8/2/12-8/3/12 - And the Hits Keep Coming...In a Good Way

I spent Thursday morning through afternoon rather quietly. I made quite a bit of progress on my travelogue. Then my glue stick ran out. A minor set-back. I blogged, which reminds me, I still haven't done the final chapter of "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." I'll get to that this weekend, I suppose. I did a lot of guitar/bass playin'. I've got new songs to learn, parts to write, and older songs to relearn, since I wasn't singing them before. I got a text from Alex informing me that when he called the night before, I had answered, "What the f*$k," and hung up. I have no recollection of this, but in my defense, he did call after midnight.

Helene came by to pick me up around 6, and we went over the the Hammer Museum for The KCRW Summer Nights/Made in LA event. It was pretty cool. I love the space. I'm bummed I missed the date with Chris Douridas and Poolside last week, but that was probably much more crowded than the laid-back scene DJ-ed by Jeremy Sole this week. There were some very enthusiastic kids dancing their diminutive butts off. There's some seriously weird "art" on display up in that piece right now. I didn't see much that felt resonant. Still, Helene and I had fun, overpriced drinks and all. Check us out in the photo booth.

More after the jump!

When we'd had enough people-watching (most notable: extremely tall former stripper) we loosed ourselves on Westwood to find some food. After a bit of strolling, we settled on Mr. Noodle, where I had a pretty satisfactory Tom Yum noodle soup for a reasonable price. We had a lovely conversation, half-watched Ladies Gymnastics, and marveled at how young all the college kids looked.

I again fell asleep before midnight.

Friday I hauled my butt down to California Plaza to see Belle Brigade at noon. They were playing as part of the Grand Performances series, which I think is just a fabulous effort. I packed a peach avocado basil sandwich and a banana, and took the Metro to Pershing Square. Check out the newly constructed performance space:

Belle Brigade themselves are incredibly charming, and I imagine they must be tons of fun to hang out with. Their music is good, and the brother and sister team sing together beautifully. Drummer/singer Barbara was disappointed that the kids summer camp she heard was coming wasn't there because she was really hoping to get a guitarist/bassist/drummer kid up there to play a song with them, fulfilling their little rock'n'roll dreams. I was disappointed too. That would have been awesome. All their success couldn't be happening to nicer people, so even though their music didn't really speak to me, that didn't diminish the experience. They're just so darn cute!

Cool stuff I saw between the Metro stop and California Plaza:

Angel's Knoll Park looks a lot nicer in "500 Days of Summer." In real life there's a bunch of trash and homeless people. But there is free wifi...

I went home to get gorgeous and wait for Becky to arrive. After we finally found her a parking space, we got back on the Metro, and scooted down the The Standard for a drink at the rooftop bar.

After that, we trotted over to The Edison for happy hour. They've raised their prices a little, but it's still top-shelf cocktails for normal cocktail prices. I had 3. And we ate an embarrassing amount of french fries. It was pretty quiet in there, so we had the opportunity to chat with the bartenders a bit. Rick turned us on to his favorite sipping tequila (a plata!), called Ocho. We discussed whiskey and terroir. I felt very high brow, but you know, also drunk.