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DINNER AND A MOVIE IN DOWNTOWN LA!!!

Stan Lerner — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:39:02 +0000

Foreword by Stan Lerner: I was born and raised in Los Angeles, which is truly one of the world’s great cities, so even though this is blogsincity I think every now and then I’ll share with you some stories about trips back to my hometown. And let’s face it, when you need a rest from all of the fun in LV — LA is a nice change of pace…

I once went to Vegas for a weekend and stayed for a year—that would be 2003 to 2004 the year of “Stan Lerner’s Night Tribe” at the Rio, oh what a year.

My most recent 30 straight days of partying and blogging in Sin City, well a teaser by my own standards. And while I was in LV I heard some news from LA that REGAL 14 OPENED AT LA LIVE!!!

“Not far from Rock ‘N Fish,” I thought to myself. “Not far at all. Oh, and FIDM is having a little “New Moon” party on Friday at the restaurant before the sucking kicks off. And there’s also my much older sister’s birthday to consider—Saturday night.” And then there was one more thought. “I should probably spend some time with my girlfriend who is less than thrilled…”

So I resolved to head back to the City Of Angels, although I’d been up to debauchery that would have embarrassed Heidi Fleiss back in the day—when I was dating her roommate Dianna.

Down the 15 to the 210, cut through Pasadena, down the 110, off on 9th, right on Flower, cheap parking lot—pick up girlfriend— head straight to Rock ‘N Fish meet with seriously up an coming producer, collect $150,000.00 down payment on three new projects, say goodbye to seriously up an coming producer—order Spicy Tuna Roll and Ahi Tuna with Spinach and Mac ‘n Cheese.

“Edward…Edward…Edward…Do you like Jake or Edward?” the girlfriend ranted on in a “Twilight” frenzy that alleviated all guilt for the things I had just done in Vegas.

“I’m going to head into the party. Why don’t you hang at the bar? Maybe Edward will show his glowing little face that I’d like to punch in.”

“You wouldn’t…”

I walked into the party and looked for Sarah Maxwell—who was responsible for putting together the little soirée.

I ran into Chris first. I actually met Chris and Sarah together some time ago, when Chris spotted me carrying a couple of boxes of Hygee Danishes. If you don’t know what Hygee Danish is, go to the dining section and read my blog “Let’s Hygee”, suffice it to say giving one box of this pastry crack to Chris and Sarah made us friends and business associates for life. Anyway, I was chatting with Chris about a hotel in Vegas he and his partners had just taken over when Sarah walked up.

I gave her a big hug—tempted to let my hands wander down a little bit, but noticed the girlfriend spying on me from the bar. “Where’s F’n Edward when you need him?” I mumbled.

“Wow you’re really excited about this movie,” commented Sarah, having no conception of my dilemma. “Come on you guys come mingle.”

We let Sarah go first into the sea of attractive young FIDM students. I thought about what it would be like to be in bed with all of them at the same time—then turned to Chris who nodded toward the bar area. “Drinks?”

“Good idea,” I concurred, and headed down the steps toward the much safer environment.

Amusingly, Chris decided to pull up to a spot at the bar right next to my girlfriend—whom he did not even know existed.

And in my “Rock ‘N Fish Rocks” blog I predicted that the bar at Rock ‘N Fish would be the place to hang out at LA Live—SURPRISE I WAS RIGHT!!! The bar was hopping and so was the restaurant for that matter, much more so than Katsuya or Wolfgang Puck. And I can eat and or blog anywhere I want. By the way, no offence to the original Katsuya on Ventura Blvd. which really is one of my favorite restaurants in the valley. When I was working out of Universal, I had many a good meal there.

“Drinks gentlemen?” asked Michael, the always, friendly neighborhood bartender.

“The usual,” I answered.

He set a bottle of Jack down in-between our two very large glasses partially filled with Diet Coke.

Chris did the honors and the party was on.

“You see Chris what makes blogging so powerful is the emotional connection between the writer and the reader…And the reason larger companies are having so much trouble monetizing social networks is that they don’t understand that you have to marry the right social networks to the right blogs—content is always king…” And of course I couldn’t help but to be distracted by my snooping girlfriend eleven inches south of Chris. “And Chris if you just turn around for a second I’ll introduce you to my girlfriend.”

Disclaimer: my girlfriend is young and hot, but she’s the only girl in my blogs that I’m not having sex with—something to do with her being mad about my promiscuity.

Off to the movie theatres, all 14 of them, big building, lots of people, architecture has nothing to do with the rest of LA Live, which is inexplicable, cool regional manager although not overwhelmed by the presence of world’s greatest blogger. NOTE: I’m ecstatic that there are nice movie theatres FINALLY in Downtown, but the surfaces are disappointing. Hopefully Regal will do something spectacular with the floors, walls, and lighting in the common areas of the theatre in the near future. The Grove still sets the standard for what a theatre lobby should look like and this shouldn’t be acceptable to LA Live. The movie experience once seated, however is state of the art.

“New Moon”, well it’s like watching, what when I was growing up we called an after school special. The amazingly predictable story about a 109-year-old vampire who has a thing for teenage girls…Okay, I can’t fault him for that…Bottom line is the girlfriend loved it and couldn’t wait to go home and fantasize about Edward the rest of the night.

The Next Day

Picked up the girlfriend, went to see “2012”, which is an Academy Award contender in comparison to “New Moon”. After close to three hours of watching the world come to an end I was hungry and ready to throw a nice little birthday bash for my much older sister—at Rock ‘N Fish, of course. I know I eat there a lot, but after thirty days in Vegas and another thirty on the way after Thanksgiving, I’m intent on getting my fill. For the sister and girlfriend I ordered everything on the menu…I usually get the Ahi, but I ventured into the Blackened Halibut…To really change things up I skipped on the bottle of whiskey and ordered a bottle of Conundrum—the girls loved this wine. For desert, bread pudding and lava cake, both off the hook.

I love the anything goes wildness of Las Vegas but…

Dinner and a movie…Really Rock ‘N Fish and a movie, it’s still a magical night out…Los Angeles is a movie town and I’m a movie maker (sometimes). What else can I say, this born and raised Angelino / 15 year downtownster is happy to come home and eat a great meal with friends and family, walk a few hundred feet and see a movie. It took a long time for this experience to come back to Downtown and while downtownsters need no encouragement to go try this night out—I urge the rest of my fellow Angelinos to join in. Holiday season is here, take a trip Downtown to the fashion district and do some shopping, maybe take the kids to Pershing Square for some ice skating, go to Rock ‘N Fish or some of the other great Downtown restaurants and have a dinner you’ll never forget—and then go see a movie. It’s been a challenging year, so we all deserve a night out Downtown.

ROAD TO NOWHERE PART II

Stan Lerner — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:39:08 +0000

The black Suburban rolled down the highway with the mean rumble of a venerated work vehicle. I raised the cappuccino, which I held in my hand, to my lips and took the first soothing sip. Given the distinctly not stylish clothing being warn by Mike and myself and the rugged “Road Warrior” appearance of our vehicle my choice of a cappuccino, as my early morning sustenance seemed a strange juxtaposition—black coffee would have been the appropriate beverage of such a portrait.

“But this is one of the strange facts about Stan Lerner that even you don’t understand,” I thought to myself. A profoundly civilized man and wild beast doing battle in the same being…I smiled at this thought, not because there was any humor to be found in it, but because it is this type of self-reflection that makes it incumbent on all us to travel the long and winding road of life.

Soon, the sun began its ascent above the horizon—its rays of light pouring over the sea of sand, so many grains—countless as the possibilities before us. The slope of Interstate 10 toward State Line still excites my body and soul, as I’m sure it does most. Funny and comforting to think that as time passes there are still sights that can excite even the most veteran of travelers—albeit now in a comforting way. Comforting, because there is a sense of freedom that comes with being able to move around one’s own country with such a sense of anonymity. And with so many freedoms nearing extinction it’s pleasant to know that there is still one left—I wonder if in the future children will understand what I mean by this. Or will they say, “A long time ago people used to be able to travel from state to state without being scanned.”

Why take the time and effort to mention in the first installment of Road To Nowhere my desire to eat at The Egg & I? Not because I was hoping to offer a micro blog / twitter account of my journey, quite the contrary, I wished to offer what should be a philosophical aspect of any adventure—things that have been waiting a long while to be experienced, should be ingested. There are many experiences to be had, but the experience that has been repeatedly at hand, yet not grasped, this creates a hole in the fabric of life, which can only be repaired, not by a patch, but by filling. And even something as mundane as a place to dine should not be ignored, because it is exactly the minuteness of this kind of hole, which causes such disproportionate damage—we are most damaged by what we do not know is missing!

Mike will now attest to the quality of The Egg and I’s Egg’s Benedict and I can see why this eatery is so converged upon by locals who are in the know. The Bellagio Café is still my favorite place to have breakfast in all of Las Vegas, but the Egg and I can now be listed number two on my list and if price matters, well we all have a new favorite place.

The phone rang; Andy had raised himself from a considerable slumber. “You’re already here?” he asked, in a sleepy, not really too surprised kind of voice.

“Here? I called you an hour ago to see if you wanted to join us for breakfast…Hey I have some stuff for your new house, are you home?”

“Yeah, come on by,” he answered, happy to know that his friend since the age of six was about to drop in accompanied by a good friend from high school (Mike). And a little irritated because I have that Cat In The Hat kind of effect on people, places, and things. Meaning I screw things up, tip the apple cart, think out of the box and generally cause a commotion…I like to think of this as helping people.

Shortly there after we arrived at the front of Andy’s single story, which he had just recently moved into after sojourning for the last several months at Dave The Jew’s house. And yes, for my longtime readers, Andy who prefers, now that he is an adult, to be called Drew is the same Andy known as Fat Andy in my more satirical blogs. I handed him a set of towels (Ralph Lauren), a bunch of canned goods, and a copy of my novella “In Development” for his visiting mother, Carol—this book is probably not appropriate for my friend’s mother, but I didn’t think about this until afterwards.

“The waters nice,” I said trying out the new pool. “You want to roll with us?”

“I’ve got Jake til Monday and my mom.”

“Oh. Well you can grab Dave The Jew and meet us somewhere.”

Andy nodded indicating that he liked this idea. “I’ll ask Dave…Stan, we generally swim with trunks on. The neighbors.” He pointed at a curious couple looking on from their back porch. I waved and headed for the house.

“So where are you guys headed to?” Andy’s voice trailed after us.

I opened the door of the big black Suburban. “I think we’ll go catch dinner with Richard!”

“Utah?” Andy shouted.

I nodded. “Utah…”

To be continued…