Yom Kippur Hollywood Style

I am once again a proud owner of a passport - the chinese government gave it back without too much of a fight (although they did get $100 out of me). But now my passport has a picture of the great wall in it.

I took Friday off to get my passport. Once I got it back I had some time to kill. First I headed to Rodeo Drive. I'm sure it's exciting if you are looking to spend $100,000 on art or clothes or want to look at either of those. But just walking along the street was not as impressive as I expected. If I was going to walk around a fancy shopping area I would go to fashion island instead, although I don't usually walk around fancy shopping areas so not sure how much my opinion counts.

After that I still had some time so I went to the WB studio tour. That was fun. It was a bit weird because there was a group who drove up from dallas, a guy from philly, a girl from australia and I had just headed over to kill some time. When everyone else started taking pictures of everything I realized I probably should have brought a camera. I already realized that movies and TV are fake, but this really helped it sink in. When you look at the front of a house on TV the back of the house is probably the front of another house on the show. The NYC park where they play football in Friends is a tiny stretch of grass in a studio in LA. And of course practically everything is some setup in a sound stage. I did get to see Morpheus's car from the Matrix and the flying car from Harry Potter and I was sorted by the sorting hat (apparently there are 6 that they used, but the one that talks is all green just like a green screen), but I did not appreciate the house it put me in. In case you are curious, I think it is fairly obvious which house I think I should be in, and of course being in the same house as Harry would be good, and I actually don't mind going for pure power.

After the tour and through the next day it actually rained somewhat hard (ok everyone in Boston would laugh, but hard for LA). The craziest thing was over the course of Saturday I saw 9 cars broken down, some of them in the middle of the road. I have no idea why rain would cause cars to break down, it's not like they are special LA cars that aren't made for the rain. But it was way too many cars in one day to be a coincidence. I also got to see the LA river actually be a river (normally it is just a concrete thing that provides a good spot for filming car chases).

On Saturday I went to the Laugh Factory for services with Evan. This time we didn't show up ahead of time and ended up in the overflow room which was the first time I've ever watched the Rabbi on a giant flat screen. It was a bit silly watching on TV, although the room is setup as a lounge so it made for a much more comfortable services experience. Evan was fasting so I went with it. That was an experience I will not repeat soon (well, at least for another year). We were both so tired from not eating we spent the whole day watching TV (sometime someone is going to explain to me how not eating helps people concentrate on praying). For break the fast we went for a giant steak dinner. I was expecting to not be able to eat much, but I cleaned my plate.