oh dear lord.

I sometimes forget that life in LA is never quite normal. I've been here almost 5 years now and I've kind of gotten used to the weirdness, but every once in a while I step back and take an outsiders look at my life and go, "Duuuude!"

We'll start with Saturday. First, I went to meet my small group. One of the members of which was an actor in a major 90's television show. Discuss Jesus with a star? Check.

On to lunch. Which was hamburgers with my good buddies Sean and Nick. Pretty normal, right? Well, if normal means eating burgers at an Asian-run burger stand where the burger lady is, like uber nice (and probably crazy) and knows everyone's names writes you notes on your paper plate and you stand in line in front of a dude that is clearly a chick or a chick who is clearly a dude (I'm not sure which - beard, boobs, and toenail polish - you decide) and then eating said burgers while having a discussion that includes the phrase, "I got a job teaching Lego robotics," and "It was an hour of pantomime! It was genius." and then having a stranger come up to us and ask us if we thought Tom Cruise was faking the whole insane Scientologist thing, then yes, I had a normal lunch. In case you were wondering, the weirdo stranger guy told us that Tom Cruise is taking anti-anxiety medicine on the low. Just in case you were wondering.

Then today. Dear Lord, today. I was in Beverly Hills for church and lunch and was getting in my car to go home when I stopped dead in my tracks. I see a house, with a, um, a statue, like...uh...attached to it? It's of a window (not a real window, mind you, a statue of a window), with RAPUNZEL looking out. How do I know it was Rapunzel? Cuz she's letting down her hair. All the way to the grass below. A big bronze Rapunzel. Let me repeat that. A BRONZE RAPUNZEL.

I immediately sent a pic text to my fried Lori who has a blog devoted to funny and strange things (www.funnystrange.net), to which she responded, "Someone had to commission that, dude."

Dear. Lord.

My camera phone pic wasn't that good, and I really wanted to post it here, so I've done the best that I could with a google map. It's still a little fuzzy, but I think you should be able to make it out:


View Larger Map

If you need to see it in person (and trust me, you do need to see it in person), it's on the corner of Carmelita and Rodeo Drive.

Then I went to a Hollywood Rock Academy show to see one of my C.A.S.T. kids kick some ass on drums. I was a little wary at first. A show full of teen rock bands in my day and area would have been an earful of tone deaf. I went late so I wouldn't have to hear most of them, but I get there and DUDE - these kids - I don't even know what to say. Yeah, there was some tone deafness here and there, but these kids were doing what can only be described as "shredding." Like, I'm talking serious ass-kicking! What are these kids on? Special rock steroids?? All I know is that I went straight home and googled Hollywood Rock Academy and plan on sending a donation there way soon. And I'll probably spend a significant amount of time being sad that I didn't grow up in a big city where I could form a band, get professional help cultivating that band, and then get gigs at world famous venues. (Just a quick side note - After the Reign (www.myspace.com/afterthereignband) will be playing the Roxy on March 27. You should go and support them, especially Christina, the drummer, who kicks ass).

Tonight is another C.A.S.T. kid concert, which this time means a trip into downtown, which is always an adventure. At least it's not some back alley club that smells like urine, which would describe the last concert I went to in downtown LA. I won't even go into the screaming hookers and the men peeing publicly and the guy that caused me to think to myself, "This is it. In about 5 minutes I'm going to know what it feels like to be stabbed, and I will die. This is the last night of my life."

Only in Los Angeles.

What did you do this weekend?

UPDATE: As suspected, the orchestra concert was amazing. Apparently they've found a way to disguise professional musicians as 15 year old Asian kids. Did I mention everyone was Asian? Annette rocks!