10:21 am - Sun 10/27/02
M&J Hit LA (Continued)

But it turns out there's an up-side to jumping to conclusions; After assuming the car had been stolen, finding out it had "only" gotten towed, that instead of having to figure out how they'd get home, they only had to pick up the car at the impound lot, that instead of having to buy a new car they just had to pay $148, left Mark and Jane in the "It could have been worse" range-of-thought. And now they have their "LA story" (Though we were all disappointed that we never found out what the "hold" on the car had been about).

I was also glad the car had "only" been towed, but that said, it still made me angry; By my thinking, if three intelligent, basically law-abiding people make a concerted effort not to break the law, and this ends up happening anyway, the system is broken (Well, not broken, really; The parking here is designed, not to be easy or convenient or safe or anything like that, but to screw people out of their hard earned money in order to enrich the city coffers. And who are the people who have to park on the street the most, the people who don't have garages, or the money to rent a parking space? You guessed it--Poor folks. So I think, by and large, that making parking here such a pain-in-the-ass amounts to a defacto tax on poor people).

Mark and Jane were actually up for going out to the Comedy Store later (We'd passed it on our way to the Laemmle to see Auto Focus), but I was a little spooked by the whole "towing" episode, and wasn't anxious to do the street parking dance all over again (To be honest, it was also a "money issue"; It wouldn't have been right to have them pay my way, right after they had just shelled out $148 dollars, but I thought admission, drinks, valet parking, etc and so forth, would have made the visit cost-prohibitive for Yours Truly).

But we did do something I'd been telling myself I should do for quite awhile now--We had Korean food (I live in Koreatown, but the only time I've eaten Korean food during my time in LA is when Chris invited me out to meet his acting coach, way back when, and it wasn't even in this neighborhood).

So we walked to a place on Wilshire I've passed a million times called Tofu House (I don't know why, but I really like that name!).

I'd been struck, when I passed the place, by how I never saw any white people inside, so I thought that would be a pretty authentic ethnic dining experience. And it was; We communicated with our waitress with a combination of broken English, hand gestures, and pointing at the menu, hoping that we were going to get what we thought we'd asked for.

We were given a spoon, for our tofu soup, and three sets of chopsticks, while kimchi (sp?), these dessicated-looking squares of fish (Complete with all the bones), and assorted things we weren't quite sure about were laid in front of us (There were three eggs in a bowl that we didn't know exactly what to do with. I thought maybe they were for the soup, but didn't want to embarrass myself by guessing wrong, but it turned out to be exactly the case when we asked the waitress).

Well, we were wondering at that point just what we'd gotten ourselves into, but then the entrees came (Pork, BBQ rib, and Vegetables), and then a good time was had by all (Contrary to the joke I usually make about my eating with chopsticks--"I'm not sure we have that kind of time here..."--I actually did ok with them. Even Mark, who claimed a similar incompentency, seemed able to feed himself.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty fun (I paid for the meal, one of two which I sprung for during their time here).

On Thursday we got up comparatively early, and after I moved my car and got some copies of my "non-commercial" resume made, we hopped in their car and went to LACMA, on Wilshire and LaBrea.

Now, I have this generic assumption that public venues open at 10 am, and we wanted to get an early start (Since M&J also wanted to see the bookstore, and we were on for Dinner with Cary and Kay in the evening), but when we got there, we found the museum actually didn't open till noon (And it just struck me; If we had tried to go on Wednesday, the museum would have been closed altogether. But anyway...).

There were a large group of kids there, which led us to believe they perhaps schedule school groups in the mornings, so they can have the run of the place and not bother serious art mavens like us.

(Well, I had hoped to finish up reporting on Mark and Jane's visit with this entry, but I have to lay down before work. I was kind of struggling not to be overly bummed out yesterday, so I want to give myself every opportunity to at least start my work day with a positive attitude.)

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