Los Angeles: Here's Lookin At You, Kid.

Mt. Baldy and The Climb To the Top

The day had finally come on our great trip where we would not be sleeping in a nice cushy bed or even an air mattress. It was time to break out the tent and sleeping bags. Camping is usually fun. From the hard ground you sleep on to the setting up just to tear it down again way of life that is genuinely pleasurable, for now at least. We had done a little research and found that the Angeles National Forest had some camping available on Mt. Baldy. This sounded good enough so we hopped to it.

The air was already cool when we entered the park. It was a nice departure from the 110 degree weather of sunny Arizona. We drove into the forest, another thing that was welcomed, and started our climb to the campsites. We drove up those hills for what felt like an eternity. We finally got to a sign post that read: Manker Flats Campground 2 Miles. We pressed on. The Mercedes is temperamental with steep climbs and a lack of momentum. It handles them but likes to get a little warm, which it says in the manual is quite normal on mountainous areas. We took it easy and kept driving. I'm pretty sure they forgot to put a couple of zeros after that two on the sign since it felt like we were climbing for days. The windy roads went back and forth and back and forth and I think we even climbed a ninety degree angle once or twice. Just when we thought we missed the turn off, there it was in all its glory, the Manker Flats Campground.

After hooking up the propane lantern, we started to set up camp. Luckily our sweet Coleman tent that we got on clearance from Big Lots for $20 a couple years ago is easy to set up as well as an amazing tent, even in the dark. It was nice to sleep out in the wilderness and enjoy the crisp fresh air that the mountains provided. The morning gave us a breakfast session of making a whole loaf of bread disappear. The bread then reappeared as 10 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one each for breakfast and the rest for lunches over the next coupe of days. Thanks to Dad we have a lovely assortment of four kinds of jam to keep them interesting, although I don't know if it's possible to get tired of PB&J. After snapping some pictures of the birds in the area we started to pack up camp and get on the road to make our taping of the Craig Fergusen Show in LA.

Los Angeles, CA

The LA freeways were surprisingly not too bogged down by traffic. We made it to the CBS Studios in good time and joined the rest of the audience on the sidewalk. You see just like the “price is right” the ticket that you get for your show off of the internet is not a guaranteed spot as you must wait in line for a bit and then if you are among the number of allowed inside you get to sit around and wait for an hour or two more. The system is ridiculous and I think they only make you wait in lines like cattle getting herded to the next stable so that you don’t show up for a taping everyday. If it was easy and painless everyone would do it al the time. We arrived at the sidewalk line around 2:45 and didn’t leave the studio until close to 6:30 or 7. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch.

The funniest thing about the CBS Studios visit, besides the actual taping of The Late Late Show, was the pages that lead you through the halls and tell you what to do and such. If you’ve ever seen 30 Rock you know that a Kenneth is a one of these pages. There are a couple of Kenneth’s walking around and they truly seem to enjoy their work and like being around the magic of television. The other half of the pages consists of people like the characters from the show Party Down. If you haven’t seen the show it is much like a bunch of wannabe actors that can’t make a living acting so they work a catering job. Switch out catering job with page job and you have the pages at CBS studios.

While Jen and I sat on bench waiting for the next cattle call, we were graced by the lovely conversation of the pages. It mostly consisted of about a twenty minute back and forth regurgitation of how to work out. One guy said that you only really need to work out your legs because if your legs look good it makes up for your upper body. The other guy told him the way to work you legs is to run up a couple flights of stairs and the walk back down and continue this for an hour or so. The chick page then chimed in and told some crazy talk about muscle confusion and how muscles need to be confused or they won’t develop correctly. I wish I had a tape recorder because the back and forth conversation they had was comedy gold. Also if you are a cool page you wear wicked awesome aviator sun glasses all the time. Magnum PI style.

The actual taping was really cool and went fairly quickly. Craig Fergusen was hilarious and did a great bit about him taping his guest spots for his hosting of Shark Week in the future months ahead. He was also a bit jet lagged due to these tapings that he had just completed. The jet lag had shown up in his complete disregard for the FCC as he dropped about 4 or 5 F-bombs during the show. He played it off as if they were just gone bleep it any way. After the taping was done Craig did a little Q and A with the audience but was fairly short with it as he said and looked really exhausted. It was understandable but it would have been really cool to hear more from him.

Following the final herd out of the studio we walked over to the nearby shopping complex to get our parking validated. While walking around killing some time and taking in the good weather we had a celebrity spotting. Coming out of the valet area was none other than Tommy Boy’s little sidekick, David Spade. All in all he looked kinda shitty. He had some hot young broad with him though so that probably made him feel good about himself. Not sure what he was doing and me not wanting to be an asshole just kinda nodded at him and kept walking. He seemed grateful and busy since he was talking on the phone.

All in all our LA visit consisted mostly of sitting around and waiting, but it was pretty laid back and we had a decent time. I wish LA, and California for that matter, weren’t so damn overpriced because it is a fun place to hang around. There are plenty of things to do as long as you have the carelessness with your wallet to match it. Next up is more camping and then even more camping and maybe after that we can get to some more camping.

Random Facts

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches eaten = 4

Cool ass blue birds seen in the mountains = 2

Douche bags witnessed hanging around LA = infinite

Price of diesel gas = a ridiculous $3.49