Muscles and Hula Pie

Friday, September 4, 2009

We woke up in Culver City at my cousin, Amanda's house. After breakfast, Amanda headed off to work and was kind enough to let us use her place as we explored Venice beach.

Venice beach was full of visual stimulation. J tried to work out at muscle beach, but decided he didn't want to embarrass the other guys, so sat it out

.

We also saw a guy putting on a street show where his performance was jumping on broken glass.

That was not the amazing part, the amazing part was that there were a lot of people watching and then giving him money to do this. We gave him $2. After purchasing a painting from a street artist named Kai- which is Hawaiian for water, or hippie- whatever, walking past the self proclaimed local wine-o who was singing the song: "give

me a dollar, so I can go to the liquor store," and dodging all the other Venice beach color, we headed back to Glendale to battle the traffic once again- I sense a theme here in LA.

Tito Jun, Tita Josie, Tita Racquel and my newly met Tito-

Ian took J and I to Dukes in Malibu. We drove up the Pacific coast line, which was as beautiful as it looks on postcards. Good thing Filipinos are small- white people in front, Filipinos in the back. At Dukes, we all did as the locals and drank tropical drinks until our

table was ready. I had a Lava Flow, which tasted like a fruit smoothie and J had a fancy margarita.

It was the Tropical Itch drink however, that took my Tita Raquel under. After one, she was done. We dined flying forks style and ended with Ian's favorite dessert, Hula Pie. After Tita Raquel booted in the bathroom, we headed on our traffic filled journey back. A few hours later and a few pictures of Tita Raquel passed out in the back seat sent to my dad and cousins, we came back to Glendale to where Amanda and her boyfriend, also named Jason, also a tall white guy, were waiting for us to drink a bottle of wine on the deck of my Tita's house, which overlooks LA, to talk about water polo on the west coast and just how interesting and "direct" people can be (see J and J glossary).

As the night closed J and I finished our laundry and prepared for the next day, which has us moving on from LA. We will miss you LA, but we will be back again soon.

jb