Arcade Fire Live

Last night I saw one of my favorite bands, Arcade Fire, perform live at the Greek Theatre here in Los Angeles. The Greek Theatre is an outdoor amphitheater situated in Griffith Park. It is a beautiful venue. I almost didn't go because I had an extra ticket and couldn't find anyone to go with and even though I love the band, I wasn't looking forward to going by myself. But, at the last minute, I forced myself to go. The parking was horrendous. I was stressed by the time I got to the gate and questioning my decision to go at it alone. But then everything got better. I guy bought my extra ticket outside the gate, I went inside and some of my friends happened to be there as well. So we hung out for a bit and then went to our separate seats to enjoy the show. And enjoy I did! What an amazing band. Afterwards we met up to hang out at a local fav, the Cha Cha Lounge. It was a fun time to be had by all.


Arcade Fire live at the Greek Theatre.

Cha Cha Lounge.

From Arcade Fire

Links:

Arcade Fire
Greek Theatre
Cha Cha Lounge

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Cooking with Trevor and Rachael Ray

I've just gotten on a cooking kick. Until recently, I've always been strongly opposed to anything more difficult than opening up a hot pocket and putting it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Last week I got one of Rachael Ray's cookbooks on an impulse. I read through it and the recipes seemed fairly easy and something that I could handle. As I've tried more recipes, I've gotten more excited about cooking for myself and abolishing fast food all together. I live right across the street from Ralph's (California Grocery chain) and so I'm there pretty much every other day buying ingredients for that night's meal. The portions are usually for 4 people, so I stick all the leftovers in the fridge or freezer. It's also fun going to the grocery store and asking cute women such things as "excuse me, can you help me out? what is a scallion?", or "do you know what tamari is?" My favorite dish so far is the Thai Chicken Pizza. It is so delicious, even better than California Pizza Kitchen in my humble opinion. Each of the recipes are supposed to only take 30 minutes to prepare, that's Rachael Ray's whole shtick, but it generally takes me about an hour because I'm fairly slow and slicing and chopping.


Thai Chicken Pizza.



This is a great starter book.

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Santa Barbara Trip

I spent the past two days in Santa Barbara. At the last minute on Thursday I felt a need to take a day trip and get out of town. I convinced my friend Michael to come along and we decided to drive up to Santa Barbara. We arrived in town around 4:00 PM and began looking for a cheap motel. We got a place near the beach called the Pacific Crest. We then went and checked out downtown Santa Barbara on State Street and the night life there. Apparantly Thursday night is "College Night" and we were about 10 years older than everyone one else out on State Street. We had fun regardless. The next day we took a 2 hour whale watching tour. We didn't see any whales, but saw a few dolphins and enjoyed the serenity of boating down the California coast on the "Double Dolphin" from the Santa Barbara Sailing Center. We both got sunburned pretty bad though. We arrived back in town to Los Angeles around 6:00 PM on Friday night. Santa Barbara is a beautiful city and it was great to get a change of scenery for a couple of days.

Aqualung

Last night I went to see one of my favorite bands, Aqualung, at the Fonda Theatre here in Hollywood. I was a bit bummed at first because my friend that was going with me ditched me at the last minute so I had to go solo. But shortly after arriving, I made some friends hanging out on the rooftop deck and ended up hanging out for the rest of the show. They were two lesbian couples and very kind and welcomed me into their group. While hanging out on the rooftop, we could view the fire that was taking over Griffith Park. The entire sky in the east was red and smoky. The theatre was about a mile away from the fire.

The Lab

I had a fairly eventful weekend this past weekend. On Saturday I went and saw Spiderman 3 at the Arclight. There was a lot of fun action and special effects in the movie, but overall I was disappointed. There was just too many different storylines going on and it got sappy a lot. It definitely did not feel like a wrapped up end to a trilogy, if anything it seemed that it was setting up things for another movie, just because nothing seemed to get really resolved with any of the characters.

Saturday night Gavin and I went with our friend Connie down to Orange County to an art opening in Costa Mesa. It was at a shopping/dining/art complex called "The Lab". They had the art show in several freight trailers. There is an interesting article in the OC Register here. It was a very bohemian crowd and a fun time. Plus they had free Grosch beer. More photos are on link over on the top right.





On Sunday my friend Michael invited me at last second to go to an Angel's baseball game and after I drove an hour to get down there, the game was already almost over. So we ended up just hanging out at Downtown Disney at Tortilla Joe's. For those that don't know, Downtown Disney is a free part of the park that has shopping and restaurants. Disneyland is very close to the Angels Stadium.