late on Sunday, so we listened to the Super Bowl as we drove in to Denver. The game was better than anticipated, and even Diana was getting in to it at the end!

With Diana gone, I gave my talk on Monday night, and it seemed to go over really well. They basically invited me to come back next year, so hopefully we'll be able to keep this tradition alive!

Getting Started

Assuming we finalize the wedding date we're currently considering, Diana and I are about 340 days away from being pronounced Man and Wife. I thought I'd start this little blog for us to keep track of fun memories (including the non-wedding related). Let's see if I can get Diana to blog!