Bruno!

So I haven't updated this in a little while, and I' m bored right now, so I'll make this one a longer post for those of you that enjoy reading my updates. ;)










4th of July was fun. Went up to Newport Beach on the 3rd to a friend of a friend's beach house. It was a lot of fun although there were about 30 other people there, only 1 of which I knew haha. Just chilled the whole night (spent the night there) and then went to a parade the next morning. After the parade, headed over to the beach where we just laid out the whole day. The weather was awesome. It's really sweet that it's never too hot or too cold here in Cali. (Although I can't say the same thing about the water, which is almost always freezing). I've been to quite a few beaches around here, but it's really cool that there is something that differentiates all of them.

Driving around LA at night is really pretty. Went over to the Santa Monica Promenade the other night. It's basically a big outdoor shopping area with lots of cool street performers. On the other hand, driving around LA during the day just gives me a headache. You would think that a highway on a Sunday afternoon wouldn't be too bad to drive on but it was still pretty awful today.













Saw BRUNO on Thursday night at midnight! There were a crazy amount of people at the theater I went to. The line was already out the door when we got there, but the movie was TOTALLY worth staying up late and being tired at work the next day. It's probably the funniest movie I've seen in a long time (even more than The Hangover, which was great too). Even though it's pretty racy and offensive, it's still hilarious. I don't think there is a dull 30 seconds so I highly recommend everyone to go watch it if you want to laugh and be entertained. Some of the stuff he does and the people's reactions are just...hilarious. Everyone always seems to compare it to Borat but they are really hard movies to compare because the characters and the premises are so different. All I can say is that Sacha Baron Cohen is a genius.

So it's July 12, which means I have exactly one month left until I leave LA. I can't believe how fast this summer is going by. Looking back on that list I posted a few posts back, I've actually already done most of them which is surprising but good. :) I really like it out here and I think my internship has really solidified, in my mind at least, that entertainment is definitely a career I want to pursue. I can't even imagine doing anything else. I know it's so hard to make it out here, but at least I've already got a big foot in the door.

Well, until next time.....

Shady...

So went out to eat the other night at a bar...below is the conversation the waiter had with one of the guys I went with...

Waiter: "Here is the pork sandwich."
Ben: "Oh I ordered a chicken sandwich."
Waiter:"Oh, okay, this is a chicken sandwich."

Hahahaha, wtf? They also served microwaved macaroni and cheese and "special house sauce" turned out to just be ranch dressing. The food wasn't even very good so probably will not be eating again at that place anytime soon. Looks like a fun place to party on the weekends though at least...

Last Friday was a lot of fun. We had a big party at the pier, and everything there was free. It was awesome! I mean come on, how many times will you get the opportunity to play those games to win prizes an unlimited number of times? There was a basketball I wanted to win, but you could only get it if you had 5 other players playing. I only had one other person with me, so I used the game bucks to "pay" for 3 other players haha. I also probably threw close to 100 rings in that game where you have to try and get a ring around a bottle to win a really big prize (in this case, a Wii or Xbox 360).

Looking forward to the 4th of July weekend...probably going up to Newport Beach!

Transformers

So the last few days have been pretty eventful actually! Got to do some cool stuff over the weekend. I even met Annie Wersching, who plays super hot Renee on 24!















We actually had a legitimate conversation for about five minutes or so about 24's upcoming season, baseball, etc.. haha. She's super cool, funny, and even hotter in person, so that was definitely the highlight of my weekend.

Last night was the Transformers 2 premiere. They went all out with the set up for it, and it was SWEET. Giant Bumblebee, the Optimus Prime truck, etc. Linkin Park played after the movie was over, and they sound JUST as good live as they do on their tracks. It was awesome. I guess some of the funnier moments were that I saw Borat's sidekick walking around after the movie was out, and I was taking a video and right at the end he sort of points at my camera haha.

I saw these two dudes who basically should have been paparazzi. They were chasing around one of the Playboy girls trying to get a picture with her. It was kind of funny to watch, but I don't know if they were successful in their attempts or not.










Red carpet area pre-famous people arrival

Shia Labeouf's Camero on the red carpet










Giant life-size Bumblebee (like this was literally the size of a real Transformer)










Setting up for the Linkin Park concert (I've got vids but no pics so I'll put those up on facebook at some point! Great concert!)

So today I went to Trader Joe's for the first time (a grocery store all my co-workers told me was a lot cheaper than Ralph's). It's a pretty cool place. A lot of stuff is organic but it's not expensive so I might shop there a lot more often. One nice thing about my area is that literally everything is in walking distance, and considering parking is awful around here, it's nice to not have to drive. My parking spot here is $100/month, but it's totally worth it cause there is no way I could deal with looking for street parking everyday, especially considering people get tickets all the time with "street cleaning" on different sides of the street at different days.

Til next timeeee.

Stand-In

So today I was told that I look like Jon Niese, the New York Mets pitcher.

That definitely has to be the most random comparison I've EVER gotten (not to mention we look nothing alike). I don't see the resemblance. Do you? Haha

Sunburnt.

All right, so I know I posted an update here on Friday, but for some reason it has disappeared. Weird.

Anyways, spent the weekend at the beach. I forgot to bring along suntan lotion both days so I'm sunburnt all over. Kind of painful haha. Went to Venice Beach on Saturday and Malibu today. Both are really cool areas. Lots of surfers over at Malibu...hopefully I'll get to try it before I leave LA. I don't actually mind going to the beach by myself as long as I've got my IPOD, although it would definitely be nice to have someone to split the parking cost with.

The one thing that really blows here is parking. I always have to park in parking garages or parallel park (which I suck at). I parked about 1/4 mile away just now after getting back from the gym, and probably spent a good 10 minutes driving around looking for a better spot before realizing I wasn't going to find one.

So yep, that's about it for now. It's Sunday night so another work week begins tomorrow. Until next time...

List of Things to Do

So there is so much to do in LA that I decided I am going to make a list of every place I would like to visit before I leave in August.

Go to Universal Studios Hollywood
Go to Disneyland
Go to Six Flags Magic Mountain
Attend a movie premiere in Westwood
Go to Graumann's Chinese Theater
Spend a day at the Santa Monica Pier
Go to Malibu Beach
Go to a Dodgers/Cubs game
Go to Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach
Go to downtown LA
Walk/drive down Sunset Boulevard
WIN/Be given tix to a Lakers game haha
Tour Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures movie lots
Go to Catalina Island
Go to Hollywood
Go to San Diego
Check out a cool museum? I heard some of them aren't boring...

So yup, there's my list of everything I want to do when I'm not working out here in LA.

Today I met...

Time for some photos from the first few days! I still need to take some pictures on the lot, but I'll upload a bunch to Facebook once I have enough photos. :)



Venice Beach-Look at that water!

Venice Beach-This is one crazy place.



UCLA-Tennis is a pretty big deal here. That's me down there playing tennis. :P



UCLA's campus-It's awesome.

The weekend's coming up but I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do. Maybe go to the beach and sit around or something.

The First Few Days

So here I am sitting in LA the night before my internship begins...it's been a pretty good past few days, so I'll recap the 29 hour road trip that I had with me, Cody, and Tell Me Garmin (aka G-Unit aka GPS Girl). I've got some photos but I haven't uploaded them yet so I'll post them when I get a chance later in the week.

Day 1

Left my house around 8AM to go and pick up Cody from Champaign. I got into Champaign close to 10:45, but I had to go and exchange my defective GPS for one that was working properly. Anyways, Best Buy literally has the worst customer service in the world, and long story short, I ended up getting a cheaper GPS after an hour of dealing with their customer service. Finally picked up Cody and left Champaign for Oklahoma City around noon.

The drive wasn't too bad cause we took turns driving about 5 hour shifts. It took 10 hours to get into Oklahoma City. Neither of us have an Ipod radio connection thing though so we listened to the radio for 10 hours and heard the same songs over and over again. Fun fact, tolls on Oklahoma highways are 3.50!!! Luckily, we only had to pay it twice. And 14.50 if you're a truck. I'm never going to complain about having to pay 50 cents on Illinois tolls ever again though.

Anyways, we got into Oklahoma City around 10 PM and just chilled in the hotel and went to sleep.

Day 2

Woke up and got to eat a nice breakfast buffet for free. We went up to the concierge services too on the 14th floor (which is only accessible to really cool people), but they didn't have any alcohol at 10 in the morning so we just got some bottled water, and were off for our 12 hour drive for the day!

Nothing too exciting during the drive. We both ended up driving close to 6 hours each. Because of the time change (we gained 2 hours), we got into Flagstaff, Arizona at 8PM, watched the end of the Lakers game, and then went over to Denny's to eat dinner. This huge crowd of like 50+ high school kids came in (must have been graduation night), but that's not really that relevant now that I think about it.

We had some extra time so we drove around and ended up driving on Northern Arizona University's campus (we were actually trying to find the Grand Canyon but ended up in a trailer park thanks to Tell Me Garmin, so we ended up on the campus instead). Back to the hotel and bed for the night.

Day 3

Woke up around 10 and headed out towards LA! Friday's drive was only 7 hours. We ended up driving through the Mojave desert and sorta freaked out because we were running low on gas without any gas for another 50+ miles or so (according to G unit). Word of advice, fill up your tank before driving through the desert because there is literally nothing out there. NOTHING. Also, did everyone know that Texas is actually bigger in square feet than California???

Stopped at Popeye's for lunch, and then arrived in LA close to 5PM. I moved my stuff into Ken's uncle's place, and then we went out to dinner with Cody's aunt and her friend, Graceanne, at this restaurant called Catalina Del Rey, close to the beach. It was really good Italian food, and we had a beer in what is supposedly the U.S.'s smallest bar. Pretty cool!

Day 4

Big day. We did a lot of stuff on Saturday, even with LA's never-ending traffic.

Then, we went up to UCLA, and walked around for a few hours (photos to come). The campus is seriously awesome, and WestWood Village (kind of like U of I's Green Street but 10X better) was pretty sweet too. We ate a BBQ chicken pizza at CPK and then headed over to Venice Beach. (Well actually, we drove up to Burbank first and drove around Warner Brothers which in hindsight might not have been worth it because we literally drove 25 minutes on the crowded freeway to circle a building, but still cool hahaha).

Venice is sweet. First experience on the beach in LA. There weren't any people jumping on glass, but still plenty of crazy people to see. After Venice, we went and drove around on USC's campus (or around it because they have a fence around their campus).

Afterwards, we headed back to Cody's aunt's to watch the Lakers game. Then, Cody was leaving real early on Sunday morning, so I went back to Ken's uncle's place to crash for the night. First time by myself in the big city.

Not gonna lie, it was really weird going from having one of my best friends with me in a really big, foreign city to being completely by myself, but I've tried keeping myself busy the past two days. (Sort of, not really unless grocery shopping and looking for the beach count).

Anyways, that was a really long post, but hope that kept you entertained for the past few minutes. Now I'm off to bed. I've been looking forward to tomorrow for the past 2 months!