If I Were Going...: March 2018

Caty and Becca channel the Partridge Family in Warner Brothers' prop department

As we switched our locale from south of Los Angeles to Burbank, we made two detours, neither of which were really worth the effort. If I had to do it over, I would have driven on the eastside through the mountains rather than along the west side. We had repeatedly discussed going to the Griffiths Observatory and the Hollywood sign. That would have been an option.

We drove through Palos Verdes, which, on a nice day, is gorgeous. Unfortunately, the fog was worse there than in Seal Beach, so it was fairly drab. We really didn't even stop.

Of course, it didn't help that I missed a turn and we ended up on the 405 instead of the Pacific Coast Highway. Yuck!

After deciding that the coast had nothing to offer on that day, we headed for the iconic Santa Monica Pier.

That's a better concept in the abstract than it is in reality.

Lunch!

It was crowded, parking was difficult and crazy expensive, it smelled bad and was populated by some sketchy characters and lots of pigeons (Becca's favorite part). Plus, there isn't really anything to look at.

But, we parked, walked to the end, ate lunch (Mexican again; it was really the only viable option) and got out of there.

But, the picture of the sign is pretty cool.

Not as great as you hope

Then, we checked in to our hotel in Burbank -- a very nice, CLEAN, centrally located Best Western. Now it was time to get down to the real reason we went to LA -- showbiz.

I already outlined the difficulties we encountered with that. But, we did have three good experiences.

Seems appropriate for LA

Our first night in Burbank, we went to Flapper’s Comedy Club. It was graduation night for students of “Flappers University,” the club’s comic training program. So, we got to see the debut of many aspiring comedians. A few were really good; most shouldn’t quit their day jobs.

The rest of the evening was improv. I love improv. Ironically, one of the funniest performances was from an audience member who was called up on stage to do sound effects for comedians. She was hilarious. But, since comedians tend to hang out in comedy clubs, she may have actually been a comedian.

One reason we went to Flappers is that famous comedians sometimes drop in. Whitney Cummings is often there. We did encounter one “celebrity,” but it took a while to figure out that she was who we thought she was.

Yep, you've seen her

It was Edie McClurg, a comedian and actress known for her character roles as a Midwestern woman (clerk, teacher, nurse, principal) in movies including Carrie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. She came in with another comedian (I never found any evidence that he was known or not).

She just looked like a regular person. We just thought she “looked like that woman who was in all those movies.” Then, they called her on stage to participate in an improv number. So, she was “that woman who was in all those movies.”

Our next adventure was the Warner Brothers Studio Tour.

More showbiz

This is a very nice, very well-organized tour. We were able to walk from our hotel – nice in an area where all decisions are predicated on traffic. Plus, we were able to grab a delicious lunch as we walked back after the tour. I had been driving a lot, so that was a nice break.

All of the Warner Brothers Studio Tour employees are personable and friendly. The process for lining up visitors and assigning them to tours seems well-thought-out and the pace was good.

Our guide

While not mind-blowing, the tour was interesting and lots of fun. I suspect it's even more fun if you are a hardcore film or TV buff -- especially if you like Marvel movies.

Our tour guide, Dustin, was knowledgeable and entertaining.

I wonder if guides come into the job fully informed about Warner Brothers films and shows (I suspect many are aspiring actors or filmmakers) or if they have to watch lots of movies and TV shows as part of their training. Probably both.

The tours are conducted on small trams (sort of like elongated golf carts) with a small amount of walking. It certainly wasn't challenging. We had a little bit of intermittent rain, but, fortunately, it was never bad enough to cause a problem.

We got to walk along streets made famous in movies as diverse as Annie, The Last Samurai, The Matrix and Christmas Vacation ...

The sets and real examples

We hung out in Stars Hollow, including visiting a house with two fronts. We learned that the interiors of many of the streetscapes are actually offices. Here’s the production office for Young Sheldon ...

A house in use

We saw costumes from popular movies ...

Costumes

We saw the props department ...

Props

... and a garage full of batmobiles and bat props ...

Becca calls for help

We passed sound stages (and walked through the Lucifer set) ...

The lot

The girls even got “sorted” ...

Becca got Gryffindor; Caty got Slytherin

We toasted each other in Central Perk ...

Coffee?

And, Caty and Becca both accepted Oscars ...

And, the Oscar goes to ...

It’s a good comprehensive tour – we’ve heard that it’s the best of the studio tours.

We had one sighting – well, Caty did. She saw Andy Richter drive by (Conan tapes on the lot). The closest we got to The Big Bang Theory was the soundstage and parking spaces.

Soundstage

The price for the tour is a little steep -- $65 for just a few hours -- but it was a good experience. But, at that price, I wouldn't do it again any time soon.

That afternoon, we went to a taping of Superior Donuts, a sitcom based on the play of the same name by Tracy Letts, that debuted in 2017.

Photo: Superior Donuts

While I was not familiar with the show, I was with many of the members of the cast.

Photo: Superior Donuts

Here's a synopsis of the show from Wikipedia …

The series revolves around the relationship between donut shop owner Arthur Przybyszewski (Judd Hirsch -- famous for Taxi), his new young employee, Franco Wicks (Jermaine Fowler, who is also one of the show's producers) and the shop's patrons in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.

With the Superior Donuts shop struggling financially, Franco makes suggestions for improvement and modernization to the sometimes-reluctant (read curmudgeonly) Arthur.

Superior Donuts' regulars include loyal patron Randy (Katey Sagal -- famous for Married with Children and Sons of Anarchy), a detective whose late father was Arthur's best friend; Tush (David Koechner -- famous for The Office), a colorful customer who uses the shop counter as a makeshift office where he keeps tabs on a variety of odd jobs via fax machine; Sweatpants (Rell Battle), Franco's roommate; aspiring real estate capitalist Fawz (Maz Jobrani); and Sofia (Dianne Guerrero -- famous for Orange is the New Black), a food truck owner with a crush on Franco.

The taping we attended focused on Franco and his relationship with his girlfriend, Tavi, played by Shamikah Martinez.

Photo: Superior Donuts

As I said, I had never seen the show, but it was the kind of sitcom that doesn’t require much viewing to get up to speed.

We had to arrive by 3:00 p.m., where we went through security. No cell phones are allowed, so you really do disconnect from the world; no cameras are allowed either. We were taken to the stadium-like seats above the sound stage, which had two permanent sets – the donut shop and the kitchen.

Other scenes were shot over to the side and we had to watch on the television screens. In addition, a few scenes had been shot in advance. We saw those on the screens in the correct chronological order.

Our job – what we have to do in exchange for a free show – was to laugh robustly. We were recorded so they could use our laughter on the show. Does that make us TV stars?

Photo: Superior Donuts

Caty, Becca and I had gone to a taping of King of Queens way back in 2004, so we had a relatively good idea of what to expect. However, we were a bit surprised when they asked us if we could stay until 9:00 p.m. (King of Queens didn't take that long). And, we were even more surprised that we didn’t get out until 11:00 p.m.

Before surrendering our lives

It wasn’t that lots of things went wrong or that there were lots of costume or scene changes. They just moved fairly slowly.

During the down time, the crowd was entertained by and interacted with a comedian. So, he basically put on an eight-hour comedy show, filled with audience participation, juggling, balancing chairs and ladders on his chin and keeping us distracted. Now, that was the hardest working guy in TV. I wish I could find his name. I was very impressed.

The show was fun, but a long, long haul. They normally provide no refreshments, but took pity on us and passed out bottled water, half sandwiches and Rice Krispies treats.

I got the distinct impression that the length of this shoot surprised everyone.

After we got out, we were hungry, so we used GPS to route us to the “nearest” open restaurant – a Wendy’s. Little did we realize that the route was through Laurel Canyon on a narrow, dark, winding road in the rain. Not fun! But, we survived.

Oh, and we didn't make it to the Griffiths Observatory or the Hollywood sign.

Iconic sign

We headed home the next day, all on different flights. Becca had to leave early, so she took an Uber. Caty and I drove. My timing was perfect; poor Caty had to hang at the airport for hours.

It was fun spending time with the girls, but I think for entertainment, it makes more sense to just buy some tickets and watch a show – especially in a place where you don’t have to get on the 405! Like New York City! Of course, had we gone to NYC, we would have gotten caught in a blizzard.

And, that did not happen in Los Angeles.

The Pacific Ocean

Trip date: March 8-14, 2018

Gray Whale fluke

I am so glad that we changed our whale watch to Sunday. Even though it was raining when we arrived at the Long Beach Harbor, the sun came out as we left the dock.

Our boat

Our trip was with Harbor Breeze Cruises -- reasonably priced, good naturalists and a very nice boat. There was a fairly good crowd on the boat, but graduated stadium-style seats on the bow made it easy to see without having to crowd the deck.

Winter doesn’t have as many types of whales off the California coast as the other seasons, but it is prime Gray Whale season.

And, we saw our first two before we even left the harbor.

Gray Whale

The Gray Whale, also known as the Grey Whale, Gray-Back Whale, Pacific Gray Whale or California Gray Whale, is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and breeding grounds – about 12,000 miles of travel each year. An adult can be up to 50 ft. long with a weight of 40 tons. Its name comes from gray patches and white mottling – much of it caused by parasitic barnacles and algae -- on its dark skin.

The sole living species in the genus Eschrichtius, the Gray Whale descended from filter-feeding whales that lived more than 30 million years ago.

Gray Whales have two blowholes on tops of their heads ...

Blowhole

... that create a distinctive heart-shaped blow ...

LOVEly blow

The Gray Whale has no dorsal fin. Instead, it has a line of six to 12 raised bumps on its lower back (dorsal crenulations) leading to the flukes, or tail. These "knuckles" look like the backbone of a very skinny animal.

Backbone ridges

The tail is 10-11 ft. across, deeply notched at the center and tapered to points on the edges. Tail markings are unique and are, therefore, used to identify specific whales. As the naturalist told us, it's a much easier method that trying to tag whales with expensive transmitters and then electronically tracking them.

Fluke

Because they have no dorsal fin, Gray Whales are a bit harder to see and photograph than Orcas or Humpbacks.

Splash

Generally, they are not particularly active above the surface during non-breeding seasons. But, we actually saw three breaches. The whales did not come as far out of the water as a Humpback might and I didn’t get a single breach picture. Just a splash.

But, it was exciting to see a Gray Whale breach.

While it is hard to see whales -- and thus to predict where they will surface -- you can often spot them swimming below the surface if the water is clear. What you will see is lighter turquoise patches -- the lighter the whale, the brighter the turquoise. There are at least two here ...

Underwater view

The whales we saw (five total) are part of a population of up to 22,000 individuals that travel between northernmost Alaska and Baja California. Before the advent of whaling, there were three or four times more Gray Whales than there are now. Whaling led to Gray Whales becoming extinct in the North Atlantic in the 18th century.

Interestingly, in 2005, two conservation biologists proposed a plan to airlift 50 Gray Whales from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean; this plan has not been undertaken. I can imagine there are many reasons for not attempting such a feat.

Gray Whales feed mainly on benthic crustaceans, which they eat by turning sideways and scooping up sediments from the sea floor. They almost always turn to the right, resulting in loss of eyesight in the right eye for many older animals. This unique feeding style makes Gray Whales reliant on coastal waters. Mostly, they feed in the northern waters during the summer. But, they do eat opportunistically while migrating.

Back

Humans and Orcas are the adult Gray Whale's only predators. Recently, more and more Orcas have been showing up along the California coast, which might not be good for Gray Whales. Greater danger comes from oil drilling and ships, plus whaling by other countries.

Because of their size and need to migrate, Gray Whales are rarely held in captivity. The first captive Gray Whale was taken from Baja California in 1965 and died two months later from an infection. The second was captured in 1972 from the same area and was released a year later after becoming too large for holding facilities. The last captive Gray Whale had beached herself. She lived at SeaWorld San Diego for 14 months until she was released because she also grew too large for the facility. Reaching 19,200 pounds and 31 feet long, she was the largest creature ever to be kept in captivity.

On this trip – and I thought this was odd – we didn’t see any dolphins. There might have been one near the whales in the harbor, but it was hard to tell if we were seeing a dolphin or part of the whale. The last time I went whale-watching in California, we saw thousands of Common Dolphins plus some Rizzo’s Dolphins.

We did, however, see some California Sea Lions basking in the sun on a buoy ...

Sea Lions have long flippers they can walk on

... and some Harbor Seals hauled out on the rocks ...

Harbor Seals can't walk on land

How do you know if it is a Sea Lion or a Seal? Both (as well as Walruses) are pinnipeds, which means "fin footed" in Latin. But, there are differences.

Sea lions generally have a solid color brown to blackish coat, bark loudly, "walk" on land using their large flippers and have visible ear flaps.

Scratch

Seals often have multi-color coats, sometimes with ring-shaped patterns, sometimes with differentiation between backs and bellies. Because their small flippers are not useful for walking, they wriggle on their bellies when on land. They seldom "speak" and they have no visible ears.

Cute face

We got a kick out of both the "show-off" Sea Lion ...

Show-off

... and the Seal that kept poking his rockmate ...

"If you kids can't behave ..."

During the whale trip, I captured a few bird shots – none particularly good. These included:

Western Grebes …

Pretty red eyes

Brandt’s Cormorants (new) …

Pretty blue throat

California Gulls …

Flying high

And, Brown Pelicans …

Flying close

We were so relieved that the rain stopped because, not only did we get great views of wildlife, but, we also had a good view of the Long Beach Harbor Lighthouse ...