Rex Lee made my day

Even though it was a sleep in day today, I still got up at around 9am. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older, the time changes, or the different bed and my sore back, but I no longer seem to be able to sleep in as before. At McGill, I remember sleeping into two in the afternoon or later! But since my locum in Red Deer, or maybe getting up early at the farm, has thrown off my schedule. Once again, the weather outside our hotel balcony was foggy and cool. So wearing long pants and a jacket, I was over dressed for the hot weather in Hollywood. We decided to do the Warner Brothers tour even though it was on the expensive side at $49 a person. It was rated quite highly on TripAdvisor, and we were running out of things to see. Asking for a discount at the cashier scored us a $5 discount per ticket. The tour started off with a video and then we were divided up into small groups and driven around the studio in electric golf carts. It was a much more intimate tour as we got to get out of the cart, feel the facade material, and our guide Joshua was extremely well rehearsed in his movie and television trivia. We saw the set for Oceans Eleven and a piece of the red casino carpet that remained, where Spiderman hung upside down for his kiss, and the set of a tv series at the time. The highlight for me was seeing Lloyd from Entourage. I pointed him out as we drove by and Shannon almost peed her pants. He walked exactly as he does on the show and was even wearing a sweater vest - very much in character. Overall, it was a very nice tour and completely different from the Universal Studios tour. We drove back down to Hollywood Boulevard and signed up for one of the many open air van tours of the area. This turned out to be pretty enjoyable as well, if not freezing, because we were on the last tour of the day with the sun setting. We learned about the Hollywood sign and how it was originally an advertisement for a real estate company selling "Hollywood Land." We cruised down the Boulevard where our guide pointed out famous hotels and restaurants with significant celebrity history. In Beverly Hills, we drove by the houses of Dr. Phil, Elvis, his neighbor the late Michael Jackson, George Clooney and all his famous neighbors on Roxbury Street, the Playboy mansion, the largest house in town owned by Aaron Spelling, Tom Cruise's hill property, Will Smiths museum like house and the corner where Tara Reid wrote off her car driving impaired. We also saw a bunch of houses owned by LARP's: lucky ass rich people. It was nice to just sit back and relax and let someone else do the driving, talking and music changing. I'm impressed at his multitasking. We drove back to Santa Monica and the 3rd Street Promenade once again where Shannon justified a pair of pants from The Gap. We had dinner across the street at an Italian restaurant that hit the spot for me with the pizza. Walking back to the car, we recorded our summary of LA for the blog before driving back to the hotel.