LA on a Monday.
Last Monday I took a half day off from work and headed up to LA with Ryan to hear one of my favorite bands in the whole wide world play at the illustrious Hotel Café. And just in time to because I needed a break from work and all this wedding planning. Who are they? Sleeping at Last(.com)
SHAMELESS BAND PLUG
• I’ve written about them in my blog here & here.
• And they have a new music video here.
• And this is one of my all-time favorite music videos here.
• And they have an amazing album design artist here.
OK back to the day. We took off at noon-thirty and headed for Pizza Port in Solana Beach for lunch. It’s on the way and I have never been but have heard tons about the Pizza Place/Brewery. We tried 4 of their specialty brews before making our pint selection.
I ended up picking their porter, as that’s what I’m into at the moment. This one looked dark but tasted much lighter considering it’s a porter. The pizza was good too, stacked with fresh onions and chicken on our BBQ Chicken pie.
After we were done, we still had about 1.5 hours to kill. We decided to stop at Disneyland since we both have passes and we might as well use them. That’s the beauty of having passes. Scenario: You’re driving near Anaheim and have an urge to give Micky a jumping high-five…with said pass, no problem! High-five on the way!
We parked and made a B-line for the Tower of Terror (our favorite any-land ride)…Ryan downloaded the Disneyland App that tells you the line wait times, but not in enough time for us to get there and find a 40 minute wait (in the middle of a MONDAY?!?!). That was too long for us. Bye, bye tower…next time.
Then we remembered that every time we come, all the girls are too scared to get wet or it’s too cold overall and none of us want to get wet…ummm we have car time to dry off, Raging Rapids it is!
While in line I realized I was wearing a white t-shirt and contemplated the show I potentially was about to give Ryan… I’ll leave you with that image for a second.
We only got drizzled on overall and still had time for at least one more ride. The iPhone revealed 10 minute wait for the roller coaster, California Screaming…and we figured the fast coaster air would help us dry off. Well the app failed at that one…30 minutes later we just got on the ride and when it was over we had to take off for the car and get back on the highway.
I have never been to the Hotel Café before. And so you know, it is more small concert room / bar than hotel or café. But I have like tons of recordings from the place for people like John Mayer who set up secret midnight shows here to this day.
LA is pretty sketchy too. There are swanky establishments sharing walls with questionable ones on the blocks of Hollywood. To add to it, the Hotel Café doesn’t let you in the front door…you have to walk next to the building, down the ally and around the back where there is a big dude with a clipboard and a small velvet rope. Thankfully, Ryan had been before, but just to be on the safe side I let Ryan go in first 😉
Once inside it is super dark and you have to go through a couple more “waiting rooms” to get into the main room. Low and behold we made it, stage cram-filled with tons of instruments set right in front of us.
The band sounded great! And thank God because this is only the second time I’ve seen them. They live in Chicago and never make it out to Cali on tour. I found them, and the first time I saw them play, was as the first opener for a Switchfoot concert at Soma that Switchfoot videoed and released a DVD of…yes I have it, and yes you can see me crowd surfing in it ;).
I always want to put SAL’s music to my life. Meaning that if I was directing a movie of my life (and if you read Donald Millers new book, I am), I’d put their music as the soundtrack to my life and orchestrate moments just to compliment their songs. Really I would. They are so beautiful and the lyrics are blow away. I might even use a few tracks at the wedding. My favorite line is on their song Levels of Light: We are volcanoes, making new land, Transcending borders with seeds in our hands.
You know you have made it when LA gang members write “Danger” on your concert poster!
Best Weekend Ever (Part 2: Sunday)
I have not been to Disneyland in years…and after 5 months of begging and pleding by Jordan and Ryan for me to accompany them (cuz I’m awesome)…I found out my cousin works there and offered to get me in for FREE! Sold, let’s go.
There were a few key highlights:
1) Well this is not a “highlight” for me at least but,…Jordan kicked my a$$ at Buzz Lightyear. She talked a big game and backed it up killing me by a whopping 140,000 points. Now granted it was my first time, but I’m confident on making a comeback…or at least making it respectable next time. Watch out Jordan, I’m a fast learner, with many years of duck hunt under my belt.
2) I’m usually not one to love the get strapped to a chair, then lifted a million stories into the air and get dropped back to earth…but I loved it from the Tower of Terror. There are a lot of other things going on to and you get pulled up and down in all these “random” sequences, but it is pretty fun and you get to see all of California Adventure when they open the doors at the top, and we did it a dusk so it was very pretty with the sunset and park lights. Oh not to mention that Jordan hates the ride (but secretly loves it) and used it as an excuse to latch onto me, I wasn’t complaining 😉
3) Jordan kept raving about the Fireworks show and I have to say that I didn’t have to high of expectations. Though I did want to see Tinkerbelle jump off the Matterhorn and fly to the castle. Low and behold, the show was actually very cool, especially with all the music and Disney stories that they weave together to coincide with the blasts. It was done very well. Even if Tinkerbelle didn’t jump for this show.
4) There was an earthquake that hit later in the night. It was a 4.7 and Ryan and I were standing under the raised track for the monorail…and even though a 4.7 is hardly enough to get me out of bed with it’s gentle and almost comforting sway, we promptly moved to a more open area after we realized what was happening. At first we thought it was just all the people around us walking as we were leaning against a planter bed with a loose railing…obviously it isn’t when the ground starts swaying. They shut down Space Mountain and the Matterhorn right after, the 2 rides we were about to hit up and end our day with. We were going to just leave, but decided to hit up Honey, I shrunk the Audience real fast…when we got out, low and behold!…the rides were back open! Jackpot!
Overall, great day. We left at 12:30am got back around 2am with Ryan surprisingly staying awake the whole time (even though I bet him that he couldn’t make it and was a little questionable during the “Table for Glasses” incident, Jordan will testify. But he assured me he was conscience and I now owe him 5 Red Vines at 5 different requests at anytime from now until eternity…a candy-ized slap bet if you will.) Blasting Jimmy the whole way and with Jordan’s company, I got us home safe and sound. I was a zombie the next day, but due to other circumstances…
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