Being in LA I am pretty close to Las Vegas.  Unfortunately it is still a drive away and flights haven’t been too cheap lately.  I found this service online called Casino R Us which offers gambling tours of Las Vegas!  Unfortunately, they only leave from Pittsburgh & Erie, PA and Myrtle Beach, SC.  Why don’t we have gambling tours leaving from Los Angeles?  To be honest, I don’t really like gambling, but I do like going to Las Vegas, seeing the hotels and the casinos, and I will spend a small amount of time in a casino watching others gamble and maybe spending a little bit of money here and there on myself.  Personally, I have a strong preference for the hotels on the strip, like MGM, Venetian, Paris, Mirage, etc.

It would be great though if I could take a big group on a “Las Vegas Tour” leaving from LA taking us to a few of the different hotels.  Big group trips have been a challenge to organize since its hard to get everyone to Las Vegas at the same time, but I feel like a set tour would conquer that issue.  If you are from PA or SC you should check out Casino R Us and their Las Vegas guide and tours.

• Official Vegas Website

Happy Traveling.

Sat next to Tony Danza at dinner friday night (4/11/08) at Marmalade Cafe in Malibu, CA.

Ok, but seriously, Who’s the boss?

A good friend of mine linked me to this earlier today.  Thats right! It is the Echo Park Time Travel Mart!  I need to go and take a look at this place myself…  I’m runnin dangerously low on anti-robot fluid!

 Have any of you been yet?  Give me details!

It has been very windy in socal yesterday and today.  I remember a few years ago when I used to wear glasses and contacts I hated everytime it rained or got windy.  Rain meant my glasses would get wet, which was a drag if I actually wanted to see where I was going, and wind meant i would get dust and debris on my contacts and they would dry out so it would be an all together uncomfortable experience.

Lucky for me I don’t wear those anymore, I had my eyes corrected a while back.  I originally went in to get Lasik eye surgery, but that didn’t quite work out.   My corneas were deemed too thin, so I had to settle for an older procedure called PRK.  Now my eyes aren’t a perfect 20/20 but at least its manageable and I don’t need to wear my glasses or contacts!

Hopefully, regardless of my eyewear, the weather will clear up and we can have warmish, calm, sunny days here in the southland.

Just got back to LA, finally, and its POURING.  I’m sure this will be interesting after all of our wildfires.  Here is a link to a guide on how to properly sandbag areas for those of you who are in need.

Stay Dry!

Like I said the other night, now that I have some freedom from law school I have a little time to have fun in LA.  Last weekend got a little busy, right after our last finals a few of us went out and saw The Strike Show, which was absolutely hilarious.  Lots of familiar faces like Brad Garrett, Emily Deschanel, Kat Foster, Nick Kroll, and Michael Urie.  It was a great show and we were lucky to be able to go see it since there were only two showings  (I don’t know what made me laugh harder, the saved by the bell scene, or ronna and beverly).  After that was over headed out for the usual drinks on the town.

Saturday night was pretty awesome too.  Headed out to Ketchup, on Sunset, with some friends.  Was my first time there though a few in the group were repeat offenders.  It was an interesting crowd, but the food was great.  Their tomato soup (called American Comfort on the menu) was really good.  As for the ketchups, personally I hate ketchup, but the ranch-ketchup and maple syrup-ketchup were both pretty amazing.  Then of course we rounded the night out with the usual…. drink on the town.

Now?  Oh now I recover from finals and try to become a normal human being again.  I wish my TV shows would come back on…

We (USC) defeated UCLA today, as we should have last year, and now we get to go to the Rose Bowl!!

Super Excited, I love it when my team does well.

We’re all back on campus, the roads are open again, and the fire is over 75% contained.  Looks like this fire was more damaging (structurally) than the one last month, but the on last month was a lot more traumatic for the students on Pepperdine’s campus.

Hope everyone is ok after this one. 

After high winds a fire broke out again in Malibu, around 3:30am.  Firefighters were ready and waiting.  Pepperdine has been evacuated again.

Earlier this year I posted about Malibu catching fire (in January, with pictures). Today Malibu caught fire again and it was a lot more hectic and scary than last time. Didn’t even have time to snap pictures before escaping. As of tonight 2,200 acres have burned including several structures (and the facades of my market and pharamcey, Ralphs and CVS).

Like I said, no pictures this time, but a much more exciting story. Sometime between 6 and 6:30 am this morning I woke up because I heard a loud knock on my bedroom door. I asked whoever it was to come in, heard no response, asked them who it was, heard no response, so I called one of my roommates (we’ll call this Roommie1). I asked Roommie 1 if she knocked on my door and when she said no, we started thinking intruder! We heard another bedroom door open and decided we needed to get out of our bedrooms and see what was going on. We walk out, still sort of asleep, to see Roommie2 slightly panicked saying something about how her parents called from florida reporting a fire in Malibu next to Pepperdine. We had NO power and cell phone reception was shoddy. Roommie1 and I started calling family to figure out whats going on. Local news is not reporting a fire.  I decided to run outside (barefoot) to see what was going on and saw smoke East of us. We start packing up our important items (medication, laptops, thats all) in the dark. While packing we hear from family that Malibu canyon is on fire and that news agencies are reporting that Pepperdine has been evacuated, though it hasn’t. We decide that we need to get rolling and get away from the fire. As we start leaving campus we notice the evacuation crews setting up, fire trucks everywhere, and smoke billowing east of campus. Unfortunately for us, the quickest route away from the fire is East/Southeast on PCH, the same direction as the fire. The 3 of us had thrown our stuff into our cars and were caravaning out towards the smoke. At one point just past the Cross Creek area, the smoke on PCH was so dense that we had 0 visibility from our cars, and even though it was still before sunrise, this cloud of smoke was illuminated bright orange. Yeah, we drove through the bright orange cloud of fire while fleeing. We were later informed that literally minutes after we left the roads were closed and residents were not allowed to drive away, just evacuated to the designated evacuation areas. We were lucky to leave when we did.
After that stretch of road the smoke cleared up and we just had to live with burning eyes until we hit PCH and Sunset Blvd and made our ways to friends’ places (where we watched nearby hills and buildings burn).

Sorry that I couldn’t snap some awesome pictures, I was too busy fleeing while I was still allowed to. I hope everyone else made it through this ok.

Here are a few shots I found online of things I recognize on fire:

• Damage to facade of shopping center off of PCH (mentioned earlier)
• Hill behind Pepperdine Law smoldering