San Francisco in a day

Day 61 (Monday Nov 22nd)
"In your message please tell me one thing that you're grateful for"

The first thing I did when I woke up was to check online and see if there was any change in my travel options. My dad had spotted that train tickets were available again but for about $20 more. I quickly booked one and then checked my emails to find a couple of replies to my rideshare post. One asked me to reply with a bit more info about myself and the other one left a phone number which I called. It went to voicemail and she sounded like a very hippy woman so I left a message. I called Amtrak to check if could cancel my ticket with no charge and the woman said that would be okay up to a couple of hours before my train leaves so I left my options open. I stored my bag at the hostel and went down the road to a cafe for a veggie chili bowl. Then my plan of doing the whole of San Francisco in a day went into action!

Union Square was my first stop, there wasn't much going on there so that was simple enough. I walked through Chinatown, it was mostly Chinese people, I'm used to Chinatowns being full of tourists but this one was different. It was pretty cool and seemed to go on forever! I walked a bit west to get to Lombard Street and see the famous steep winding road. There were lots of tourists here just standing in the middle of the street, it was rather amusing. Next stop was Pier 39, I'd been told they have sea-lions and that it was a good location to see Alcatraz, both of these things were correct but also correct was that I'd been told they don't have as many sea-lions as they used to... damn humans. I had a pee and a poop on the pier (in the restroom) and then Nick called me about the rideshare, he seemed like a nice guy and the only condition was that I had to get over to Oakland which was about half an hour on the BART train. I called Amtrak and cancelled my ticket, it was all rather easy, Amtrak is good. I had a long pleasant walk along the waterfront to the Golden Gate Bridge and then walked about half way across it. I headed back the same way that I'd came and managed to snap a hawk that was perched in a very good photo op, I also got a comedy pervy video of a couple snogging. I'd decided to get a cable car back towards the hostel but the one near the waterfront had a massive line so I walked a bit further to the next one. It was still about a half hour wait but the ride was pretty fun, I rode hanging on the side of the car because I like living life on the edge..

I got back to the hostel at about 6pm and booked another night there. The room I was in the previous night was now full and I ended up getting a different room all to myself. I went to Golden Era Vegetarian which was a fairly cheap Vietnamese restaurant around the corner and I had Pho. It was a bit confusing because I had a bowl of stuff and a side dish with just bean sprouts and a lemon segment. I dumped some of the bean sprouts into the bowl and chowed down. It was a tasty and very filling meal. Nick called again at 9pm and we confirmed everything, he'd done the research on which train I'd be getting in the morning and how much it would be, very helpful indeed. I'd need to get to the pick up point for 8am so I went to bed quite early.

My last day in L.A. and first night in San Francisco

Day 59 (Saturday Nov 20th) "Anybody in from Iceland? Yes."
I woke up to the sounds of an American guy being interrogated by the Mexican cleaners. He was saying that he didn't know when he was checking-out and they were asking if he was lost. Me and the Welsh guys chatted to him for a bit but were none the wiser as to his situation. The Welsh boys were leaving and one of them gave me a Jon Bon Jovi biography because he couldn't fit it in his bag. I did some planning for the Oregon part of my trip and sorted out a rideshare to San Francisco for the next day. It would be with a guy called Michael, he said there would possibly be another guy joining us. I went out for a veggie burrito at Chipotle because I hadn't been to one of those for about a week. I almost left my bag in Chipotle because I wasn't used to taking it out with me. I'd decided to turn up at the Big Blue Bus depot because the security man hadn't go back to me but they wouldn't let me in without the proper paperwork. They told me to go to customer service which I did but to no avail except that I got to chat with a nice lady about the bus, she used to drive them. Back to the hostel and I booked the San Francisco hostel for the next night. I went to buy some headphones because mine had broken and then went down towards the beach for sunset. I'd planned to walk down to Venice Beach but it was getting too late so I only made it as far as the Speed bus explosion location. I bought a blueberry muffin from a CVS across the road and did a weird little photo re-enactment. That actually really cheered me up for ten minutes as I walked back towards the hostel listening to the Speed score. I managed to get slightly lost for the first time in Santa Monica but only because they print the maps the wrong way round to make it look like the beach is to the south. At the hostel there was a middle aged English guy badly chatting up a young Japanese girl much to the amusement of everyone in the library although Daniele (Japanese Brazilian) was getting a bit fed up with it and wanted to close the door, I wouldn't let her. The giggling French girls from Flagstaff turned up at the hostel (not the French girls from New Orleans). We found out that a stand-up comedy night was happening in the hostel so a few of us decided to go to that. It was four comedians telling mostly bad jokes to about fourteen rather tired and mostly foreign, totally sober travellers. It was never going to work although the stand-up woman was quite cute. I thought about going back after the show to chat to her but she left before I had the chance. In my notes it talks about a cute Chinese girl coming into the library straight from the shower, wet hair, dressed for bed and then me ending up alone in the library with her and a Japanese girl. I'm going to skip that bit and say that I went to bed.

"The Firehouse Restaurant, the bus and the muffin all fit the doubloon!"

Day 60 (Sunday Nov 21st) "I thought it couldn't be you but then I heard that Liverpool accent"
I got up at 9am but I still managed to be the last one up. I checked-out, said good bye to Danielle and then grabbed a slice of pizza for breakfast. Micheal my rideshare guy turned up in a snazzy BMW. We drove to the station to pick up our other rideshare dude but when Michael called him it turned out he was still in San Diego so that wasted half an hour. Micheal had a massive stammer but it would be rude to mention that so I'll just say that on the seven hour journey in between the massive spells of no talking we talked a lot of crap, he kept telling me about women he'd been with and I talked about Speed, we went to In & Out Burger but they had a massive line so we waited to eat at Panda Express which had a couple of nice veggie options. When we got to San Francisco at around 6pm and he needed to pick up some medical marijuana and for the purposes of this blog I most definitely did not buy a marijuana cookie off him. He dropped me at the hostel and I checked-in. The room was quite cold because there was a window open... I closed it. A couple of French guys came back to the room so I chatted with them for a bit, they'd been sutdying in the US for almost three months and were heading home in the next week. I planned a whole day of walking around San Francisco, trying to fit in as many of the major tourist things as possible. I asked one of the hostel staff if it was possible and she gave me the green light. After all my planning and deciding I could get a train to Eugene at 9pm the next night I discovered that the trains were sold out for the next two nights. I posted on Craiglist about getting a rideshare and found that Greyhound was back-up option but it was about $80 for a 15 hour journey. I popped out to Walgreens to grab some snacks and bumped into Victoria from Liverpool who I'd hung out with in New Orleans. After some snacking I went back to the hostel and was in bed by midnight.

Los Angeles continued: Dreamworks and some live music

Day 57 (Thursday Nov 18th) "Vagina!"
I woke up with one of my "I'm still drunk" hangovers. It wasn't painful but I was feeling very zoned out. I was supposed to get the bus to somewhere near Burbank but in the end Damon came to pick me up. We started with a beer run because Damon had to re-stock the bar in the hidden room so pretty much the first thing I got to see at Dreamworks was the hidden room. It's quite an incredible thing and there are so many stories that go along with it, Damon is my hero. Guillermo Del Toro was apparently on campus doing a book signing but I didn't get to see him. We grabbed some food at the canteen and then sat outside for a bit. Back inside and Damon showed me some cool animation stuff from How To Train Your Dragon while he was explaining exactly what it is he does. I also got to see some early stuff from The Croods. Matt was in an office nearby and Damon left me with him while he went for a meeting. Matt showed me a bit more of the campus, lots of cool artwork, a big wall of famous signatures and then a sequence from the upcoming Kung Fu Panda 2. At the end of the working day we headed for the hidden room and this time it was full of people. I tried a pint of one of the beers that's brewed by people that work at Dreamworks an hung out with some of the interesting animation folks. A lot of the people seemed to be writing novels so they were all talking about that. I met a woman called April who told me a lot of movies that I should watch and I found out that her husband actually worked on the bus explosion scene from Speed. Someone was telling a story about the "saying penis louder than the previous person" game and that's where the quote for this blog entry came from. Damon drove me back to the hostel and on the way we went to Norm's for a veggie burger. When I got back to the hostel the Chris, Leigh and Stuart were loitering and Stuart was going to Hawaii the next day. We had a bit of banter, added each other on Facebook and then went to bed.


Day 58 (Friday Nov 19th) "Spare some change for an old fool?"
I didn't sleep too well and when I woke up it was cloudy outside. I had a missed call from the bus manager guy so I called him back. He passed me on to a bus maintenance man who gave me some information about the bus and said that they'd kept one for historical purposes but I'd need to clear it with the head of security before I could go in and see it, I left a message for the security guy. I put my laundry on then headed to an Indian vegan lunch buffet about twenty minutes walk away. I ate two plates of lovely food but I think it was too much because I felt too full for the rest of the afternoon. On the way back to the hostel a homeless guy said "spare some change for an old fool?", I replied with "sorry, dude" and he said "have a good weekend buddy". I thought that was a nice exchange. I was really tired but was checking online for interesting things to do that night when I remembered that one of my old internet friends Justin had a gig in L.A. tonight. He has a band called Lemon Drop Kick who originally were three American guys with a Japanese female vocalist who sings in Japanese, I messaged them about four years ago on Myspace because I thought it was an interesting set-up and Justin had replied, we'd kept in touch ever since. I made sure I knew which buses to get and headed to a venue called The Strange in an area called Silverlake. It took about an hour on the Rapid 704 bus and then I had to walk five minutes through a slightly dodgy looking area. The venue turned out to be some sort of art gallery with a performance space which meant I didn't have to wait outside. Justin arrived about five minutes after I got there so I said hello, his band were on first so he had to set up his stuff. LDK did a good set although they said it wasn't one of their best performances. I got to meet the rest of the band when they'd finished and I also recognised Jeff as one of the old members of the band, he'd come along to support them. The second act was a trendy young black man doing some beat-boxing, dancing and rapping, he was quite cool. The third band were called The Slants and they had some Asian Jonas brothers on guitars who jumped on some boxes at the front that then lit up. The front-man had some great dance moves and had a mic stand that lit up. I can't remember the name of the next act but it was a rather camp Japanese man doing some electro-pop with some dancing women and a dancing man in a monkey suit. They were quite entertaining although the singer had a video of himself doing backing vocals behind him, he even conversed with himself between songs, it was quite creepy. Paul the LDK bassist told me to talk some random Japanese women so I had a go at that, they preferred my English accent to my lame attempts at speaking Japanese. One of the girls was literally the prettiest Japanese girl I've ever seen in person. The next band were Dead End Amelia, a lot of people had left and it did kind of feel like the night should have been over. I was mainly sticking around to hang out with Justin after the show but DEA turned out to be a very cool band. The front-woman was rather hot and I stood with Justin up near the front to take in the full show. They had some cool songs and did a really good cover of Change by Deftones, so good in fact that a balding dread-locked black man started going crazy at the front. Justin and Jeff spoke to him after the show and he showed us his driving license, his name was officially Freak. I said hello to more people at the end of the show including the sexy front-woman who had to mock my accent... but I didn't mind. Justin, Jeff and I drove to Mel's Diner which is where I'd almost gone with the BTTF gang, I knew where it was but Justin didn't, that was weird. I had a veggie sandwich and fries. Justin drove me back to the hostel and I had one of the latest nights I'd had in quite a while, in bed by 3.30am.

Justin (LDK), me, Jeff (former LDK)

Another movie location day and my first day in Santa Monica

Day 55 (Tuesday Nov 16th) "Nice night for a walk"
I didn't leave the hostel until about 2pm and I kept forgetting things so I didn't get to Mann's Chinese Theater until about 3pm. I just wanted to go there during the day because that's when it was seen in Speed. I then got the subway over to East Hollywood and checked out the Vista Theater which was used in True Romance. Then I started my walk to Griffith Observatory. It's on a hill that overlooks L.A. so it was a bit of a tiring hour to get up there. On the way I stopped by a tunnel that was featured in Back To The Future and War Games. Some opening scenes from The Terminator were filmed at the observatory but for a change that wasn't the only reason I was visiting a filming location. It was really nice up there, the building is quite interesting and there were some really good views... through the smog. I took a different trail going down and then went for a Thai yellow curry at Truly Vegan. They had a comedy night at the hostel but when I walked past I heard some terrible jokes so I decided to just chill in my room and get an early night.


Day 56 (Wednesday Nov 17th) "China Wednesday!"
I checked out of the Hollywood hostel and got the bus to Santa Monica. On the way I stopped at the Viper Room where River Phoenix died. It was something I had to check out but then wished I hadn't, it just felt kind of morbid and not very fun. After checking-in at the Santa Monica hostel I struggled for an hour to get on the internet. I couldn't actually get online in my room which was a bit annoying but they had little library room with a good wi-fi signal which ended up being where I'd spend a lot of my time. Sharing my bunk was a middle aged Australian man called Russell. The only way I could print stuff was by using their computers which was about 10 cents a minute with a $3 minimum. It was rather annoying and I ended up having to call up customer service because the code for the rest of my minutes disappeared before I could write it down (I can't be bothered to explain that any more that I have, it was annoying, I'll leave it at that). I tried to find a veggie or vegan food place nearby using Google Maps but there didn't seem to be anything cheap in the area. I walked around the block a few times and eventually found a Greek fast food place with a falafel wrap thing. I walked to the corner or Ocean Park and Main St which is where Annie got on the bus in Speed. Then I walked up to Rose and Main which is where Bob's bus blew up. I tried to re-enact the phone call between Dennis Hopper and Keanu and then went in to the Firehouse Restaurant. It's more of a bar now so they didn't have any muffins, instead I had chips and salsa. I walked back to the hostel via the beachfront and Santa Monica pier and then went online for a bit. When I got back to my room there were two Welsh guys dressing up as Austrian women. They introduced themselves as Chris and Leigh and explained that they'd recently started a tradition of dressing up every Wednesday and calling it China Wednesday to confuse Americans. There was also an English guy Stuart who had dressed up as a gynecologist. I blew up some balloons for the Welsh guy's breasts and decided to join them on the hostel pub crawl. There were about twenty people out on the pub crawl, we had three voulenteer guides that were going to take us to four bars. At the first bar we played drinking games with a a Korean guy and a Japanese guy, it actually went pretty well despite the language barrier. In the second bar they had a Beatles cover band and after a few songs they let people go up and sing with them. We put our name down for a couple of songs but only Stuart and Leigh had time to do one. The third bar (which ended up being our last) was a long sports bar with karaoke at one end. I put my name down for Power Of Love and gave the woman in charge $10 so she could bump my name to the top of the list. I was quite drunk and didn't dare imagine the state I'd be in trying to sing that song an hour later. I chatted with lots of people including a Terry McDermott lookalike, nobody knew Terry McDermott so we resorted to chanting "Keegan! Keegan!" at him. The Welsh guys spent a lot of the night explaining China Wednesday to everybody, they came up with a whole fake history for it. I befriended a Japanese girl who didn't know any Japanese because she was brought up in Brazil, that didn't stop me trying to speak nihongo to her. Lots of drinking took place and I was told by the Welsh guys that they found me asleep in the hostel library. I have a few videos from that night and my narration did sound quite nonsensical but Daniele (JapBra) and a couple of other girls made sure I got back to the hostel.

Day 54: The Price Is Right and Japanese drunks.

Day 54 (15th) Monday "Berry good Danish man! kusou yarou!"
I got up relatively early but I still didn't have time for breakfast, this was the day of The Price Is Right. I walked the to CBS studios and grabbed some chips to eat on the way. It took about an hour to get there but when I arrived I followed the map to the car park rather than the front entrance. If this had been a show in England I probably wouldn't have got in but being ten minutes late didn't seem to matter here. The audience members were all hanging around for about an hour before some people handed out numbers and got us to fill in some details about ourselves. I chatted to a nice lady called Norda and her rather lovely niece Alisha. Norda's parents were also there celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. Alisha was a stand up comic but she was going to say she wrote children's books, she said this was because she didn't want to be put on the spot but I think she was going for the "aww factor". I'd already decided that I was going to say I was a grave digger because I thought an English grave digger might have a chance of getting on the show. They interviewed us in small groups so they could choose who they wanted to be on the show. I told them my pretend profession and then the guy asked asked me about how I got into grave digging. I said "I just fell into it", I didn't actually intend to make a pun, I'm just a genius like that. Alisha was actually one of the first contestants to be picked but she didn't get any further than contestant's row (where they stand at the front guessing the prices). Nobody actually won on any of the normal rounds, apparently that's not uncommon but it made for some impressive anti-climaxes. It was insane how much clapping we were being told to do and it was funny how even Americans were struggling to keep the enthusiasm going. The strangely thin Drew Carey chatted to the audience between rounds and he was quite funny. They had a guest announcer from Heroes but he only started in season three so I didn't recognise him. One of the funniest items was an in-car microwave, Drew was laughing about it and he made some pretty funny jokes about how unsafe that could be.

After the show I decided to walk back a different way, via Fairfax and Sunset. There were some quite interesting shops including a few really big music stores. Once again I ended up at Truly Vegan and had a Truly Spicy, pretty much just a Chow Mein but with more peppers and hot sauce. I thought about going to a comedy improv show that Alisha had recommended but it didn't look too great. I asked my L.A. friend Justin about live music but the places he recommended all had a steep cover charge. Shintaro came back from his daily adventures, he told me that yesterday he'd been at Gamble House (Doc Brown's house), he same place I'd been. We did some Japanese joking around, the more I divulge about my knowledge of Japanese culture, the more embarrassing it gets. He told me that he'd made friends with a Japanese girl called Tomomi who was staying at the hostel, he popped out and brought her back to our room. We chatted over a beer and then decided to go out for drinks with our other room mate Jesper. When we got to a bar we realised that both Japanese were only 20 and they were IDing at the bar so we decided to buy some beer at the store and drink it back at the hostel. What ensued was an international night of drinking, jokes, bad language in lots of languages, awful translations, foosball, opening beer bottles with various objects, Shintaro the lightweight and then sleep.

Los Angeles days 2 and 3

Day 52 (Saturday Nov 13th) "World's finest chocolate!"
I tried to catch up on my sleep a little bit so I didn't get up until 11am and I didn't actually head out until 2pm. I was going to check out downtown to get my full Speed and Terminator fix. Before I headed out I booked a free ticket for a recording of The Price Is Right, a couple of people said it would be fun and I had no plans for Monday.

When I arrived at the subway station there was a big group of kids crowding around the ticket machines so it took a while to even get on a train. They were also on the same train as me and they were screaming every time it jolted, very annoying. I got off at Pershing Square station and immediately recognised the neon lights, I tried to do a bit of walking in Keanu's footsteps. I went to a Subway at street level that looked onto Pershing Square and had a very nice foot long veggie sub. I then walked a few minutes to the financial district and checked out the building from the beginning of Speed and the hill where Harry and Jack jump into shot in their police car. Also in that area I checked out the bank used in Heat and Fight Club. Next was the jewelry (American spelling) district which featured a couple of locations from The Terminator. One was the store front used for Tech Noir where Sarah takes refuge and the other was the alley where Kyle appears. I was slightly unsure of where both locations were but I narrowed it down to only two possibilities and got photos of both. I spoke to a security guard next to one of them and he had no idea what I was talking about.On my way to the Bradbury Building (Bladerunner) a woman was selling "Chocolate! World's finest chocolate!". I didn't buy any, I assumed it would be very expensive. The Bradbury Building was actually closed for filming, I tried to sneak in the rear entrance but there were security guards right around the corner so I chickened out. I then walked to the Orpheum Theater which was featured in Last Action Hero.

I got the subway back to the hostel and got off the train a few stops early. I just wanted to check out the area on foot and there was a pretty cool sky when I turned onto Sunset Blvd. When I got back to the hostel I met another room mate called Jesper, he was from Denmark and doing some acting classes over here. I caught up with some blogging and then went across the road for some vegan chop suey, it wasn't as good as the chow mein but I was making sure I wasn't eating the same thing on consecutive days. Shintaro returned from his day of skateboarding adventure and we chatted in the kitchen until about midnight, then went to bed.

Day 53 (Sunday Nov 14th) "Sarah Connor! Sarah Connor!"
I was meeting Damon at around midday so I got up at 9am to do some planning. He said we might be able to drive to some of my movie locations so I made sure I knew where they all were. The vegan restaurant didn't open until 11am which I thought was strange because they serve breakfast, so I went to the nearby gas station to get a blueberry muffin, a blueberry Danish and some grape Gatorade.

Damon was bang on time and it was so good to see him again. We drove straight to the apartment complex from The Karate Kid, I hadn't even put that on my list but Damon had been doing his own research, my kinda guy! We then drove to Marty McFly's house and then on to Vasquez Rock. It was quite busy on the rock but we managed to get some videos of where Kirk and evil robot Bill and Ted had climbed up. Next was the E.T. house which was a bit harder to find than th other places. Damon's iPhone told us to drive through a hill and it turned out the house was in a gated community, our first two attempts were blocked by gates but third time lucky and there was no gate on one side, seems a bit silly. As we leaving the area a couple of cops were driving around, Damon joked about them arresting us for tresspassing, then saw that they were actually checking his plates and then they turned around behind us. Damon was rather scared for a couple of minutes but it was a false alarm. We then drove to Gamble House which was the house used for Doc Brown's house in Back To The Future. They have tours and a book shop there now but we just got a few photos and headed to Carrow's restaurant where Sarah Connor worked. We also did a rather terrible re-enactment across the road from there of when Arnie pulls a guy away from the phone box so he can check the phone book. Onto Bushnell Avenue where there were three house that were used in the Back To The Future trilogy. We bumped into a couple that were actually at the event the other night. Then Damon agreed to drive a bit out of the way just so I could get to a Masters Of The Universe location. We re-enacted the final scene of the movie where Kevin and Julie meet in the street and realise that it wasn't all a dream. Look forward to that video!

It was time to head home... to Damon's home in Monrovia. I got to meet his wife Courteney, his two month old Presley and his eldest son Carson. We had some very filling Mexican food and I played trains with Carson. It was weird because he's into Thomas The Tank Engine and it was pretty much the same kind of train set that I used to play with twenty years ago. Carson also kept breathing fire on my legs with his toy dragon. After some running around in the back yard I got to read him a bed time story (Carson, not Damon) and then it was time for me to go. On the way back we drove to Jennifer's house which unbeknown to Damon was just around the corner from his house. I'd be seeing Damon again on Thursday so it wasn't too much of an emotional good bye.

I got back to the hostel at 10pm. Shintaro was already asleep and Kim was packing her bags because she was leaving early the next morning. I did some photo uploading and then went to bed around midnight.

My first day in L.A.: "There's a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up."

Day 51 (Friday Nov 12th) "Does anybody know where Sean Bishop is?!"
I arrived in L.A. at about 7am, we were either an hour early, we'd changed two time zones, or the daylight savings thing was screwing with my mind. I'm actually still not sure which of those is correct. I'd been drifting in and out of consciousness all through the journey so I'm not sure I got any proper sleep. I had a couple of granola bars to keep me going and then got on the red line of the subway. It wasn't long until I was laughing to myself when I realised this was the line that Speed took place on. Then we actually went through Pershing Square station and I was riding along chuckling to myself (I was tired and rather happy). It was only about 8am when I got to the Hollywood hostel and I couldn't check in until 11am. The receptionist let me leave my bag there and I had a quick look around the hostel before deciding I should use the time wisely and go thrift shopping for my 50s outfit for that night. The crazies were out in force but I was just glad to be away from the cold of Flagstaff. I've decided I love heat, mainly so I can wear shorts when I'm out at night, maybe I'd get fed up of it after a while but I think it would take at least a year. A couple of vintage shops I'd looked up weren't open until 11am so I hit Goodwill and spent a good couple of hours in there. Eventually I decided upon some garments and spent about $45 on what I thought were some pretty decent looking 50s style clothes. I also went to stock up on toiletries and noticed that there were security guards in every shop. Walking back to the hostel I realised there were no Speed buses, they had a new fleet, I was actually quite annoyed at this. I checked into the hostel just after 11am and my room was pretty cool. There were only two bunk beds in each room and we had a bathroom and kitchen between eight of us. There was a Japanese dude still asleep in my room when I arrived so I woke him up and we had a chat. His name was Shintaro and he was from Nagoya. I caught up with some stuff online and at 3pm I did some laundry. It was the first laundry I'd done in almost two weeks but somehow I had three sets of underwear left... I set my laundry going and popped out to get some food. There was actually a Thai vegan place just across the road from the hostel so I thought I'd check that out. They had a really cheap menu, lots of stuff for $7 and all vegan. I had some chow mein which was probably the best meal I ended up having there (I ate there at least three more times). It was around 5pm when I started getting ready for the Back To The Future event, while I was getting dressed an Australian girl named Kim showed up. I didn't realise our dorm was mixed until then, cool. Andy had actually raised $200+ on the "Get Merk To The Fish Under The Sea Dance" Facebook page so even though I'd had no sleep I was going to make sure I made the most of it...

I'll quickly set up the event. In the movie Back To The Future Marty has to make sure that his parents get together at the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance otherwise he'll never be born. That dance was being re-created in the same venue where it was filmed and they were inviting some cast and crew to sign autographs, take photos and generally just mingle with us fans. I chose to walk to the Hollywood United Methodist Church where the event was being held and I didn't feel too out of place in crazy garb walking down Hollywood Boulevard. I knew I was in the right place when I saw two Deloreans in the car lot and another one arriving. Two were done up like the second movie and one was not modded at all. After hanging around outside for a while, chatting to some random people, and getting some photos we were finally let inside. One of the guys I was chatting to outside was Marvin from San Diego and we did a walk around the hall together. He had a poster that he was getting signed for his two year old son, I thought that was quite sweet. Some of the guests were charging for autographs which I thought was a bit much, especially on top of the $275/$300 entry fee. I got no autographs but managed to meet most of the guests just by shaking their hand, explaining my trip and also explaining the donation side of things, it was a good angle and they were all willing to chat a little bit. I met Bob Gale (co-creator of BTTF), Harry Waters Jr (Marvin Berry), Donald Fullilove (Goldie Wilson), Courtney Gains (ginger kid, also in The 'burbs), Bob Yerkes (did Doc's zip-wire stunt and is a legendary Hollywood stuntman), Jeffrey Weissman (George McFly in Parts 2 and 3), Wesley Mann (kid who says "he took that guy's wallet"), Shawn Kerkhoff (Sound editor on American Dad). Jeff Weissman was really friendly and I chatted to him about an event in Milton Keynes that we'd both been at, Shawn Kerkhoff confirmed Seth MacFarlane's 9/11 story (look it up). I didn't get to meet Claudia Wells, she had the most people crowding around her and to be honest I just couldn't be bothered. Half way through the night a random guy grabbed me and asked if I wanted to do an interview for his documentary, I was up for that. It was easy enough, just the usual kinds of questions and I layed the accent on thick so I reckon I'll get on there. During the night there were dressed up fans posing for photos and recreating scenes from the movie. Towards the end of the night Harry Waters got on stage with a bandage on his hand and put the spotlight on a guy near the front of the dance-floor. This guy then proposed to his girlfriend, she said yes and then Harry Waters dedicated Earth Angel to them. It was a really good performance of the song. He then recited lines from the movie and introduced the guy who has done the voice of Marty for the new BTTF video game. He played guitar and sang Johnny B Goode in the style of Marty, again a very good performance. I like to fault things and I really couldn't fault it. For some reason we were all told to go outside and they did the raffle in the parking lot. I'd snagged some free raffle tickets from one of the organisers but I didn't win. During the raffle my camera died and I quoted The Goonies with "Only problem is batteries don't last so long, guys", nobody knew the quote and I was very disappointed. The winning of the hoverboard was quite interesting. One guy came forward and said that he knew it was his number but he'd lost the ticket, then another guy said he had the ticket and that he'd found it on the floor, he gave the ticket back to its rightful owner and the cockles were warmed in everyone's hearts when he collected his prize.... except mine... I was two numbers out and I wanted that bloody hoverboard!..... and that was the night over...

I hung around in the car park for quite a while because there were now five Deloreans to take photos of and everybody else seemed to be loitering too. There was a slightly odd bloke dressed as Doc Brown standing on his own and beat-boxing, he worried me a little. I met some guys from Bristol who were trying to rally a bunch of people to go to a bar but first I had the mission of finding somebody that Damon knows. Eventually I found him and had a little chat, he said he is to Ghostbusters what Damon is to The Goonies. Then some Deloreans started driving out of the lot so I had to film that. It was about midnight before me, the Bristolians, another English dude called Julian, a French girl and one of the event organisers left to go for a drink. We tried one hotel but they didn't have a good bar so we went to The Roosevelt instead. We all got a drink and then some more people turned up, a couple of people I can't remember the name of plus Caroline from Santa Monica and Bob Schmelzer (Eric Stoltz's skateboard double when he was playing Marty in BTTF). I chatted to Bob and Caroline for a bit. Bob was really cool, he told some great stories of his time on set and said if I was ever in San Jose to check out his skateboard shop and then we could head up to San Francisco for the night. After one drink everybody except Bob wanted to go for food, I think he stayed at the hotel because he liked the wine they had and he wanted to pick up chicks. They all went to Mel's Diner and I decided it was time to call it a night. On the walk back to the hostel at about 1am I was getting various heckles. One drunk guy thought I looked like Jeremy Piven from Entourage but most of the shouts were of "Pee-wee Herman!"