Everything Is Holiday – The Epilogue

08/09/201408/09/2014alxkdd

And so it’s all over, after 11 days of LA fun I’m back home in London now, I was originally going to write this yesterday but I couldn’t think straight or keep my eyes open so I’m sitting down today to write up my final day and to sum up the whole experience in one go.

The final full day on Friday was great fun, spent the day with my friend James, who lives out there now, we headed out to The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA, which is a huge second hand store that’s housed in an old bank building, complete with vaults packed with amazing vintage books. The best part though is the huge $1 per book section, which stretched for what seemed liked miles and miles, we barely scratched the surface of the place. But what we did take out time to look through fully was the VHS section we found, not huge but a good dig revealed a few choice finds and all for only $1 each. We also stuck our heads into the Bradbury Building, which is probably most famous for being featured in Blade Runner, the lobby area is open to the public and you’re free to walk around, though you can’t go up to any of the floors, it’s well worth a visit to see this iconic location in person.

Now I thought I had something very cool planned for the evening, but sadly it turned into an unexpected disaster, it’s far too long of a story to write here, but do feel free to ask if you see me in person.

Then that was it, Saturday morning was here and it was time to pack and wrap everything up for my time in LA. I always get the blues at the end of any holiday, things always go too quickly and I never want to come home, but there’s always next time. The flight back was simple and I got home really quickly, it felt very strange being back home on the Sunday.

To put it simply I had such an amazing time over in LA and at Everything Is Festival, it was worth all the planning and saving that had gone into getting there. Finally getting to step inside Cinefamily was such a treat, it’s got such a great atmosphere and all the staff and volunteers there were so great and helpful. Also all of the Everything Is Terrible guys that I met were so welcoming to me, Dimitri did everything possible to make me feel at home, Scott and Nick couldn’t have been nice as well, they all made me feel like I was a real part of the festival. Also a huge thanks to Nate (The Sadist) for being such a great friend out there and showing me around one night!

One of the reasons I’d wanted to head over to the festival was just to see how something like this ran in comparison to what we do here as The Duke, it was fantastic to see the similarities and also to pick up on a few things that I thought worked really well there. It really made me feel like we’re doing the right thing with all our screenings and events, it also really inspired me to try and do more, to track down funnier footage and to hopefully make our audience enjoy out nights as much as I enjoyed Everything Is Festival!

Everything Is Holiday – Day Ten

05/09/2014alxkdd

Today started with with an early Thai lunch with Heidi and a massive long chat, which was so great, Heidi always says the best stuff and makes me laugh some much. Then we dropped into Meltdown Comics, which was OK, but a lot of comic stores always seem to have the same stuff in them.

Then I headed off on my now to the Arclight cinema to catch Lucy, I was really watching it just to kill time until I had to meet someone in the evening, but I did really want to catch it anyway. The Arclight is great, the screens are big, you can sit in the front row and it’s been empty every time I’ve been. They also have an usher introduce each screening and ask everyone to turn their phones off and not talk, which is so good!

Then I kept my evening’s appointment, which was with one of my fellow Found Footage Battle Royale contestants, but the exact details of what shady deals transpired through the evening will have to be kept a secret, let’s just say that I’ve pulled off the impossible for us all!

A short entry this time, but I’ve been taking it easy these last few days, tomorrow is my final full day here in LA, I was stood outside the Cinefamily earlier tonight and I couldn’t believe it was all just starting this time last week, as always it’s gone too quickly. There might not been an entry here tomorrow, the evening holds something very special, if there isn’t one then look for a final Everything Is Holiday Epilogue Edition on Sunday night when I get home to London!

Everything Is Holiday – Day Nine

04/09/201404/09/2014alxkdd

After the crazy day I had yesterday today was a really take it easy day, we went out for brunch at the Smoke House, which is an old style LA restaurant right opposite the Warner Brothers lot, it’s packed with old holly woods pictures and clippings, it also has very stylish red booths, it looks like a real part of old LA style.

Then I spent most of the afternoon listening to music and watching films, really the first time I’ve taken it easy in all the time I’ve been here.

In the evening I met up with my super cool old friend James, who lives out here now, we met in this old style Irish pub, which was apparently the inspiration for the show Cheers. We had a great night, it was so good to see him and it was like we just seen each other the day before, so good to catch up with everything. We’re going to meet up again on Friday and hit a few interesting spots during the day.

And that was my day, it was so laid back and I really enjoyed it. The next couple of days will be super busy though, especially tomorrow night, when something very cool should be happening! Keep your fingers crossed as it’s going to be something that’s going to benefit ALL of us!

Everything Is Holiday – Day Eight

03/09/201403/09/2014alxkdd

Today was taken up with one thing only – hand moving the 8000 Jerry Maguire VHS tapes! The morning started quietly and I spent most of it chatting with Heidi, who also gave me a great selection of very cool Ramones merchandised. Then I headed back down to Cinefamily for 2PM to meet up with Scott to help load up and move the Jerrys!

Now I knew this was going to be a tough job and for once I actually planned ahead, I wore the oldest T-shirt I could find knowing this this was going to be a long, tough and very hot day, boy was I right. Turns out there we’re going to be three of us moving all the tapes, I have no idea what Scott would have done if we hadn’t been there to help out, it’s 8000 VHS tapes! Just loading them up into the Terrible van was a huge job, we ended up having to leave a few crates behind as they simply wouldn’t fit in the van. Man I’ve never sweated like that before, I’m used to moving boxes but not in the intense LA heat, I had to keep drinking water as I just so dehydrated straight away.

Then we had a drive across town to the Terrible HQ, which gave us a bit of a break before the real work began. The car park was a bit of a walk away from the gallery/storage room, plus there we’re two short flights of stairs to deal with, so this is were the real work took place, if I thought I was hot and sweaty before, this stretch of the operation turned me into a walking sweat machine, ok not a cool thing to talk about but it was just so hot I had to share that fact with everyone. We got them all moved in the end, but it was a lot of work. Plus poor Scott had to deal with towers trying to take the van away, there seems to be an ongoing run in between them and the person who runs the parking at their office space, it got sorted out after a while, but the van nearly went off on it’s own adventure without us!

OK that took a good few hours, but once it was done it felt good to have moved so much stuff, the people in the room next to ours even took pity on us and lent us their trolly wheels to help out. Once it was all finished though we headed back down to the bottom floor of the complex where we’d seen there was a big gallery show of martial arts posters from Ghana! Which was sadly shut, but we could see everything through the windows, the hand painted posters looked amazing!

After that we had to drop off the Terrible van to it’s regular home, on the drive we swapped interesting film titles, I always think that everyone knows about all the films we champion, so it was great to introduce Scott to some of our classic finds, and him bust out a few ones I’d never heard of, oh yes I made notes and I’ll be investigating all of them!

After a great Mexican meal I got dropped off back here and just had to lay down for a bit, it wasn’t the physical moving the boxes that did me in, it was the crazy heat, I’ve never sweated like that before, I swear I must have lost a stone in water today. But it was all worth it to get to help out with the Jerrys!