A Weekend in Tinseltown, Part II

[tealin]

Yes, Part II ... Part I will arrive when I have found the appropriate clips on YouTube to fully illustrate its awesomeness.

We went on an L.A. Public Transit adventure today. It does exist! Only, if you live in Burbank, you're not cool enough for it to bother with you. We drove to Pasadena to catch the Gold Line into downtown. Functioning trains, imagine that! A nice way to see new parts of the city, too. Union Station was quite impressive in that Art Deco/Mission kind of way, and the Red Line stations – massive, cavernous things with no one in them. Granted, it was a Sunday, but compared to how packed the Tube stations were all the time last year it was weird to see something roughly similar so deserted.

Half the purpose of our trip downtown was to catch Mass at the cathedral. What an odd place. As you walk up to it it looks for all the world like a CG set, no doubt in part because of the single light source and acute angles that look like forced perspective.* We've been going to a lot of museums lately and I kept expecting to have to pay admission at a desk just inside the doors but, luckily, no. The inside felt like no less of a sci-fi set and while the scale (which you can't come close to capturing in a photo) was mightily impressive, something about the space and the proceedings made me really understand how the rest of the world seems to view the Catholic church as a massive beaurocracy with a billion souls under its thumb.

By the way, can anyone tell me why the LA Yellow Pages don't list chiropractors anywhere?


*Or vast angles and stone surfaces too great to belong to any thing right or proper for this earth, with the abnormal geometry of dimensions apart from ours, if you've been reading as much Lovecraft as I have lately.

Comments

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

What happened to Weekend in Tinseltown part I?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

See the small text at the top of the entry.

[beckychan.livejournal.com]

It doesn't? I don't know why! That's just dumb!

I'm all anti LA cathedral for one main reason: They spent multi-million dollars on building the thing when there paritioners live in skid row a few streets away. The hell is that all about?

Also, I think it's ugly.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

That is a freakin' weird cathedral.

[mariahgem.livejournal.com]

That's so awesome!! I love LA, I hope I can go back there soon. (and someday work there, obviously! XD)

Weird off note: I was looking at your site yesterday, and noticed you had a TON of AWESOME Discworld pics! But no mention of Rincewind! I love your style, and most of the ways you've draw the characters are spot on with how I imagined them too (which always is a tough thing with books. I had fights in high school years ago with my friends over what the Wheel of Time characters looked like, lol.)

Have you ever done any Rincewind drawings? (I loved your Conina, btw!)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

No Rincewind ... He doesn't grab my imagination much, as a character, and Paul Kidby does more than enough of the PERFECT Rincewind so I just don't bother. If I ever need him for a scene I'll probably just appropriate Mr Kidby's design.

[martes.livejournal.com]

As a long-time LA resident, I'll attest that people avoid public transportation if at all possible. The city is too big and too spread out to make it practical, and the trains they do have go to only very limited areas (like, there's none to the West Side at all) So even if you're lucky enough to live near a station, if your office isn't right next to a station on the other end, you're stuck taking the public bus, which is horrific. I had to work on the West Side for years, which included a nasty commute from Santa Clarita on the 405 that took at least an hour each way. My only 'option' for public transportation was to drive into the Valley, and then take a commuter bus. All at around 7 AM, when morning traffic is at it's very worse.

Living in LA has its good points, but it sucks choads to get anywhere in a timely fashion. If you're feeling particularly masochistic try driving downtown or on the 101 through the Valley during rush hour.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Oh, I pretty much assume the 101 is solid bumper-to-bumper at all times. I've never been on it when it wasn't, except that one time we were coming back from Tarzana at 3 am.

If they put a big loop from downtown to Santa Monica then up the 405 and across the Valley along the 101/134 corridor, then back to downtown by way of places like the Zoo, Los Feliz, and Dodger Stadium, that might actually get some traffic. I'd be on it all the time.

[phonixa.livejournal.com]

Last time we were in Anaheim, we were about a block away from the crystal cathedral. Now THAT is a nutso building.

That cathedral IS crazy looking. Part one better have some Kung Fu Panda in it.

[(Anonymous)]

something about the space and the proceedings made me really understand how the rest of the world seems to view the Catholic church as a massive beaurocracy with a billion souls under its thumb.

What a telling observation.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

A billion souls that are free to leave any time they want. I came to the church late in my life and have found it incredibly rewarding, rich, varied, fascinating, giving, and revealing.

[(Anonymous)]

which is why the inhuman architecture was perhaps a bad choice for a cathedral....

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Agreed. It would have made a very impressive seat of government or finance. Whatever happened to the days of banks whose lobbies cowed their customers? Now it's all friendly linoleum and acoustic tiles in an ordinary office. Give me 'MONEY IS POWER! TREMBLE, YE WHO ENTER HERE!'

Additionally, monocles should be part of the dress code. How can you take a banker seriously if he's not in pinstripes and a monocle? And shiny shoes. Why should I trust my money to someone who looks like he just came back from a whitewater rafting holiday?

I digress.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

No perhaps about it. It should be a friendly, warm, inviting place, but not too homey as to be too comfortable.