If you like what you see...

follow me.

or email kcattaraugus@gmail.com

2 out of 99

I have a lot of work to do:

http://www.laweekly.com/2010-02-26/eat-drink/99-things-to-eat-in-l-a-before-you-die/1

things are not always what they seem

There are a lot of Wizard of Oz moments in Los Angeles. What you think is this great and powerful wizard that you have heard about in legends and stories is just an old nervous man behind a curtain.

Some times our imaginations are just better.

When I have friends and family visit who have never been here before, I always struggle on whether or not I want to ruin other people's idea of this place. Do I want to be an imagination ruiner?

Here are the places in LA you should show at your own risk:

The "Walk of Fame"

I think people are expecting to see a velvet roped off area with very clean well kept sidewalk spaces and a museum-like atmosphere. Well, I hate to disappoint you but the walk of fame is just a sidewalk, like the one outside of your house, just stick more gum on it. You can almost miss it if you don't look down.

The Kodak Theater

I feel is equally disappointing. It is nestled within the Hollywood and Highland center, which is just a mall, next to the Aveda. You can just imagine the starlets clicking their Manolos up the staircase and stopping by the Bread Papa for a quick bite. (Not really, too many carbs) Not the majesty of old Hollywood that I think people are expecting.

Pink's

It is just a hot dog. A hot dog you wait an hour for. Is it a great hot dog? Not something so fantabulous that you have a Giada food porn moment when you taste it. It is just a hot dog. I think Pink's is good for people watching and if I were a teenager I would be scoping out guys. Also, the person who came up with the Chicago dog has never been to Chicago before.

Shatter people's imaginations at your own risk.

Bus blog-:(

No one waiting for the MTA looks happy, least of all me.

La blogs I heart-mistress of the tidepools

My Chaperone for the last post was the Mistress of the Tidepools. If you aren't reading my blog, maybe you should read hers:


Western Wilds

It is all her adventures and misadventures while exploring California. It is a must read for all of you who think that LA county is just full of strip malls, celebrities and freeways.

They tide is low and I holding on

Sometimes you can be overwhelmed by all of the possibilities of every thing that there is to see and do here, that you can miss the little things that makes Los Angeles great.

There was a point in my life here where my social activity was confined to Beverly to Hollywood, Vermont to Fairfax. It was months before I saw La Cienega and months before I saw the ocean. This is not the way I recommend being and Angeleno.

Today I went to Malibu Lagoon to explore the tide pools at low tide. Low tide happens everyday, few days are optimal and even fewer of those are on a weekend. So take those four to six days and think about which of those days you would like to sit in beach traffic and that leaves one day. Which left today. (I apologize, that was very SAT story problem of me)

Exploring the tide pools is like exploring an alien planet as a giant. Sometimes you step on things.

Anemone are everywhere in packs or schools curled up until water hits them, then they open up to try to catch their prey. The tentacles are poisonous to small creatures, but not to you. If you touch them, they pull themselves into these mounds, that kind of look like donuts. It is hard to capture the colors of these animals. Crystalline greens, silvery creams, pinks, purples and colors I don't think that there are names for yet. If you click to open this photo, you can probably get a better idea of their color spectrum. These things make me wish that I had a better camera.

You have to climb further out over treacherous rocks and get tangled up in Sea Grass to see the good stuff like:

Lazy Sea Stars in oranges and purples.
Which when I was young we called them Star Fish. But I guess since they are not fish so they have a new name.
(Pluto will always be a planet to me)

Please do not be one of those assholes who picks them up and carry them around.

Also further out toward the ocean are this crazy things called sea squirts that are basically animals that filter sea water for food and then spit the water out at you. I wish that I could have gotten a photo, but they are bad actors and do not spit on queue.

Please do not step on the cute purple spiny urchins. It will hurt, plus you will have to go to the hospital.

We also saw Sea Hares , a couple of crabs spending sometime together that I can only explain as TV MA, plus an old friend pictured below-I guess I am not the only Minnesota transplant here.


It is these little things that make Los Angeles great.

Something topical

I never thought the day would come that I would be snagged for jury duty. I do not have a CA drivers license, I tried not to register to vote until I had to, I have moved a lot, but alas, they found me.

I was told that serving on a jury was a privilege and that was the first thing I thought when I saw the summons in my mailbox. If you could translate a bout of expletives into words, I am sure what I said would be something like this:

"How wonderful to be able to do my duty as a citizen, what a privilege."

I sat in a room for seven hours in hopes of fulfilling my citizen destiny. And why, why do they always have to show a video? You know what I am talking about, "The Judicial System and You" my favorite part was when they interviewed a previous juror and she said:

"You know it was a great experience meeting people and spending such a large amount of time with them. You meet some really great people. In fact we still keep in touch to this day"

I never knew that serving on a jury was a form of social networking, did you?

The highlights of my day were:
Sitting in the jury assembly room with the Director/writer/actor/producer Kevin Smith
Going to MOCA on Grand and looking at the exhibit of their permanent collection, which is very photo heavy, which I like.

I am off the hook for another year, hopefully more.

On another note. I don't think Mr. Smith was so large that he needed to be kicked off his Southwest flight. And they do not call Southwest -Southworst without a reason.

California is beautiful when it rains

This is the song I always think of when it rains here:

In California - Neko Case

...and now I am living in Koreatown waking to the sound of car alarms

City Pages vs. LA Weekly

There are a lot of differences between L.A. and Minneapolis. One of the most telling differences between them is located inside their free reading material. When I lived in Minneapolis my social activity centered around the City Pages. A free weekly newspaper very similar to the LA Weekly and New York's Village Voice. The City Pages was always full of great things to do including seeing local bands (God, I miss the local music scene) art crawls and my favorite find Atari Party. Every Atari game, living room set up kegs and local bands in an artist loft from 10:PM to dawn. (This blogs makes me sound like I am addicted to atari, but I am not, I just like music.)

I thought that I would have similar luck in finding things to do with the LA Weekly, but unfortunately the majority of what I can find there is where I can get breast augmentation, reduction, botox, chemical peels, rhinoplasty, tanned, buffed, extensions, color contacts and other places to change the way I look.

Because how I look just isn't good enough right?

I feel like here they are letting you know about the great things to do in this town but if you want to go, you better at least get a chemical peel before you go.

I much prefer the Minneapolis come as you are attitude.

M.T.A.-May take a while

Once after jumping on a bus at Melrose and La Brea, the driver came over the microphone and announced:

"For those of you who are going to call into the Metro hotline today because the 7:48 (a.m.) bus never showed up, I will save you a phone call by letting you know that the bus broke down. After all you are riding the MTA and it is all about the way you look at it MTA... Metro Transit Authority..... MTA .... May Take Awhile. Think about it and have a great day."

The best way to cope with public transportation in this town is to be zen about the whole experience, the more you care about where you are going, the less cooperative the buses will be, always plan to make it to your destination 30 minutes before you need to be there and NEVER, NEVER take the 10 if you have to be somewhere at a specific time.

The best way to comment on the Public Transit system is to ride it and let you know what happens.

kcattaraugus at gmail dot com

Meeting people in LA

If you have recently moved to Los Angeles, I would like to give you some ice breaker advice. The one question that will ultimately start a conversation here is:

Where are you from?
The truth is that the vast majority of people in Los Angeles are not from Los Angeles. There are tons of people from the midwest, east coast and recently I have met a bunch of people from Michigan. Neighborhood bars here take on a whole new meaning because here you can find places populated by your old neighborhood.

For example take a concentrated population like the people I work with. (The only time I will mention work in my blog) 6 people out of 21 are actually from Los Angeles and one of those lived in Colombia for the majority of her life. The others are:

Idaho, Nebraska, Orange County (people assure me that this is very different from Los Angeles), South Africa, Wisconsin, Minnesota (someone other than myself), Hawaii, Michigan, Viet Nam, Brooklyn and Ohio.

The fact is that I have met very few people who are native to this huge city.

So if you are at a party or a bar and you find your self alone, forced to mingle just ask:

"Where are you from?"

Because that will lead you to a whole host of other questions that will occupy you for at least 10 minutes. Like:

Why did you move to L.A.?
How long have you been here?
I am new here where are some decent places to hear local music? or go have sushi?

Another thing that shocked me about asking this one questions is that here people actually elaborate. (Shocker)

If I asked this question in Minnesota:

Oh, where are you from? Eden Prairie
Originally? yes
What do you do? I work at General Mills.

This usually ends our conversation because a) what I am supposed to do with one word answers and b) No one from Minnesota will actually ask you those same questions back.

If I ask this question here, I goes a lot different.

Where are you from? I am from Kentucky.
How long have you been here? Well I came out here in 98 for college and never really left.
What are you doing out here? Right now I am trying to act but I also nanny for this rich family in Bel Air. They let me go out on auditions whenever I want and it is really great.

Then you can ask them, if you have seen them in anything.....

Are you new you L.A.? Where are you from and what are you doing here? Do you know of any good sushi places?

cupcakes for a cause

(If you didn't make it, you really missed out)

write up in Laist