A Lovely Saturday

I had a lovely Saturday.

I made breakfast, omelettes with portabella mushrooms, leeks, kale and wine-soaked goat cheese seasoned with herbs collected from Mummy's garden.

We drove into L.A., first to Culver City to see a show of Evan Hecox. This show was of pieces he did in Mexico City, lots of woodcuts and color-blocked watercolors. It was great! We peeked into another gallery that was in the process of hanging a show to open that night and saw a whole slew of great pieces! As we headed to our next destination, we talked a lot about what we liked about the works, how they worked, and tried to define why. I love talking about art, and I'm so lucky to have a hot boyfriend that loves it too!

We went to Fairfax near Randy's house and looked at books in this great bookstore, Family. They had comics and lots of art books and novels as well. Julie Doucet and Dame Darcy! A diary of Werner Herzog's as he walked from Germany to Paris! Our tummies were rumbling so we got a pastry at a bakery/deli across the street that has obviously been there for years, and they must put crack in the stuff b/c people were lined up out the door and pushing and shoving and yelling at the people behind the counter. What a mish-mosh it was! That's when you know something is good, when people will wait in an obscene and violent line to get it. We got it, and it was GOOD!

We drove around the corner to Randy's house and had a nice visit with him & Julia. Someone stole their aloe plant off the porch, and I decided to try and take a cutting from the monster in the back of my house and propagate it. Challenge: all of the appropriate pieces on this behemoth are HUGE and will require a small army of supports to keep it up in water so it can sprout new roots....

Then we made our way over to Little Tokyo, to a little place called Daikokuya which is rumored to have the best authentic ramen in the city. We knew it must be true when we walked in and saw how many people were crowded patiently into the tiny and cramped waiting area. Alas, the menu was not created with vegetarians in mind. Brian had the famous ramen, and was so enthusiastic about it that I copied down every detail that the menu revealed, with promises to try my best one day soon to replicate it. I will not, however, be boiling down pork joints for two days at an undisclosed location before adding the fresh veggies and noodles in front of him. This is what the menu claimed as the secret to the mystique, flavour and success of the dish... I had tuna wrapped in these wonderful leaves (I can never remember their name), dipped in tempura batter and fried. AMAZING!!!!!

THEN, as if the day couldn't get any better, we went up the street to the Frank Gehry Disney Concert Hall to see the L.A. Philharmonic open up for Grizzly Bear. Are you kidding me?!?!?!?!? Brian had never seen an orchestra perform live, so I had fun being a little know-it-all, answering questions both posed and imagined. The acoustics in this room are unreal. It's like a round pod, with every angle designed specifically for the sound coming from the stage. Grizzly Bear's performance was unbelievably beautiful, they are truly great.

We drove home laughing, tired and wired on energy drinks that did not inhibit a full on crash into bed...