{"id":4261,"date":"2006-01-28T11:55:49","date_gmt":"2006-01-28T16:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4261"},"modified":"2024-10-27T15:38:08","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T19:38:08","slug":"things-experienced-so-far-in-la-part-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4261","title":{"rendered":"Things experienced so far in LA – part 21"},"content":{"rendered":"

— Alex and I headed out into the day to go meet Emily<\/a>. We had our directions. I spoke with Emily. We ended up being TWO HOURS LATE. We hit major traffic. But it was so exciting – I don’t know – Alex and Emily have been bantering back and forth on my blog and on Alex’s blog so it was so cool for them to finally meet each other. I love meeting blog-friends. Patrick: NEXT TIME I come out here I will meet you! Just too crazy this time. I just couldn’t take time out of my busy schedule trying to infiltrate a major cult to have lunch with you … NEXT TIME!! Okay?<\/p>\n

— Strangely enough, as we neared Emily’s office where we were picking her up – Alex realized that we were driving through the town where she was born. We were literally blocks away from her birthplace – so strange!<\/p>\n

— And Emily kind of brilliantly covers our experiences<\/a>. We sat in the food court of Hollywood Park (a massive casino) and IMMEDIATELY began to RANT AND RAVE about the couch-jumping cult-wads. We just WENT there. See, with people who do not share my obsession, I do try to keep it under control … because when you start to shout about Xenu and stuff like that, people slowly edge away from you, quietly dialing 911. They are terrified. Also, if I’m talking to people who don’t know as much as I do (“You don’t know the history of $cient0m0gy … I do. You’re glib.”) then I can tend to dominate the conversation. But with two other obsessives? Who know not only just as much as I do, but more? It was sheer heaven. We inhaled our food and talked like MANIACS. It was hysterical. We got right down to business. No “so where did you grow up?” and “so when did you start blogging?” None of the niceties were needed here. We leapt straight to Xenu. IT WAS AWESOME.<\/p>\n

— Then, very very exciting, we drove to see the Western Surplus store (now a T-shirt warehouse) where the Manson family had a shoot-out with the police. It was thrilling. There is still a sign, now blacked out, that said Western Surplus. We literally parked the car on the street, and sat there, engine idling, staring up at it. We are lunatics.<\/p>\n

— The segue from COS to the Manson Family was seamless. One cult to another. It all makes sense.<\/p>\n

— We drove by Emily’s high school where the Beach Boys also went to high school. Alex went to make a turn into the driveway and Emily said from the backseat, “No – you can’t go in there. You have to be fingerprinted by the state of California to go on any property.” “Oh, Jesus,” Alex said and merged back out onto the street. Later, Alex did a U-Turn – this was after we dropped off Emily – and Alex had to go into a driveway, briefly, to complete the turn. “Have you been fingerprinted?” I asked her. “Because otherwise … I think you are FUCKED right now.”<\/p>\n

— Emily took us by the house where she grew up – it’s really an adorable little town by the way. These peaceful cute little stone houses with small yards … It was amazing. We were driving through Emily’s hometown! She told us about a guy who used to drive around the neighborhoods and call over high-school-age girls to the window for directions, and then be there, jerking off ferociously. “We called him Dildo,” Emily informed us calmly.<\/p>\n

— We howled with laughter about the fact that when I develop my photos from this trip – there will be no PEOPLE in them – just pictures of the Hubman Life Exhibit Building and the damn Literacy Scam across the street. Like: WHAT IS MY PROBLEM????<\/p>\n

— After driving around for a bit, we dropped Emily off at her place – it had been an awesome afternoon. So good to see Emily, as always. One of the best things about blogging has been meeting and befriending people like Emily. As my father says, “That Emily. She’s fantastic. So tough. So funny.” Yup, Dad! I agree!!<\/p>\n

— There was one moment over our lunch in the casino when all three of us were talking at once – and we were literally almost YELLING about Hubman and his minions – everyone talking at the same time, emphatically, fiercely. At one point, Alex said, “My goal in life is to get one of them to admit to me the truth about Xenu.” There was a long long pause and then Emily said, kind of cracking up, “Okay. That’s kind of weird.” hahahahahahaha It was SO FUN!!!<\/p>\n

— Alex and I then drove home, just all lit up with our afternoon with our friend from blogging. It was great.<\/p>\n

— We then watched one of the most enraging and STUPEFYING documentary ever created (meaning: it was great) called The Weather Underground<\/i>. Oh. My. God. We were out of our minds with rage afterwards. We had a GREAT conversation about “people like that” … just sputtering and shouting … We got so worked up that we had to go out for pizza. The Weather Underground<\/i> is obviously what the two main characters – Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti – are involved in – or something like it – in the wonderful movie Running on Empty<\/i>. These “revolutionaries” … There was one guy who had been a member of the Students for a Democratic Society – who then watched as The Weathermen basically hijacked their group. The Weathermen were interested in violent confrontation (“bring the war home” or some such bullshit) … and SDS was more about peaceful protests, a la Martin Luther King. But anyway, this guy was amazing – he said something like, “These people are now adopting the philosophy of Hitler, Stalin, Mao … they are in that continuum.” Yup. Yup. It was a FANTASTIC documentary but it truly made the two of us crazy.<\/p>\n

— Or I should say “craziER”.<\/p>\n

— Wonderful day.<\/p>\n

— Today? I’m going on a tour of one of the studios with Brendan and Cashel!! Whoo-hoo!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— Alex and I headed out into the day to go meet Emily. We had our directions. I spoke with Emily. We ended up being TWO HOURS LATE. We hit major traffic. But it was so exciting – I don’t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[600],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4261"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64103,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4261\/revisions\/64103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}