Last night Gina and I went to Hollywood. We drove down from Pasadena, and the drive actually is pretty easy.

We saw the Hollywood sign on the hill and got very excited, naturally. Shortly aftward we hard parked at a little lot at the famous Hollywood & Vine.

Then…we got out of the car. Hollywood… IS A PIT! Hollywood — which is a small section of street — is just one dirty, bum infested, dangerous block after another. There is of course the stars on the sidewalk that lead to Grauman’s Chinese Theater … but you can’t really read them for fear that someone might jump out and attack you at any given moment. And if you are brave enough to read them… you discover that it’s one big cheat… Perry Como has AT LEAST 4 stars.

But, on we walked toward the theater…because we are fearless Chicago natives. Wading thru the bums, and crazy people (one of whom was very concerned that people weren’t willing to J-walk despite the fact that there were diamonds covering the street — I had to explain to him that I didn’t see any diamonds, and I would let the traffic stop first).

Finally we arrived at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. This turned out to be (as one might expect) the bright shining star of our Hollywood experience.

It was 6:30pm when we got to the theater and had to cross the street because the side walk was closed. It turns out it was closed because the premier showing of a new movie was about to take place (at 7:30) and the red carpet would soon be covered with Hollywood super stars.

The movie that was being premiered was A Man Apart staring Vin Diesel. So we stood across from the theater and waited for the convoy of limos to pull up. We saw all the stars of the film and waited with the crowd for Vin Diesel (who very nearly was late for his own premier…nice).

Finally when Vin arrived — driving him self in some sleek, black, overly tinted truck like thing — he bolted across the street to where we were standing. It was then that we realized that we had a GREAT spot in the line up! Vin came right over to where we were standing. He was maybe three feet from us. Gina leapt over the crowd and attached herself to his neck. Ok not really…but Doug believed it. (April Fools). Seriously tho, he was RIGHT there. I have some GREAT photos which I will post in the near future.

Overall it was a worth while trip to Hollywood. Although when we got back to Pasadena and told the natives where we had gone… the common response was “Oh…and you didn’t get mugged?!”.

For those of you who are star watchers, here is a list of the people we saw…

• Vin Diesel



• Larenz Tate



• Steve Eastin



• Timothy Olyphant



• Jacqueline Obradors



• Geno Silva



• Juan Fernadez



• Jeff Kober



• Mike Moroff



• Emilio Rivera



• George Sharperson



• Santiago Verdu



• Laura Salem



• Julia Lee



• Richard Gross



• …oh…and Magic Johnson