Saturday and Sunday were our last days in Los Angeles, though now we're pretty ready to return. The day kicked off with a shower that wouldn't stop running - mostly this means I sat and read Planet Walker while Daniel and James built up some plumber cred.
We went to the beach in Santa Monica which, big surprise, was really friggin cold. Turns out California loves to be really friggin cold. I built up my sunburn watching people do the traveling rings, which (we are told) are only in two places in the country, and are better described by the video below than by anything I could say.
Skip to about the one minute mark to see some of what they're actually doing . . . and feel free to mute the crappy music.
I had to give it a try - none of the fancy tricks, just trying to get from one end to the other, which is more difficult (and painful!) than it sounds. On my fifth try, I made it through all but the last ring - and seriously tore my palms up in the process. See those guys? A lot of them wear leather hand guards, and there's a good reason.
That evening we hit up the Prince O' Whales in Playa del Rey, where the management was just happy to see so many people wandering in. Saturday was Global Reddit Meetup Day, and the Los Angeles area Redditors met in POW before moving on to the beach for a bonfire.
[We've confirmed the demographics of the Internet. Everyone there was white, male, and in his mid-twenties, except for two girls, neither of whom were Redditors]
I keep feeling outclassed here. One of the guys owns a medical marijuana dispensary. One is starting up a brewery to produce hard cider. One's a rocket scientist (and also, basically, Clark Kent with charm). An animator, web designers, a few in town for E3, and a standup comedian - college student sounded kinda lame as a title to add to the mix.
We crashed with one of the guys who came to the meetup. First thing when we walk into his house, we notice that there's a big purple rubber phallus on the wall. And a pink one on the refrigerator. It seemed like a weird decor choice, so I asked him. He told us that when he was in high school, he and a couple of his friends started a studio that made infomercials - for sex toys. They now own and run what is essentially the home shopping channel for the adult toy industry.
Mostly I was stunned to see a guy start a major business while still in high school. Can I say "outclassed" again?
The next day, he was good enough to take us down to see the studio where they make the commercials. I kid you not, it looked like the set of The View. We had lunch there.
. . . that still feels a little surreal.
. . . apparently they used to have a smart car in the building, and it was just small enough to fit in the halls . . . so they drove it through the halls.
The sandwiches were pretty good, yeah.
Leaving Los Angeles was beautiful for two reasons:
1. An open road that's not clogged by endless traffic is stunning
and
2.
