Alright, I insist on getting rid of the logjam of days, so my lips are sealed about anything that I may have done or thought about for the last two days, except for the bit where I worked more on my photo page yesterday!

Yeah yeah yeah, I know ya'll are sick to death of hearing about the fucking photo page, but I added another series of pics and changed the font and changed the directionals on the cat pages and am generally being pretty obsessive/compulsive about the whole thing.

3 January

I went to the Getty Centre.

The Getty is a beautiful museum in Malibu that has spent the last ten years building a second museum in Los Angeles. Ten years, a billion dollars (that's a literal billion), and when they opened in December, they found that they didn't have anything like enough parking. Personally, I find that hilarious.

Because of the parking problem, you have to make a reservation for you car, and when I rang I found that the next open reservation was in April! So I had Mom drive me and drop me off and I'd take my chances on getting in, since you only are guaranteed to get in if you have a parking reservation! I lucked out--I got there early enough that they were just letting the walk-ins in without having to queue.

And the Getty is gorgeous. I mean really gorgeous! The art is wonderful, but the buildings themselves are just so unbelievably beautiful that I could have spent hours looking just at them.

West Pavilion is the one with the photos and the Impressionists, so I went there first, and later I saw a line out the door, waiting. Later I went to the gift shop--when I left there was a line out the door. I went to the bathroom--a couple of hours later, the line was a million people long! Either I was very lucky or I was quite the trend-setter!

I got a very funny t-shirt that said on the front "The Getty Centre" and on the back "finally open" that I just loved. I also wore it for the next three days because it was such a novelty to have a black t-shirt without any cat hair on it.

My favourite thing was overheard at the gift shop. A woman said "It was so exciting to see Claude Monet's Irises. They paid 30 million for it, you know!" I think it's hilarious that she knew how much it cost, but not that it was painted by Van Gogh.

After the Getty Mom and I went to see Oscar and Lucinda at the Academy.

What a loathsome movie. I mean really quite revoltingly so. I really loved it for most of the film, but then something happened about ten minutes from the end that made me so angry that I ended up hating the movie with all of my heart.

The problem was, I later realized, that the tone of the film (aided by the music) was that of a cheerful romantic comedy, sort of like The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain or something, and that wasn't what the movie was about at all. It was really much closer to Jude. If I hadn't been faked out, I wouldn't have been so angry.

After the movie, I went to see Rita and Simon's band, Lust Pollution, play.

It was lots of fun--they have a wonderful act. It's funny to see all this adulation directed at Rita, whom I have known for sixteen years. She sure deserves it, though! They say that their next project will be their own independent film, and of course I'll be in it, so I'm just lounging back, tapping my foot in a slightly impatient manner, waiting for them to make me famous.

It's always good to have energetic friends.

There's a new law in Los Angeles as of January first that says no smoking in bars. I think that's important, because Lord knows there's no-one more health conscious than an alcoholic! One wouldn't want them to have to breathe in second-hand smoke while they are destroying their livers! Rita commented how strange it was to look out into the audience and not see a hanging cloud of smoke over it!

Afterwards, we went to another bar, walked through the door, and practically fainted at all of the smoke! Rita asked the bartender why everyone was smoking, and she said "How could I stop them?" and I said, "Well, not having ashtrays on the tables might help!" I had two cigarettes in a pack in my pocket, and I smoked them up.

That's right, I haven't discussed the smoking thing yet, have I? I didn't smoke the whole time I was in Los Angeles, and then on New Year's Eve I sat outside right after midnight and smoked a cigarette. And it tasted awful! And that's when I thought, maybe I really have stopped smoking! Then I had those two that night, and they were okay, but I haven't smoked since. I don't say that I quit, because quitting implies forcing yourself to do something--I just kinda stopped accidentally.

After nineteen years of smoking, who would have expected it to be that easy?

Shit, that was long, and it was only one day! I'll finish up tomorrow, I swear!

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