Monday, February 21, 2011

Only in Los Angeles

The Boys and I managed all of the following in one day:
  • Drove Surface Streets to get to the Miracle Mile District

  • Arrived Fashionably Late for an Event

  • Went to the Beverly Center Because Social Media told us to

  • Will was Recognized for 'who' he was wearing while on a red-ish carpet

  • Won a Fabulous Prize

  • Met Celebrities and took Pictures with them

  • Boys got SWAG Bags

  • Strangers recognized and commented on my TV show-related t-shirt

  • Managed the Return Traffic down La Cienega Blvd and the Expressway

So what did we do?

Because we are members of the Natural History Museum, we knew that President's Day had a special event at the Page Museum near the La Brea Tar Pits. They have a realistic, 2-person-sized "puppet" of a Saber Toothed Cat. The traffic wasn't bad, but the iPhone told us to surface streets to get to Miracle Mile. We drove La Cienega past Rodeo to Jefferson then up Hauser Blvd.

This caused us to arrive fashionably late for our reservation, about 5 minutes. I opted to pay the extra cost to park in the Tar Pit Parking Lot, but alas, it was completely full. Cars filled the street parking too. So, we parked 'next door' at LACMA. By the time we got back to the tar pits, we were half an hour late. So, no Saber Toothed Cat to view. However, we did get to skip the line and use our membership status to explore inside the Page Museum, working to pull things out of tar and watching the coin donation pennies spinning around their funnel before falling into the collection hole. While we were looking at the exhibits, we did see the Saber Tooth Cat puppet go rolling by in it's crate. I think Will jumped when he saw it. So, prior to actually seeing the Ice Age Encounters exhibit, we are going to try to gradually ease Will into the idea of seeing a giant Saber Tooth Cat.

On the way back to the car, we wandered around and thru LACMA. I introduced the boys to Calder sculptures and Alex seemed excited that they were made by a guy named Alex. I also tried to get them to start recognizing Matisse cut outs, but there was only one example in the area where we were.

Next Stop - The Beverly Center. Because I am a fan, on Facebook, of The Imagination Movers, I get updates from their feed. It told me that for President's Day, they would be at the Beverly Center in the Sony Store. It was only a few blocks from the Tar Pits, so we went.

At the Beverly Center, there was a line to take a picture with the Imagination Movers. The redish-carpet line wasn't too long, but the guy helping out with the line and passing out the scratch and win discount cards did comment about how Will was wearing his Imagination Mover's t-shirt. Back in December of 2009 I took Will to an Imagination Mover's Concert downtown where he acquired the t-shirt.

Now Will thinks that his t-shirt was lucky and may have caused the scratch and win card to reveal the fabulous prize of a 14 mega-pixel Sony Cyber-shot camera.

After standing in line a reasonable amount of time, we got to talk to and take pictures with celebrities! Of course, standing in line around 4 in the afternoon is not something Alex was up for after not napping, so he sat on my shoulders while we were in line, finding great pleasure in mixing and tangling my hair with his hands. By the time we were inside, it was quite crazy and I told Mover Rich that I was having a bad hair day and perhaps I could get some advice from Scott. He commented that they all knew something about bad hair days. Now that I look at the picture, I see that Rich was indeed the one having kind of a sticking up hair issue.


I snapped some shots with my iPhone, which it turns out, has exactly the same case as Mover Dave's iPhone, which he had on him. I guess there are a lot of pockets on those jump suits.

The boys scored SWAG bags with nifty Movers' silly bandz, coloring books, temporary tattoos, and balloons.

Then on the way back to the car, the people in the elevator commented on my shirt, recognized the TV Show it references, and went to their car singing the song.

All in all, a great way to spend President's Day, although not very Presidential. But, it's not like we live in DC, we live in LA!