Philip Fibiger

Last night I went to see Ari Hest at The Mint, mostly because my cousin Randy had been asked to check him out, and he was +1 on the guest list. It was a wonderful change of pace from the last show I’d seen, just one guy with an acoustic guitar. The club was really cool, a great red velvet curtain, dim chandeliers, and the floor was set with tables. It wasn’t tiny but it still felt intimate. The bar was pretty well stocked, but I felt it was a little more expensive that it should have been. Maybe I’m naive to the ways of drinking in LA, having mostly ordered beer, but $8.50 seems like too much for gin & tonic in an old-fashioned glass.

As for Ari, I could take him or leave him. He had a nice voice, but there was no real spark, nothing drew me to his music, and his guitar playing was fair at best. In general i’m not a fan of this male-soulful-singer-songwriter thing (I prefer my male singer-songwriters to have indie-rock roots and to mope ), and I felt like he was channelling Dave Matthews a little too much.

Episode Two of Celebrities Who Look Like Scumbags: waiting in line to get popcorn and a soda while seeing Insomnia (it was a great film)..I was standing behind someone I don’t recognize, who offered his friend the last open seat on a private jet to go watch game 7 in Sacramento, and was wearing a diamond encrusted Rolex. So, he was pretty clearly a player of some sort. He recognized the guy in the next line, they chatted..and I realized, the guy in the next line was Andrew Dice Clay. He was wearing these huge dorky sunglasses, these black baggy pants, and a belt pack! Granted, he’s a b-list celebrity at best, but c’mon..a belt pack? He pretty clearly needs a fashion consultant.

Our apartment has changed pretty dramatically since we first moved in, so I updated the apartment tour and found that a digital camera we have takes movies, so I took a short movie tour of our place.

I feel bad for Knott’s Berry Farm. I think it’s the long-forgotten stepchild of the California theme park world. We went to Disneyland a couple months ago on a regular friday, and it was packed. By 10 am there were long lines for everything. Today (Memorial Day) Emily and I took my sister (who was visiting from the east coast) to Knott’s Berry Farm, and it was empty. There was one ride that had a line longer than a few minutes. It was actually a lot of fun, it had a couple of really great roller coasters, including the best wooden roller coaster i’ve ever been on.

That said, I’ve had enough theme parks for the next few years..

I will learn to trust the weatherman. Yesterday, he said that it would rain that day. I looked out my sliding glass door to my patio and saw no rain coming down. It looked like it had sprinkled a bit, but nothing too bad and had definitely passed. I put on my dress clothes for work, threw on my leather jacket, grabbed my helmet and messenger bag and left my apartment. About 1 minute into my ride to work, it started to rain. Then it started to rain harder. My pants were soaked, the rain made it through my jacket and soaked my shirt. Even when a rain doesn’t feel very cold when you’re standing in it, it’s awfully cold at 40 miles per hour. To top off the experience, L.A. traffic gets absolutely treacherous after a rain. All of the road grime, bits of tire, and oil sit on the roads for months, and then when the occasional rain shows up, it forms one of the slickest substances known to man. It will suffice to say that yesterday when I made it to work i was uncomfortable and unhappy. It took almost four hours for me to fully dry. Here’s hoping the next rain will be months away. When it does happen, I’m taking the car!