No Famous Faces, But Famous Places?

So my star-sighting trip to L.A, was less than star-studded. But, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t see some fabulous places. Take for example our tour of The Gamble House, a lovely arts and crafts bungalow in Pasadena. Built by Greene and Greene in 1909, this house is a shining example of craftsmanship in the U.S. What we wanted to know from our tour guide? Where does Doc Brown keep the DeLorean? That’s right, it’s the same house used for exterior shots in Back to the Future. And, for your information, the garage is now the giftshop and the DeLorean is no longer there. It was a very serious tour, focusing on wood joints, stained glass, Japanese accents. We were biting our tongue because we wanted to know what kind of electricity the house is wired with – 1.21 gigawatts perhaps? In which bathroom did Doc Brown fall while hanging the clock? Oh, we could have made jokes all day. Our guide didn’t mention the house’s brush with fame (including it’s other starring roles in Zathura and Firefly), so we kept our amusement to ourselves.

For the rest of the week, we hit every US Weekly location, from the Urth Café to the Newsroom Café with the Geisha House (as seen on The Hills) in between. One place we were too afraid to venture? The Chateau Marmont, or The Chateau as they call it. This is where John Belushi o.d.’d, Adam Levine and Jessica Simpson hooked up, and Lindsay fell off the wagon many a time. Despite it’s close proximity to our hotel, we couldn’t bring ourselves to go in. First of all, I didn’t want to pay $18 valet at the bottom of the hill just to be told I’m not cool enough at the top of the hill. Plus, we didn’t want to reenact that scene from Knocked Up where the bouncer tells Katherine Heigl to go home as she should be ashamed of trying to get her pregnant self into the club. “That’s not even good parenting.” So, I took my fat ass back to the hotel, nursed a club soda in The Tower Bar, and watched Sunset Boulevard (which we were actually on) before passing out with turndown service cookie crumbs on my chest. That folks, is good parenting.

Star Stalking in L.A.

So I’ve been away for a bit. We decided (or actually I decided and The Hubby begrudgingly agreed to accompany me) to go on a “babymoon” before Cold Sake Jr. arrives at the end of the year. Being the starf@cker I am, I wanted to go to L.A. It seemed absurd that I, a pop-culture blogger, had never been there. We’ve been devotees of New York City for some time, but never made it to the left coast (except for a drunken binge in wine country last spring). Also, what better time to go to L.A. when you’ve got a reason to be fat and bloated? L.A. loves babies – they cover the pages of every gossip magazine. So, but that logic, they’d love a short pregnant girl, right? I could get away with so much more than I normally would. So, I booked my flight, made my opentable reservations, and prepared for the onslaught of celebrities I would meet. Wow, wait until you hear who I met!

-When we checked into our hotel, The Sunset Tower, the bellman informed us that Jennifer Aniston eats at the restaurant all the time. Instead of sharing a cocktail in the bar, we looked at this half done billboard of her all week.

-The first night, after our flight was delayed too long in Philly due to fog and caused us to forfeit our tickets to Jimmy Kimmel, we decided to drown ourselves in expensive food and trekked to Mirabelle, close to our WeHo hotel. It was 8pm on Thursday and the place was DEAD empty. Except for . . .Eddie Griffin, having a serious meeting in the bar with his posse. I know he was a celebrity for sure because he gave us that paranoid look when I walked by (the same look Beyonce gave us in Nobu). As I adhered to my “don’t pester the celebs” moto, I just sauntered by him looking hot in my polka dot maternity dress. Fierce!

-For lunch on Saturday, we went to star studded Robertson Boulevard, home of Kitson, Lisa Kline, and The Ivy. Here are all my shots of the paparazzi outside The Ivy (which means someone famous was totally there -- I’m just not sure who). We ate at the Newsroom Café and then shopped the neighborhood. There was a total hoopla and red carpet outside Lisa Kiline Men, but we went in and the store seemed to be littered with wayward vodka and Redbulls, blaring DJ music, and a bunch of employees all congratulating themselves. We pretended to shop for a bit, but had no idea what was going on.

-On Saturday night, I somehow landed prime seats at Geisha House, restaurant of Mike Boogie of Big Brother fame. Our table was so good, it was right next to the kitchen. I figured that’ so they could get food to us faster, right? Well, haha, I had the last laugh when I had a prime view of Evil Dr. Will Kirby, also of Big Brother and Dr. 90210 fame. I took several pictures and this one was the best. Sorta like Bigfoot, but it was totes him.

-On Monday, we had a VIP tour of the Warner Brothers lot (meaning, you get the privilege of buying a ticket off their website). Our tour guy was great and let us loiter on an empty E.R. set. We saw lots of awesome houses, like the ones from Growing Pains, Gilmore Girls, Dukes of Hazzard, you name it. And, they took us down a street, where you could see an episode of Pushing Daisies around the corner. And, I totally saw Lee Pace (The Piemaker) behind a bush. No one else did, but I saw him.

So, to sum up, a whole week in L.A. and I spotted a half-done Jennifer Aniston billboard, Eddie Griffin, a herd of paparazzi, a grainy Dr. Will, and a questionable Piemaker. Wow, I think I’ve hit the bigtime, no?

And BTW: What Happened to Estelle on itunes?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am loving the soon-to-be-overplayed "American Boy" by Estelle, featuring Kanye West. In the previous post, I set to link to this tune in order to allow my loyal readers a sampling of it’s fabulousness. But, I couldn’t find it on itunes at all. But the strange thing was, I bought it on itunes a few weeks ago – what gives? Well, I found out through a little googling detective work that Atlantic Records has yanked it from itunes in order to boost record sales, a la Kid Rock (the strategy worked for him in spades this summer). Are you kidding me? The New York Observer nailed it on the head when they explained that with itunes, the label “actually managed to find a way to charge people for music that they probably normally wouldn't buy, except for the fact that it's so easy. We love "American Boy," but would we go out of our way to buy it in the store when it's played every sixty minutes on Z100? Of course not! We'll never buy Estelle's album (no offense Estelle, but you look like a one-hit wonder to us), so it looks like we'll never own "American Boy" unless we decide to download it illegally (or figure out how to work Amazon's MP3 store, where the single is available.)” This reeks of the greed I saw a few months back when The CW yanked episodes of Gossip Girl from the web to boost ratings on television. Yeah, they’re back online now. So, give the people what they want, folks, and stop trying to manipulate how we consume your products! Sheesh!

The James Gang’s Got Talent

I watched a John Legend concert on TV sometime back. It was to promote Legend’s new album at the time, Once Again. The concert also featured artists from Legend’s own label, HomeSchool Records. We were introduced to Estelle (who’s song American Boy is on a loop in my head), Vaughn Anthony (Legend’s brother), and The James Gang. I thought Estelle and Anthony were okay, at the time, but I really enjoyed The James Gang’s vaudeville spin on Screamin' Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell on You”. Unfortunately, though Estelle has seemingly hit the big time with her Kanye West duet, and Anthony’s EP is available on itunes, The James Gang was no where to be found. It doesn’t help that they share a name with a 70’s funk band, making google confusing. The other day, however, during NBC’s summer pabulum America’s Got Talent, I noticed they appeared for a split second in the commercial. After some research I confirmed it was indeed them. So, then I actually had to watch the last week’s episode. Their particular performance wasn’t great as it was mired in sloppy magic, but they earned raves from the judges and have gotten through to the next round. So do I have to watch this crappy show now in order to root for my boys? Not while Youtube exists. Below is a clip of their first performance on the show. And here’s hoping to an album in the future!