Fangirl Hysterics also known as Los Angeles 2.0

Here we are, yet another entry. I’m almost two weeks into my trip; which means I’m almost one quarter done. When I went travelling in Europe there wasn’t a definite end point for a long time. I kept it open, thinking I might stick around longer, I might try to work, I might travel for longer in South East Asia on the way home. It was only when I had less than two weeks left that I made the official decision to return home after Singapore and changed my flight. This trip has an end point – although I won’t lie, I’ve looked into the option of extending a little.


I’m writing on the flight from Los Angeles to Albuquerque on Thursday June 10th. I was meant to do this flight yesterday but things came up... I should go back. This really is the kind of entry that should be written chronologically.


So, really, the first things to tell are from the flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles – where I wrote my last entry. What I didn’t mention was that I very nearly didn’t get let back into the United States. For some reason that kind of confuses me; in Vancouver we did all of the security that you would normally do once you arrive at a country. Normally you get an exit stamp; and then you fly, arrive at a country, go through security, collect your bag, go through customs. But I guess Canada and the US have things set up differently to prevent the need to go through all the hoopla in the US. And so in Vancouver I checked in and everything and went through carry on luggage security and then there was a big sign saying ‘welcome to the United States’ and I had to go through the entry procedure. Now, I’ve done this a couple of times now, entering the US; and I’ve also done the same thing in a few other countries when I had flights. They ask why you’re there, you tell them, they smile and stamp your passport and it is fine. Of course I had the hard ass security guy – he wanted to see my flight itinerary home. Shit. I have it booked. I KNEW I had the print out – I’d thrown out my itineraries from like, my flight to Vegas and my flight into Canada but I’d kept my Air New Zealand one. But I simply could not find the damn thing. I’ve got this big ass folder with all of my flight and hostel information; as well as some other things I printed out (cough fanfic cough) and I’m going through and freaking out. I tried to make a joke and said something about how I was gonna be one of those people on Border Security but he didn’t even crack a smile. He was all ‘you have all of this stuff but you don’t have your flight home? Are you sure you’ve booked a flight back?’ which offended me. I attempted to explain that I haven’t booked the very last week of my trip yet and that the print outs only go up until June 15 or so and he said ‘So you haven’t booked your flight home????’ and I insisted that I had and he’d misunderstood – I just hadn’t booked my accommodation or internal transport for the last week. I insist that he can look it up online and he says he isn’t able to – yeah right, he has this big ass computer in front of him. I’m sure had I been like, hauled into a questioning room then they would’ve been able to look it up but seriously? He can see that I’m moving cities every like, three to four days, does he really think that I’m going to be looking for work or something in that time? Finally he let out this disgruntled sigh, stamped my passport, shoved it back at me and told me to go.


I was in tears – literally – I appreciate why the US has such strict security but I don’t appreciate the way that he went about enforcing it while there’s a massive queue of people staring on wondering what the hell the hold up is at one of the counters. Anyway. I got myself together and luckily I had a really awesome flight back again on WestJet. The head flight attendant was a French man named Michele and he was freaking hilarious. WestJet make all of their announcements twice – once in English and then in French. On the way to Vancouver they’d used an audio recording but Michele did the announcement and he’d conclude every French announcement with ‘ooh la la!’ which had everyone laughing. He also spliced jokes into it all, i.e. “If you don’t enjoy the service today, there are six emergency exits on board the plane...”


After all the hassle with Vancouver security, it was nice to arrive in Los Angeles in a domestic terminal and not have to go through any of it. I was able to retrieve my bag and wait for Audrey in peace, people watching (which I enjoy) and catching up on my text messages – I hadn’t had reception in Canada.


Sunday night was MTV Movie Awards night. I had tried to get seat filler tickets to attend – basically award shows let members of the public attend for free, and when the talent get up to go to the bathroom or accept an award or present or whatever, they shove you around and you move around and sit in different seats – so that when the camera pans to the audience, there aren’t empty gaps. I hadn’t gotten tickets and so instead I had the opportunity to enjoy the hooplah live. We had a few drinks – I got a bit tipsy – and because LA actually gets the telecast delayed (so weird, when it is filmed in LA but that’s timezones for you) and Audrey is an admin on a Zac Efron/Vanessa Hudgens fansite, she had to be Tweeting during the red carpet arrivals/the show from the Twitter account of the site. So we were both on laptops in the living room with the Twitter account open and Oh No They Didn’t on LJ and Cady’s site and all the image sites and other forums and basically refreshing and Tweeting and spazzing about the hotness that was Zachary at the awards. I was texting with Jess (who lives on the East Coast and so gets it live) and Audrey was texting/calling Kerry who is also on the East coast and we were getting all of the info pretty much as it happened. We ordered Chinese food for when we’d actually get to watch the awards – meh. I wasn’t paying much attention to be honest, only when it was Zac/Vanessa/Twilight oriented did I perk up and pay attention to what was going on.


Audrey was back at work on Monday and so I was left to my own devices. I hung around her place for a while and did some writing and then decided to go out for a walk – which evidently is so NOT Los Angeles. No one walks. Seriously. I didn’t go that far but I barely passed anyone on the street. I wound up walking to the Beverly Center where I’ve been before, in 2008. I’d found out via text message that there was an event I might be able to attend on Tuesday night so I was looking at buying an outfit. And then, in this flurry of chaotic activity, things changed. I’d just gotten a text from Jess (for anyone real life reading, she’s one of my US friends who is familiar with my Zac Efron obsession and who I’m staying with for five nights from next week) telling me to check my Twitter because she’s seen a Tweet about a Charlie St. Cloud screening – again, for real life people – Charlie St. Cloud is Zac Efron’s up and coming film which is slated for U.S. release of July 30 – two days after I leave – and is yet to have an Australian release announced. I know that for regular people this is like, okay whatever, but when you follow an actor really closely and talk to people overseas who also follow him, a delayed release is like, tragic. Anyway, I was in the midst of checking my Twitter on my ghetto crappy phone I’ve bought when I get a text from Audrey. She asks when I’m leaving on Wednesday. I can’t remember the flight time off the top of my head but I know it is morning. She’s like, okay so, good news maybe? I’ve gotten an invite to a CSC screening on Wednesday night.


I was scheduled to leave Wednesday morning.


FML.


This led to me calling Jess for the first time – I didn’t have time to think about it (yeah I’m staying with her next week but I was nervous about calling. So sue me for being a weirdo) and I was like omgomgomgomgomg. We talked for a while as I was wandering around the Beverly Center barely able to hear because of the loud music and chatter in the background, I agonised about changing my flight knowing that it wouldn’t be easily done – and whether it was even SANE. Luckily for me; I’d booked four nights in Albuquerque so it wasn’t like I’d be cutting my time to an impossible amount of time to see the sights. I knew I’d be able to change my accommodation booking and my airport shuttle. Audrey came back to meet me at the Beverly Center after work, we shopped for a little bit and then headed to pick up her boyfriend to go out for dinner. We went to this really funky diner type place... um... Fred something? It was a number. Like Fred 57 or something. I was ‘healthy’ and had a chicken Caesar salad (not the best I’ve had but I did actually feel good for eating lettuce, I’ve been eating like, pizza half the time). I got back to Audrey’s and investigated changing my flight. SouthWest don’t charge a change fee; but because I’d gotten a sale fare and there were no more sale fares left, I was going to have to pay the difference between what I’d paid and what the ticket was available.


I’m really, really indecisive. It really wasn’t about the money – I can afford it. I’m getting holiday pay from work that I’ve sort of designated as my ‘extras’ money – tours, show tickets, things that are beyond the regular norm. But it was the principle – to pay that amount of money for a movie? Yes, I know, real life people would think I’m insane and plenty of fandom people would too. The girls on Twitter listened to be agonise and finally, I just did it. Kind of like the moment when I booked my flights to see Zac in Sydney for 17 Again; or when I actually booked my tickets for this trip in the first place. It was like, why the eff not? If I didn’t, I’d regret it. I’d be like, I could’ve gone to that. I could’ve already seen this movie and I said no.


Tuesday Audrey picked up breakfast when she had to go out for a work related thing in the morning – Dani massively amused. Seriously I don’t know of anyone at home who would find it commonplace to go to like a diner to ‘pick up’ breakfast. You might go out to get croissants or maybe like take away Mc Donalds breakfast; but this was like a feast of pancakes and sausages and bacon and muffins and pastries, like in a Chinese takeout fashion. We hung around during the day before Audrey had to go to work later in the afternoon. It turned out that the event for Tuesday night wasn’t really an event that I even would want to attend so I wound up with some unexpected free time and I texted Jill-Renay (again, for real life people, someone I know from my online activities ) and asked if she was free to meet up. She was and in awesome kindness she drove over to my side of town to meet me and then quickly decided to head back to her neck of the woods. I went to this funky yogurt place which being the hick Aussie I am I found massively enjoyable – you like, take a cup, get your yogurt from like a soft serve machine and add whatever you want to it with this massive selection of fruits and lollies and chocolates and all sorts of stuff. After yogurt I was taken on this driving tour of like, seriously, everywhere. I was looking around giddily – LA is just this maze seriously. Most of the time I just had no concept of where we were and I’m certain that I was sounding like an idiot with my stupid comments about things that are probably just very mundane and yet I found super amusing.


Wednesday Audrey had work again; I slept in and then FINALLY caught up on Grey’s Anatomy! After about 2395083 heart attacks I went out to get some food and was back just in time to get ready for the screening. We left really early. It’s a first come first served and it says to arrive at 6:45 but Audrey has been to other screenings and experienced the ‘we’re not going to get in, there are so many people here’ and this simply was NOT an option given that I changed my flights for this and everything. So we trekked out to the random location of Woodland Hills to this really ghetto mall – it makes some of our crappy shopping centres at home look really exciting – and we were the first ones to arrive and so we decided to go for a wander. One of the online girls, Melissa, was also going to the screening and we’d talked about meeting up and saying hi but stupid me, because we’d left our phones/my camera in the car(because you’re not allowed them in the cinema) I forgot to text her to tell her like, what I was wearing or something. We’d been sitting in view of the queue that was forming but then they moved it to a different location and we weren’t going to be able to see how big it was getting so we moved to go join them. We didn’t have to wait that long before they went along checking invitations and giving out stamps on the hand and wristbands; and then they let everyone into the cinema earlier than I’d anticipated so we didn’t have to sit in the floor in the middle of the mall and wait, we got to actually wait in the cinema.


I still don’t really believe that I saw it. Like, it feels kind of surreal, I had little time to build up and get excited about it and it’s almost like it truly didn’t happen. I was actually feeling kinda nauseous in the film which I was upset about, but that didn’t detract from its awesomeness. Not disappointing in the slightest. We had to fill out a survey afterwards and we spazzed in the car on the way back to her place and then both proceeded to get on the phone – Audrey to Kerry, me to Jess – to spazzzz about it some more.


And that brings me to now – Audrey, for future notice, when checking in luggage more time needs to be allowed. I was classified as a ‘late’ check in (it’s on my bag) and I’m petrified that it isn’t going to make it to Albuquerque on the flight – because when it is classed as such, it means they won’t pay to have it couriered to your accommodation. I literally had no spare time, I went straight through security, straight to the gate, and I had time to put my things away (I was still carrying like, my baggie of liquids and jacket and netbook in my hands from when I’d grabbed them from the tubs at the X-ray) and buy a new water bottle (normally I finish drinking the one with me so I can take it through and then fill up at a water fountain but I had no time for that so I’d had to throw it out) and get on the plane.


I’m channelling good vibes for my luggage to be on board – there’s another flight in about two hours (I know because I was looking at the flights to change just the other night) so I guess worst case scenario is that I’m going to hang around the airport and wait for my suitcase.


So yes. That’s the tale of Los Angeles 2.0. It was pretty much one big fangirl experience for the entire time, with not much else done other than fandom related things, but that’s more than okay with me!


From here I have three nights in Albuquerque, three in Austin and then I’m off to Orlando for five nights where I’ll be back in the comfort of someone’s home who can look after me. It’s a different feeling to Europe where I was literally on my own for the whole trip; it’s sort of like a balance between ‘travelling’ and ‘vacationing’ (which are two distinct things in my mind) which I’m finding enjoyable thus far.


Until next time...


Xxx


POST SCRIPT: My bag arrived safely, in fact the advantage to being the last on the plane is that it was the first off :)