Malibu via Pacific Coast Highway

It was a perfect day to see the Pacific Ocean, and so Ryan and I set out to take the scenic drive to Malibu. It involved a lot of freeway driving, and then a beautiful drive through the canyons until, alas, the ocean.

When we first arrived in LA, and first met our apartment manager, he highly recommended we take a trip to Pepperdine University and see the ocean views along the Pacific Coast Highway.

And now that it's quite likely we'll be leaving Los Angeles for the great state of Maine, we thought this may be our last chance to see what ocean views California has to offer.

And as of today we have officially been coast-to-coast.

I can't say anything looked all together that different than Maine. The Pacific Coast Highway could easily be mistaken for a busy Route One in York, ME, or Wells, or any Coastal main drag in Maine for that matter.

Sure, there's no snow here in Malibu, California, but I wouldn't say it's warm enough for sunbathers and swimmers to hang out.

Of course our blood has thinned quite a bit since being here, so maybe some people back home would find this perfect swimming weather.

But if you think about it - San Diego is an hour south of us, and if you check a map you'll see that San Diego still isn't as south as Key West, FL and therefore probably not as warm either.

Regardless, the sun was out and plenty of fully clothed people were hanging out at the beach.

There were lots of rocks, which we climbed down in order to get to the sandy beach. So really it was kind of your typical beach.

While the ocean was just the ocean when we were up close and personal with it, I will have to say the approach to the Pacific Coast Highway gave perfect, breathtaking views where you could see the ocean 

just beyond all the rocky hills of the canyons, and it looked like something out of a beautiful fairy tale.

In fact it was hard to believe it was the ocean at first, because it looked as though it could have been  a distant hill or mountain, it was so vast and expansive.

And the regular crew was hanging out beach-side - the trusty ole seagulls - dirty and fat, but less trusting than their East Coast pals who have been known to beg for food in shopping plazas, and make no bones about approaching you if there's

a chance you'll feed them something good, and of course by something good I mean it could be a chicken wing or a tin can it's all just the same to them.

The seagulls out here seemed a bit larger, and of course not quite as friendly. I think what these fellas are missing are good ole Canadians to feed them, because it seems the Canadians just don't know better than to feed seagulls (and if you're from Maine, you'll totally know what I'm talking about). 

Snobbery or not, it was still nice to be left alone by these birds.

Little mussels just about covered this

rock, and the seagulls were not trying 

to eat them. I was thoroughly confused

So the ocean views were great, the Pacific Coast Highway gave great views of the ocean front.

We saw a couple of people wind surfing maybe? They had parachute type kites attached to their surf boards - it looked cool.

There were lots of palm trees, flowers, rocks and sand. No salty ocean smell though!

And this was our fun trip to the beach.

Fear of Flying: Irrational, but I'm Not Alone.

If I had flown home today I would have made it alive, and I find solace in this thought, somehow. In fact if I had left on a plane any day this month I would have made it alive, but what if I leave tomorrow? Or the next day? Or how about if I leave on Tuesday March 12th?

The truth is for days now I have been suffering the kind of anxiety that makes you drop three pounds in two days, that makes it so you can't eat, you're nauseous all the time, and can't sleep at nights. I even considered a 3-day Greyhound bus ride to the 5-hour flight on JetBlue.

The thing about a 5-hour flight is that I'll be alone. My husband won't be traveling with me. I'll hear every noise, I can't listen to head phones cause I need to hear what's going on...I need to hear and know what's going on in case I have to freak out and let everyone else know they should freak out too.

My palms get sweaty, I've been known to drench the cuffs of my shirts or sweaters with palm sweat. It's awful.

Indiana Jones' plane about to crash - so maybe the plane we

took home from NYC was more than a single-engine plane,

but there were a lot of propellors

And the plane crashes into the mountain, Indie and his posse

make it out safely via an inflatable raft.

The last time I flew, Ryan and I were coming back from NYC to Portland, Maine.

Perhaps this was an hour flight, maybe a little longer, but not much longer.

We flew home on a plane that looked like the one Indiana Jones had jumped out of before it crashed into the mountain-side in Temple of Doom.


No exaggeration!!! The only thing missing were the chickens running around the inside of the plane.

One time I tried to listen to my iPod flying on a connecting flight home from Washington DC (home at the time was again Portland, ME).

A woman who also disliked flying told me she listened to music and it helped her.

(Now excuse my language, but...) I shit you NOT the first song that came out was "Donna" by Ritchie Valens. Thoroughly creeped out I skipped to the next song and it turned up Buddy Holly!!!! I put the iPod away in a hurry, and prayed to the heavens I would make it home and that the iPod experience wasn't some morbid omen.

And I'd like to say it may have been my fifth-grade obsession with the movie La Bamba that has caused a great deal of my aerophobia.

The movie focuses on the short life of Ritchie Valens, and puts a strong emphasis on his fear of flying.

Apparently Valens' fear of flying occurred after a freak accident on January 31, 1957 when a Continental Airline jet on a test flight had a mid-air collision with an Air Force fighter jet. This collision happened near, or over the Pacoima Junior High School where Valens attended.

According to sources, Valens was not at school that day because he was attending his grandfather's funeral. In the movie La Bamba this situation has been dramatized indicating that Valens' good friend was killed by the falling debris of the crash as he played basketball in the schoolyard.

I used to tell kids Ritchie Valens was

my boyfriend! Then I realized Lou

Diamond Philips was an actor who played

other roles in the movies - and then he

lost his appeal.

However, I haven't found any written proof that Valens was friends with any of the schoolyard victims (there were three). In fact, Valens was much older than the children killed in this unfortunate accident.

What I learned as a fifth-grader who'd watched La Bamba so many times, that to this day I can still recite the movie to people, was that flying is dangerous, and if you fear flying you'll die in a plane crash!

So I think I still secretly carry these childhood fears with me.

Needless to say I will be flying out of LAX on Tuesday March 12th, heavily medicated and hopefully sleeping a majority of the way there.

And because I live in Hollywood and many-a-celebrity has to fly, and fly safely, I thought I'd research which celebrities are afraid to fly, and here's what I came up with -

Transformers star Megan Fox is admittedly afraid of flying, so much so that she actually developed a sort of superstitious (kinda OCD) ritual where she listens to Britney Spears' music because she is certain she will not die while listening to Spears' music.

"I know for a fact it's not in my destiny to die listening to a Britney Spears album, so I always put that on in my headphones when I'm flying because I know it won't crash if I've got Britney on," Fox has been quoted saying.


I'm with Billy Bob Thornton when he said he wasn't afraid of flying, but afraid of crashing. Although, since having admitted to his fear of crashing, Thornton has claimed to have overcome his fear following the 9/11 attacks. He claims that as people have become more worried about flying, he has lost his fear.

After engine trouble on a chartered flight in 1990, Cher developed a healthy fear of flying. In fact, she ditched the plane and rescheduled a Novia Scotia concert so she could travel to Boston by train, then to Halifax, Canada by bus.

Other notable celebrities who are afraid to fly include -Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Anniston, Ben Affleck, Tori Spelling, Aretha Franklin, Britney Spears, Colin Farrell, Jay Leno, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Justin Bieber, and David Bowie.

Kate Winslet and her then husband Sam Mendes were known to fly separately because they were afraid to die together, leaving their children parent-less.

Thankfully I don't have to travel as often as celebrities do, and I do kiss the sweet ground I walk on when I do land safely. I don't have any secret tricks for getting over my irrational fear. I do, however, do things like read into things obsessively as if they were omens. For example, our dog gets too cuddly with me and I think she must foresee my demise, but then I realize that's ridiculous.

I can do this!!! So on Tuesday morning I will strap on my big girl pants and get on that plane, and ride like a civil passenger, unafraid because I'll be so drugged out!

The Oscars' Close Up

So the Oscars have come and gone, but I have to say this year they’ve left a big impression on me. It could have been because this was New England’s year with Connecticut born Seth MacFarlane hosting, and Boston native Ben Affleck taking Best Picture for Argo. But I think it had more to do with living locally and witnessing all that goes into the preparations for such an extravagant event. 

 

Of course it’s all too easy to get caught up in the glitz and glamour, but a lot has to be said of the weeks 

of meticulous preparation,and the high security detail that took over several blocks of Hollywood Boulevard, and all this for the sake of honoring movies. And then what took nearly a month for the Academy and Dolby Theatre to set up had literally disappeared overnight. 

Right down to the Oscar billboards, which had been replaced with the old standard – Sofía Vergara smooching up to a can of Diet Pepsi (she’s 40 and clearly fabulous by the way).

At first I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how they pull this off. I tried to imagine how they got all these celebrities inside. I thought perhaps limos simply pulled up to the curb depositing celebrities at the front of the Dolby Theatre where a slender red carpet, much like the yellow brick road, led them to their destination inside. Let me tell you, it made much more sense that they blocked of the section of Hollywood Boulevard in front of the theater, set up security check points for everyone entering the ceremony, laid out a red carpet that covered the blocked off street and entrances, and placed bleachers along the street on the way into the theater.

Bleachers set up just before the entrance to the Dolby Theatre 

and a week or so before they blocked off this section of Hollywood Blvd

The bleachers are where 700 hundred lucky people get to sit and watch the celebrities as they arrive. And! Tickets to sit in the bleachers are available when you enter a lottery to win them. This year the lottery opened on September 24, 2012, and closed on November 16^th with winners being announced later that month. So mark your calendars and look into this next year. The process is simple. Just sign up to be an Oscars insider at www.oscars.org/insider and bookmark the site. Then next fall keep your eyes peeled for your chance to enter. The best thing is you don’t have to live in Hollywood, LA, or California to be chosen, so it’s the perfect excuse to come visit the area and have a blast!

Perhaps next year we’ll try for bleacher seats, but for this year my husband and I walked the neighborhood to check things out, and then settled in our living room to watch the awards. Even though we walked the area of our neighborhood it was clear that even though we lived here the actual area of the event was off limits. You couldn’t really get too close to the actual area, and the streets seemed more NYC than LA in terms of foot traffic.

A security checkpoint at the foot of Hollywood Boulevard and

Highland Avenue. You can see the El Capitan Theatre across the

street, which is next door to Jimmy Kimmel Live. This picture 

was taken from an escalator leading to a shopping mall area that

surrounds the Dolby Theater and Leows Hotel.

Tourists stopped in the middle of the street to get pictures of the black limos and giant SUVs even though there was no sign or promise that a celebrity was in tow. A radical religious group staked out a few street corners and yelled some pretty mean stuff through loud speakers at the limos driving by, and the people walking around. It was just another day at work for the LAPD officers working the traffic detail as they seemed unaffected by it all.

A View From Above - This was a bird's eye view of the Academy

Awards' entrance. You can see Jimmy Kimmel Live across the street

and the large gold curtain that celebrities walked past to enter the 

Dollby Theatre

One thing that shocked me was the lack of viewing parties being held in the LA area. I should rephrase that – a lack of affordable viewing parties in the area, because of the few viewing parties I could find the prices ranged from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars. I thought for sure the American Cinematheque would have a viewing party, or maybe even the Roosevelt Hotel (which was the site of the very first academy awards in 1929), but neither establishment hosted such an event this year. So we watched live from our living room, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

And!... My opinion, for what it’s worth…

I thought Seth MacFarlane was fabulous. I love that he tried to crack an Abraham Lincoln joke and realized after “140 years it’s still too soon.” Not only was MacFarlane funny, he was an excellent singer and dancer. I loved his sock puppet version of the movie Flight. Bravo!

I was less impressed with the gowns this year than I have been in the past, but there were still a few noteworthy ones. My top favorites were Octavia Spencer’s Tadashi Shoji gown, and Sandra Bullock’s Elie Saab Haute Couture gown.  And because I love the 80s and Jane Fonda I adored her yellow Versace gown that looked like something out of Dynasty.

Selma Hayek had my favorite hairdo, and I was super disappointed that Kristen Stewart never gets her hair done. True to form she looked like she just rolled out of bed and was dragged to the event. Poor Kristen.

Jennifer Lawrence was super classy, and it appeared that she tripped on her tremendous gown walking up to receive her Oscar for Best Actress, but she saved face with her short, sweet acceptance speech. (And I thought I was the only one who fell going up stairs).

Daniel Day Lewis who won the Oscar for Best Actor gave my first favorite acceptance speech, but 

when 

Ben Affleck accepted his Oscar for Best Picture my New England heart was proud, happy, and utterly softened by his overwhelming show of gratitude. 

His final words, “It doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life because that's going to happen. All that matters is you gotta get up.” Loved it!

Feel Like a Kid Again at El Capitan Theatre

Just down the street in a very touristy section of Hollywood Boulevard is the Disney owned El Capitan Theatre. From the street this location exudes a vibe of the carnivalesque and at once you can remember being six again. Hands down, and whether you have children or not, this should be on your list of LA destination locations.

It took us a little while to get around to this magnificent landmark because it's not your normal movie house. In true Disney fashion, the El Capitan Theatre appeals to children and only features Disney movies. From Disney classics to their new releases El Capitan is all Disney, all the time. We decided Peter Pan would be our perfect excuse to go. Next month they'll be showing one of my absolute favorites Lady and the Tramp, and in March they'll have Oz the Great and Powerful.

Like a lot of the theaters I have written about for my blog, it can only be best explained in pictures. And I'll add the same disclaimer I always do - there's only so much my iPhone can capture and although the photos are nice it still does this place no justice.

Here's a beautiful look at the theater's entrance...

And here are pictures of the entrance's ceiling...

Inside the theater...

 THE PANORAMIC VIEW

SIDE VIEWS

 FROM THE VERY TOP FAR CORNER! IT'S WAY UP THERE!

THE CEILING ABOVE US

THE SHOW BEGINS - But before the show started someone dressed in a big Jake the Pirate costume (a character from Jake and the Neverland Pirates on the Disney Junior channel) came out and danced and sang. Confetti shot out over all the children sitting below. Their laughter was the cutest and was infectous. I couldn't stop laughing at them laughing! It was the sweetest :) After the performance the lights went out and they pulled the curtains up in the ultimate display of awesomeness.

AND THE SHOW BEGINS

Thanks for looking :)