Our Big Night Out in LA -- Thursday June 19

Thursday!! June 20^th!  It’s THE DAY that we came for – the big nerve-wracking, sleep-stealing, brain-overloading day that we came for.  Tonight is the dinner with Freddie Smith (actor from Days of Our Lives, heretofore referred to as “Freddie”, “Bestie”, or “FS”)..   Freddie has emailed and told me that he’s made reservations for us at “Firefly” at 7:30.  Two things.. inner geek alarms going off because I love the show “Firefly” and that’s where we’re going… has to be a sign that this is going to be awesome – and we’re eating so late because he’s working that day and will be on set until then, so that’s super cool.

Sleep is an issue – time changes, stress, too much light coming in.. we keep waking up at 4:30 in the morning and struggling to go back to sleep... we’re going to be ready to sleep on that 8 hour flight to the UK because LA is going to wear us down.  We’re also not making great preparations for food – it’s our first morning in the guest house (I like saying “guest house”… "we’ll be in the guest house"..).. and we didn’t get food for the morning yet. That’s the great part, one of the great parts, about having your own place with a kitchen is that you get to purchase food and have a snack or breakfast in the apt before getting out in the world.  But we are dumb – and Britt needs to eat every few hours or Brangry comes out to play again. I'm late with blogs - but I'm choosing sleep over blog, and writing when I can.. it won't be a year before I get things up.  :)

View of the hills, from the hills

We want to get our hair did in LA – and Britt has been doing this awesome search all morning, looking for places that will shampoo and style and maybe touch up make up.  There is one place 40 minutes from us (plus traffic) that we love, we love the price, we love the service, but we don’t love that it’s 40 minutes.  It’s the student training center for Aveda – just $45 for shampoo, style and make up – and they don’t take tips – and it’s in Beverly Hills so we can feel fancy.  After looking at other schools and salons that either don’t list services or don’t list prices (my daddy taught me that “if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it” – so we’re scared of them because the ones that are revealing prices are starting at $150 and we’re just not going there).  So we figure that we’re planning on doing the Beverly Hills sign today anyway – we’ll be close!  We have to wait til 10:30 to call for an appointment (HANGRY) – but we get in for a 3:30 slot – dinner is at 7:30 – should have PLENTY of time.

LA is famous for their diners – they’re all really old, and with just great food and coffee.  They’re left over from the old Hollywood days of sitting around drinking coffee and smoking, and there are a lot of them.  We tell Siri, “Diner” and she pops up a few on our list.. we pick “Tallyride” because it seems close and had decent ratings, did I mention it seemed close?  I swear Siri took us in circles to get to this place – but we FINALLY find it – I almost gave in and pulled into a place called “Dimples” to get food.  You don’t want your food from a place called “Dimples”.

 

The diner is serving breakfast and lunch, so I get breakfast and Britt gets lunch (our “Breakfast and Lunch” video is up for a few awards, got some good buzz).  The food was AMAZING – and it might be because we were so hangry –but that was the best omelet I’ve ever had, perfect blend of cheese, huge chunks of meat.. and Britt had the BLT with avocado – if they ask you if you want to add avocado, the answer is always yes, Ray.. (anybody with me on the Ghostbuster’s reference?).    The waitresses are classic diner too and we’re having fun listening to them rattle off specials like Flo from Alice – great place.  We are full and happy and ready for the day.

 

I find a copy place to print off my questions for Freddie tonight .. you see my biggest fear was to sit across from him and say, “Soooooo…….  You’re on Days…….   And……”  - so I’ve known about this for about 2 months, and for those 2 months I’ve been making notes about questions for Freddie in my phone.  “Why is the sky blue? I don’t know, that may be a good thing to ask Freddie..” --  I then copied these into a word file, and organized them BY CATEGORY (it’s a sickness) – and the grand total… 7 pages of questions.  Understand that Freddie has been forewarned (we had a phone call a few days before I flew out to break the ice and talk about dinner plans and who I wanted to be there, etc – and I told him I had 7 pages of questions, he said he’s excited about it).   When you’re a dork, the best thing to do is admit it right away – you try to hide your “dork” it will backfire and you’ll end up being an “idiot”.  I’d MUCH rather be adorkable than be an idiot.   We get the questions printed and we are off.  Also during this call he asks who I want there – it was originally billed as a dinner with “10 Days cast members” – and that freaked me out a little, because I honestly don’t watch all of the show and I didn’t want those awkward moments where this person gave up their evening to come let me meet them and I had to pretend that I cared, all the while trying to figure out how to just talk to Freddie more.  So when he asked, I told him I was just interested in him and Alyssa (his gf, I figure I want someone there who he feels relaxed around, so he’ll be more relaxed around us), and I mention a few other actors that are involved in their story (Brendan who plays “T”, and Blake Berris who plays “Nick”) – Chandler (Will) is out of town already – in Ohio for a Pride festival, and then to Peru with his family to climb Monchu Pichu.. whoa.  Freddie says he hasn’t talked to Brendan for a while (he only has a day on the set every few months), and Blake has a movie premiere that he has to attend, but he’d try to stop by for drinks after.  But basically it will be just me, Britt, Freddie and Alyssa – perfect.   Britt says she’s actually more nervous because there will be fewer people – but I’m feeling much better, especially how calming he was on the phone.  You can tell that he’s just a regular guy who happens to have a regular gig on a show.  He tells me that he can tell already that we’re going to get along great, it’s going to be a great evening for me and we’re just going to go to one of fave places, get a quiet table in the back and get to know each other.  Really cool guy.

We head to this intersection that has the Beverly Hills sign – we were going to try to do the Hollywood Sign this morning, but we don’t want to be pressed for time, so we just go straight to BH and plan to do the Hollywood sign later.  We take the scenic route and Britt is freaking out at the houses – she’s still certain that famous people live in all of these houses.  I point out that people with money don’t have to be famous, and to her logic, if you have that much money, you’re famous to *someone*, even if you’re a software designer. Ok..  another thing that Britt has been doing since we arrived is yelling “pink house” every time she sees a pink house (they make her happy) – it’s similar to slug-bug – and “pink” is a word with a punch to it, so every time she says it I jump just a little.. driving along in LA… PINK house!!  I told her about this, so she’s added some modification – she’s trying to say “Mauve house” – less punch, but not so catchy. 

 

We’re hitting all the famous streets that we’ve heard in song.. Ventura, Sunset, Santa Monica Blvd., Melrose, Rodeo Drive… palm tree lined streets just like in the movies.  Britt makes a note that even the bad neighborhoods look a little dressier with palm trees. She thinks we could use some in East St. Louis.  We see a lot of smart cars around, and we can see why – much easier to create a parking spot if you’re in one of those. 

We find the Beverly Hills sign easily – we had googled the best place to find a sign that we could access for a pic – and this was the top spot.  I told Britt that we couldn’t just drive around and find a sign, some might not be accessible… but we even got a great parking spot – got our pic and went.  It’s now like 12:00.  We have 3 and a half hours to kill until our hair appt.  Hmmm.. so we just do a lot of driving around, and decide to head to Hollywood and Vine to see the strip from the car.   We crack ourselves up looking at the names of places we drive by, there is a Chinese place called “Best Chinese Food”…  what do you want to eat tonight? The best Chinese food… oh yah, where is that?  The Best Chinese Food… yah, but WHERE?? The BEST CHINESE FOOD!!  (we have a whole “Who’s on First” bit worked up).   Then there is another Chinese place called “Chinese Taste Fast Food”… What?  I love some Chinese taste – and I do want it fast – and I want food… I figure that the places with the most literal translations have to be the most authentic – no fake Chinese food there, you get real Chinese Taste and you get it Fast.  And I’ll bet that in Chinese/Madarin that it’s like some awesome creative name that sings… But in English, not so much.  It’s fun to say though… try it…aloud…  “Chinese Taste Fast Food”.

Brittany has a moment when we pass a place called “Pink Taco”.. she is laughing so hard – and I don’t get it.  I keep thinking of like “Pinks” which is a famous hotdog place here – I didn’t even to that place that Brittany went.  She blames Scott. I can’t help but blame him either.  J

We do the pass down Hollywood Blvd – and then we decide to go ahead and get to Aveda – we find parking pretty quickly, a nice little lot – Britt gets caffeine from Starbucks, and we’re headed to get our hair did at this fancy Beverly Hills place.  ME? Now my friends are laughing right now because I don’t do this stuff – I don’t do things where people have to touch me and talk to me.  I know.  We meet our students, mine is Ericka – and she has BRIGHT PINK hair (“pink house!”) and she is SUPER sweet.  We decide to go for curls, and I would insert the name of Britt’s student here,  but she doesn’t remember – even though she really loved her too.  

We’re also getting our make up done here, so they consult about that – they’re concerned that we want big black dramatic “smokey eye” looks, and Aveda make up is clean and simple – I say that clean, simple and natural is exactly what I’m looking for.  My word for Smokey Eye is Raccoon Eye – it would look like I had been punched, and we don’t need to see that.  The first step is to wash the hair – and even that is an adventure – they have HORIZONTAL tables for us to LIE down on while we’re getting our hair washed. Britt tells them in her best Illinois twang, “We don’t have beds like this back home in St. Libory, we just sit”.  They think we’re cute. We try to explain to them the special event that we’re going to, and they’re really trying to be happy for us, but they don’t get it, and they don’t know who Freddie is.  But it’s the effort that counts.  We get “mini-facials” (yes friends, people TOUCHED my face.  And the world didn’t end.) – things rubbed and misted and covered in a warm towel.   Britt has them take pics of us because the people “back home” won’t believe this – adorkable works for us.

Horizontal shampoo

My Beverly Hills facial

 

Getting the hair done is a pleasant experience – it didn’t feel like we were being looked down on because we were from St. Louis or not somebody that belonged in Beverly Hills – they really took their time with us, kept us informed at every step, and made us feel cool.  Got my make up done and that was even a good experience – it’s weird to see yourself like that for the first time, but it was good.  Britt loved her student so much (the one who’s name she can’t remember) that she tipped her directly, that’s a no-no.. but she did it anyway.  The only bad thing, and not bad really, was that it did take us a little longer to get out of there than we thought it would.  It’s now 5:30, and by the time we get the car it’s 5:45.  The gps says 40 minutes away, but I know better because it’s 5:45 in LA.  They want us to take the 405 and there is no way I’m getting on that at this time – heard stories of that take 3 hours… so I just pick the biggest street that cuts through, Santa Monica Blvd, and we head east.  It’s only 9 miles away.  We’ll be FINE.  No stress.  We still have to get back to change, but we already know what we’re wearing, so that’s cool, and we want to charge phones and batteries because after being out for the day, they’re pretty drained.  We figure we should be at the apt by 6:45, get dressed, get charged and be ready to go.  We told Freddie where we were staying, and he lives in the same general area, so he picked a favorite place of his, it’s only 10 min from our guest house – so it’s all good.

Except that in 40 minutes we’ve gone 4 miles.  Only five miles left, half our trip, and we’ve taken 40 minutes.  At the salon we had tweeted a pic of us with our new hair to Freddie and Alyssa so that they would know who they were looking for – we knew them, but I realized they had never seen us – so I tweeted with the hashtag #alloutofRedCarnations (clever, if I do have to say so myself)..  While we’re driving, she tweets back a pic of them, and says something about wearing red..  And twitter is blowing up.  I’m a lurker on twitter, but since I got this dinner package more and more people have followed me – word has spread that I’m the “one” going to dinner with Freddie and they want live updates and pics – I told them I would tweet pics and Vines (videos) from the restaurant, but don’t wait up for updates.  I’m not going to be looking at my phone while I’m sitting across from Freddie and Alyssa.  But now we’ve sent these pics back and forth to each other, and the twitterverse is buzzing.  I’m buzzing because we are obviously going to be late.  Late to Freddie – what?  I wanted every minute possible, and I’m the one that’s going to be late?  So I respond to Alyssa’s tweet and say that we might be a little late #LATraffic – and I email Freddie and tell him the same, maybe 10 min late because we need to charge… he emails back immediately and says to take our time.

We get to the apt – charge – change… and I’m freaking on the inside.  This is it. We’re going. ACK!  We find the place after passing it up just once.  It’s a really obscure place, kind of a swanky bar/restaurant and they’re so cool that they don’t even have a sign out front – just a wall of ivy.  They only clue we have that it’s Firefly is that the valet out front has a big “F”.. with “Firefly” small underneath.  They’re so cool they don’t even have their NAME highlighted.  And they just open at 5:30, close at 2am. 

We’re here – we’re here – I delight just a little in saying, “Reservation under Freddie Smith”.. she tells us that our party is already seated, and leads us there.  They get up and hug us immediately – and I’m nervous, of course – but they are just such genuine people that it was comfortable immediately.  Our first topic of conversation in LA, of course, is LA traffic and why we were late…told them all about the experience getting our hair done.. all that – just a great night.  Lots of pics, lots of videos, and tweeting them to people that weren’t there.  We would do a video (his idea too) and then post it to Twitter, and all of our phones would blow up. We were there for 4 hours – and it went by so quickly.  We talked about the show, and I got all my questions answered, but we also just chatted.  We taught him and Alyssa some signs, and even gave them sign names – they were having a great time with it.  We finally ordered food, and Britt and I both wanted to short ribs after the suggestion by the waiter.. but they only had one order left.  And Brittany just snatched it up… I got the pork shoulder – it was good too.  But it wasn’t short ribs.  At the end of the night we got more pics and video outside, and Freddie told me, “You know that we’re friends now, right?”.. I was skeptical.. but Alyssa said, “No, really, he means it”.  He told us that anytime we were in LA to message him and he’d have dinner with us.  Really nice.. but it’s not like we get to LA often. We got a lot of info - and if you want to know more, message me.   J  

Just a great night – and we’ll have more fun times on the set with them on Saturday!!  I'll end with some pics from the night (but I've already posted them on FB if you're on there).