For Day #3 we headed to Pasadena to start off our day with Afloat Sushi. Well technically I started off my day with two hours of quant problems on Queueing theory – but that isn’t very exciting, is it?
After filling up with rice and fish we went to the Norton Simon and walked the grounds. The garden was closed due to the rainfall the night before. Next on the list was Griffith Park Observatory. Although it looked like the sky was about to open up just above us, it never did, and we took the “manly” route up to the top.
Once at the top we were treated to a better than average scene because all the rain on Saturday night had dissolved the smog. Here too, just like Stoney Point, thick green weeds were taking back the orange soil and growing up around blackened husks of the trees that had burnt last year in the Griffith Park fire. With the ominous rainclouds that seemed so close we could take a bite and this new landscape we both remarked that this seemed much more like New Zealand or Japan than Los Angeles. Then we’d see scatterings of graffiti and were brought back down to earth.
Excuse the scowls… it was cold up there.
The crazy black storm clouds stretched out in one giant mass over all of Los Angeles, with little bitty spotlights of sunshine peeking through. Over to the right you could see the sun reflecting off the ocean leaving a bright yellow light seeping out from under the thick grey cloud curtain.
The curtain never lifted and so we went back down and went inside the Observatory for a bit before hitting the freeway. We stopped off in Van Nuys to pick up fresh crabs at the 99 ranch.
After pulling apart the crabs we went to the Pacific Winnetka to watch Watchmen (in a horrible theater room, with really uncomfortable seats…). I didn’t realize Watchmen was so gorey… I felt like I was watching Saw 6 part of the time. It was hilarious to see “movie” versions of 1985 Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Pat Buchanan, JFK, Ted Koppel, John McLaughlin, Eleanor Clift, Andy Warhol, Annie Liebowitz and Lee Iococca playing himself (and getting shot in the head!). This was lost on the uneducated valley folk sitting behind us (“what are those two stupid gringos laughing at esay?”)
When we got home we had ice cream and Conching Special Otap.
Byron deemed it delicious, but Justin, the only Filipino present, wasn’t as enthused.
It sucks that they don’t have laser shows at the observatory anymore.
The Watchmen director took his cues from British flicks. The Brits think your average movie should also be gory and very violent.