Hollywood is well-known for it’s corn crop
February 29th, 2004 | Posted by Shannon
When I woke up this morning I did not know where I was. Then I remembered - I am in Hollywood, in a hotel room looking out onto the Hollywood freeway. We went to see one of my favorite bands, the Super Furry Animals, at the Music Box on Hollywood Blvd. I love Hollywood. I’m not a fan of L.A. but I think I could live in Hollywood, if I never had to leave Hollywood. I love the architecture, I love the retro-vibe, I love the tripped-out culture. I feel at home there.
I also love the 101 Coffee Shop. The 101 Coffee Shop is in the same building as the Best Western Hollywood Hills, but I seriously doubt Best Western owns it. The 101 Coffee Shop is a hip and colorful place that attracts the absolute best, and worse, Hollywood characters. I love staying at the Best Western just so I can eat several meals at the 101, and on this trip I ate three meals there between 6PM last night and 11AM this morning. The staff - mostly hot young things - wear brown Dickeys and white western shirts with their tummies showing. I think it helps to have some tats above the buttocks to get a job here. The customers all look like rock stars. Or most of them do. Some rock stars eat there with their parents. We brought a bottle of wine for our first meal and didn’t finish it, so I offered it up to our server. “You guys ROCK,” she said, and stashed the bottle somewhere near the milk machine. Our midnight meal consisted of fries with chili on top and an ear of corn with Cajun spices. I love this corn - I had it for all three meals. I asked our server, how do you get corn like this in February? “We grow it out back,” he says. You gotta love a place that has servers that can deal with people like me at midnight with such aplomb. After he tells me this, I tell Mark how I can eat corn every single day, even raw. How I’m going to help the 101 shuck all their corn. The server tells the busboy, “She is going to be our corn-shucker.” It really doesn’t take much to make me happy.
The show. The show was good - really good. But I got spoiled the first time I saw SFA, in a tiny club with maybe fifty people there. That was a perfect show - so perfect that they can never, ever be better than that. It sort of sucks being so good, I guess. Before we went to the Music Box we went to a dive bar called the Frolic Room. But that is a whole ‘nother story. Bukowskiesque. So I’ll skip over the Frolic Room, save it for a day when I have nothing to write about. The Music Box was pretty empty, and especially the floor, because most people seemed to want to sit down in the balcony. The L.A. Weekly had an article that said go see SFA, and “grab a seat in the balcony.” So everyone did. But not me, no way, the balcony is for pussies. I was in my dream spot, right on the rail in front of the lead guitar amp. We bought earplugs, but forgot to bring them. Sadly, I did not need them. I wanted to need them, but it wasn’t loud enough. Am I just going deaf? But I adore these boys from Wales, and even though it wasn’t loud enough, I still loved it, and everyone on the planet should buy one of their records.
This morning, slightly bleary from, uh, this morning, we went back down to the 101. The Oscars are happening today, so right down the street there is the red carpet and the security and all that stuff. We are sitting at the counter; all the tables are filled with the rock star people and their parents. Then in walks three women from the Fellowship. They have Fellowship t-Shirts, Fellowship bags. They even look like Hobbits. I am serious. “I want the Bilbo Baggins special!” I say. They must be in Hollywood stalking their master, Peter Jackson. Next to their booth is a booth with three guys in baseball outfits. One of them has a nose ring. I wonder, if you slide headfirst into second base with a nose ring, does that hurt? I ate corn for breakfast, and got no strange look from our server - I am sure she has seen it all.
