Wednesday, June 29, 2005

I Love LA 

California Road Trip with Dad: Day 2

A visit to the tourist traps of Hollywood turned into an accidental brush with fame today when Dad and I crashed the BET Awards rehearsal. If I had any clue about modern mass culture I'd probably have some great names to drop. As it is, all I can say is that the rapper on stage five feet away from us was decent, the screaming hordes outside the barriers were hilarious and teeny-bopperish, and the red carpet at the Kodak Theater is as lush and vivid as it looks on television.

Wouldn't have happened, of course, if we had been one of the young 'uns trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the black and famous. Instead, there we were, lost in the mall, merely looking for a way down to the streetside stars on Hollywood Boulevard, stymied at every turn by blockades and security checkpoints, when a security guard with a twinkle in his eye -- correctly tagging us as the whitest of white tourists -- decided that, rather than giving us directions, he'd have a little fun.

"You see that red carpet down there? Just cut under this rope and head down the red carpet. You can't miss the street. Hey, you can even tell your friends you walked down the red carpet."

And there we were, as if invisible, walking with the press and publicists past security guards and silent shutdown storefronts on the main drag, until we passed a final clipboard-holding man who never gave us a second glance and ended up among a dozen or so members of some random entourage, staring at the stage while the hordes pushed at the barriers from either side and a dozen other black and famous ignored us from just a few inches away.

We gawked for a minute, amazed at the wonder of it all; turned, decided not to press our luck by promenading down the carpeted street past the barriers and screaming teenagers, found instead a gap in the gates behind the stage, headed out towards the street.

Grummans Chinese Theater was good, too -- costumed characters, century-old handprints, the infamous lions by the entrance. But somehow, after our brush with the real Hollywood, Whoopie Goldberg's dread-print in the concrete didn't seem as impressive as we expected it to.

posted by boyhowdy | 12:32 AM |

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Comments:

Besides, now that she is in the neighborhood, Whoopi's hair is only interesting in person.

Glad you are having fun with your dad.

Dawn

# posted by  Lady Strathconn : 9:27 AM, June 29, 2005

 

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