L.A. Confidential Confessional

Here is my confidential (except to all you readers, of course) confessional.  I arrived in L.A. a couple of days ago with the intention to gaze at as many celebrities as possible.  I wanted to see these modern day "gods" in their natural habitat.  KO caught the bug too.  We researched where they live, where they get sustenance, where they practice yoga, where they buy their clothes, etc.  Then we clinched the deal by procuring tickets to both the Laugh Factory and Largo at the Coronet to experience the comedy of some of our current favorites.  This is the story of our quest for the rich and famous in Hollywood.

Our first step was to sign up for two small bus tours of Hollywood homes and a LA city tour.  Surely we could find some stars walking their dogs, playing in the park with their Gucci clad kids or hiding behind the dark glass of their Teslas.  L.A. is a sprawling metropolis with hordes of drivers spending endless hours stuck in traffic in their Prius's, Rolls Royces, Mercedes's, BMWs, and Audis.  Our experienced tour guide knows how to avoid these bottlenecks while simultaneously showing us movie locations on a big screen tv and spinning tales of movie legends.  We drive by the Thriller house where Michael Jackson and the other zombies chewed off some of the framework and we cruise by Reese Witherspoon, Adam Sandler, Ben Affleck and Conan O'Brien's down to earth homes in cozy Pacific Palisades.  Yes, we do see the dogs belonging to the stars being walked by servants and the children of the stars being played with by servants, but we do not see any stars!  

Next we meander up Mulholland Drive, high in the hills to the fortress that Schwarzenegger built by purchasing the surrounding properties, the ivory palace of Katy Perry, surrounded by fan deterring evergreens, and the Bruno Mars estate with the friendly "Stay back and Go Away" signs, or did it just feel like they said that?  Aaron Spelling (Dynasty, father of Tori) paid 85 million dollars for a 56,000 square foot abode with 156 rooms that was recently sold to the CEO of Formula 1.  Even though John Paul Getty was one of the wealthiest men in the world, he had a pay phone in his villa and charged friends for calls and he refused to pay the ransom when his grandson was kidnapped and they cut the kid's ear off!  I guess wealth doesn't breed kindness.

In downtown Hollywood, we are so excited to climb the stars up to the Dolby Theater where we imagine ourselves on the red carpet entering the Academy Awards.  

I am in awe to touch the foot and handprints of revered stars such as Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca), Judy Garland (A Star is Born, Wizard of Oz), and Marilyn Monroe (Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blonds) in front of Graumans Chinese Theater.  I am disillusioned to hear that celebrities pay 30,000 dollars to get their stars on the sidewalk. Hope that money goes for a good cause.

In Beverly Hills, we enter the Beverly Wiltshire just like Pretty Woman's Julia Roberts did when she stayed here with her prince, Richard Gere.  We see the shop on Rodeo Drive where the snooty saleswoman refused to serve Julia and where this same woman is rebuffed when Julia comes back dressed to the nines and gets her sweet revenge.  For just $15,000-100,000, you too could enjoy the Pretty Woman experience on the 25 th Anniversary of its release.  No star viewings yet!

Now it is time to try our luck on the club scene.  The Sunset Strip is famous for the Whiskey A Go Go where the Doors, Janet Joplin and Led Zeppelin waited to be discovered.  The Laugh Factory is the club where Jim Carrey, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Robin Williams, David Letterman, Red Foxx and Eddie Murphy honed their skills.  We decide to get tickets to be entertained by Whitney Cummings, Chris D'Elia, and Tony Rock.  It is a side splitting performance and the setting is so intimate, we can reach out and touch the comics.  Whitney did have her own sitcom, but does she count as a real celebrity?  The next night we go to see Judd Apatow at Largo at the Coronet.  The guy who created Superbad, Bridesmaids, Pineapple Express, Knocked Up and This is 40, regales us with stories about his neurotic life and it is so relevant to us that we laugh til our sides ache! Jeff Garlin from the Goldbergs and Curb Your Enthusiasm is funny as well and they perform til midnight.  Are we in the company of celebrity genius?  Is this as significant as seeing Angelina and Brad?  Am I a very shallow person?  The funniest part was waiting for our rental car at the valet parking.  We watch picture perfect couples climb into their expensive Teslas and Porsches for an hour and then our rental Toyota pulled up.  We just have to laugh!

It is almost time to leave Tinseltown and set off for Santa Barbara and the Health Classic.  We have not met our quota of cornering a celebrity and ogling them, but it is probably for the best.  I realize through my conversations with many locals that being famous isn't a walk in the park.  Your privacy and freedom to wander around freely is sacrificed for fame and fortune.  

I am a told that some of our favorites can be down right unfriendly and impolite. I won't name names.  The perks of stardom may not provide happiness and sometimes results in the loss of life as in the cases of the talented Janice Joplin, the hilarious James Belushi, the beautiful Marilyn Monroe, our beloved Robin Williams, the smoldering James Dean and far too many others.  So even though we didn't see any really famous celebrities, we are thrilled to hear their stories and to appreciate them as they live on forever on the Silver Screen.  There is always next week when we have one more day to haunt the Hollywood restaurants and neighborhoods for that one magical sighting before we head home!

The next blog post is on the vegan macrobiotic food of L.A. Stay tuned.