I met a guy who was an extra on Ghost Whisperer!

Well I took my therapy on the road this past week, visiting beautiful Los Angeles California. My brother had suggested a quick trip to LA to catch some hockey and enjoy the better weather. I jumped faster than David Lee Roth (see original Van Halen for you youngins) and I was California bound.

Now this trip was not my first visit to LA, nor will it be my last. At the same time, its always interesting to see in person the city you tended to watch so much of from TV, Movies etc. Before we even got off the plane at LAX, it was hard not to eavesdrop on the types of conversations I would be experiencing in La-la Land. In one word - fake - like the many sets of boobs I saw. Talk about listening to a whole lot of "well you've gotta go to this place, it is to die for. So divine. I'm real good friends with this guys dog's groomers drivers pizza delivery guy. He can get us a deal!" Ugh. Maybe I could go without listening to people on this trip. Oh the foreshadowing of things to come.

The other part about landing in LA is immediately seeing paparazzi hanging around waiting for important people to come by. Clearly, none were on our flight since these same photogs decided they would rather change film and drink coffee than come to our gate. A while later, we saw them move to a different gate, cameras ready. But for the life of me, I could not tell who they were trying to photograph. Put sunglasses and a toque on and everyone looked mysterious to me now. I told a whole bunch of tourists it was Brad Pitt and Angelina, so they took off, allowing me quicker access to the bag dispenser. We would see paparazzi at many other locations on our trip, but try as I might, they never looked my way. I guess I need to work on my celebrity, or get on a reality show or have a sex tape or something.

We did a lot of things in 3 days, more than I can fill in one blog, but one of the highlights for me was taking the ever popular Warner Brothers Studio tour in Burbank. For those not in the know, Warner Brothers (WB), they of the Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny fame, run one of the most historical and successful production studios in LA - home to many shows and movies too numerous to mention here. If you watched it on TV and liked it, it was likely made at the Warner Brothers lot. Unlike TV studios like CBS or NBC, WB offers studio space to anyone regardless of affiliation, and hence attracts all sorts of productions which for whatever reason are not made at the actual TV station site. For example, Friends, which was a huge NBC success, was filmed at WB Studios, not NBC Studios as you might think. Something about Jay Leno's ego or something. I dunno.

So the tour involves a guided tour of the lot. They put you into these little trolley carts of 13 people max. One person gets the honour of sitting beside the tour guide, while the remaining 12 people sit in one of the four 3-seat benches in the back of the trolley. For the life of me, I could not figure out why they made benches 3 abreast instead of an even number. I guess they assume everyone travels in 3s, or perhaps they were hoping for group interaction. Its the LA way I guess. We had the luxury of sitting behind these two gay Turkish dudes, who dressed identically (crew cut, denim pants and jackets, white T-shirts, black boots and tinted sunglasses). Think gay Scarface. By the way, I keep stressing the gay part because I've never seen 2 men so gropey. Get a room fellas! I'm almost positive these 2 guys were trying to find a secluded place on the lot to engage in some frivolity. Our tour guide was regularly looking for them, since they always seemed to wander off and never wanted to look at what we were all looking at. Besides, who would not want to have some secret nooky on the set of Two and a Half Men, right?

The worst part of our Turkish friends was their English was not great. As such, they felt it necessary to ignore the entire spiel from our tour guide, constantly talking and annoying everyone else who was trying to listen. But worse was the fact tour guide guy did nothing, even though he knew people were yammering and talking pictures while he was pretending to sound like he did not memorize his "script" which was obvious to me that he had (since he spoke of things we had already passed a number of times as things we were about to see).

I suspect a lot of these tour guides are wannabe actors themselves, and probably more focused on the paycheck than the experience for us. Our guy was definitely an actor - master thespian - star of community stage and student cinema. He probably told us at least 8 times during his spiel that he was an extra in Ghost Whisperer, with Jennifer Love Hewitt. It took every ounce of energy for me to not get his autograph, but I prevailed. He also talked of many of the productions "WE" made at this lot, not him of course, but the WB family. I appreciated the family sentiment, but I trust he was still driving his trolley that day due to a bad audition. I even tried to have a "normal" conversation with him while we were waiting for others to return from a Harry Potter museum. Out of nowhere, he pointed to the water tower on the lot and said "Look, I see the Animaniacs up there, don't you?" Thanks for sharing that one guy.

There is so much more to say about the trip, but I'll leave a Hollywood cliff-hanger for you all until next time.

Time to be quiet now.