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So I did my California Drivers theory test - and passed (thank you for asking)! Weird, but there's no computer to do the test on. It's a stand up ballot box affair and you get a small pencil and what looks remarkably like a ballot paper with a host of weird and wacky multiple choice questions to mark with an x. But then again - it only costs $27 and that allows for three tries. Much more egalitarian than NSW. Now for the on-the-road next Tuesday.
Walked and clamoured around Runyan Canyon - passed the newly instated RATTLESNAKE BEWARE signs! Makes it all seem so much more adventurous, and just a bit more like home - knowing there's likely to be a poisonous snake nearby while you bush walk...
Got the herbs and a tomato plant for the garden and a shovel for $1. I am the garage sale queen. Love my new bike and found the local library (yes I am still the nerd library go-er) so I'm happy now.
Today went to the Oscar Frock show.
On display were around 20 films major costume selections on mannequins, plus the story of each designer. Fascinating stuff- My Mum would love it; Marie Antoinette, Perfume, Eragon, Good German and a host of others to marvel over. The Queen costumes still baffles me. It's, quite simply, tweed done well I guess - but an Oscar nomination???...her Royal M really has shocking taste in frocks and so the designer's hands were tied..so I just don't get it. But what does an ex-pat, antipodean colonist from convict stock know....
Then we went to The Grove. This is a shopping mall extension of Farmers Markets on Fairfax. Reminds me of the Fox lot shopping centre, but filled with people and massive shops...Barnes and Noble bookstore - 3 stories high..heaven. Had a great lunch (and s**t coffee - but what else is new in this town)...Had lunch in an Italian cafe next to this weird fountain that shoots water out in time to the music..Hello Donna Summer and WILD CHERRY It's flashback to my ill-spent youth time!!! Chatted to a cool woman who used to be a professional stripper in Las Vegas - wonderful tales of an amazing life! Excellent company this one...
But the main feature of the day was yet to come, while eating and people watching the mass of humanity ambling by, we came to notice a plethora of pre-teen girls and their Mums toting HUGE red bags and these weird looking DOLLS around - so we decided to go explore All American Girl...
What it is can be summed up in one way - female stereotype role modeling. I don't know if I can do justice to the breadth of the brilliance of this retail marketing phenomenon. It is an excuse to print money. Dolls, and doll clothes, and girls clothes that match the dolls clothes, and toy horses, dogs, scooters, more clothes, a doll wig salon (kid you not) - professional hairdressers 'doing' the dolls wigs in miniature chairs. There was a doll hospital where I was told that the most common injury was dog bite resulting in chewed fingers and toes, followed by rusty eye syndrome - seems getting water in the eye is not a good thing for these gals. There was a cafe with a ONE month wait!!! and a theatrical show - booked out for months in advance too. The shop was also 3 massive stories high, and the effect of all the pre-teen oestrogen at fever pitch had a rather exhausting effect (Poor Mums and Dads!!).
And as I ambled I just wondered where the feminist, the Suffragette, the sixties revolutionaries and the rock chick dolls were? Where was a freedom fighter with an afro - the only African American dolls were just post-slave era (historic) dolls which is one story to tell - and then athletes, and the American Indians were all pre-reservation models in 'yee olde indian tribe' cossies... Not that they are type casting or anything.
But the most fascinating facts - if you look close enough were that Julia Roberts is one of the executive producers of vast array of movies (stroke of genius), and we even found one directed by our own Nadia Tass!
Oh it's too hard to explain really... and I think I may dream of all those eyes peering out from their glass cages... go look - www.americangirl.com/.
Star spotting of the week while sipping coffee at Urth Cafe was David Spade and a lovely young miss pointedly hiding her face, and then the lovely Sissy Spacek with a young bloke in tow.. and today we ran into Emma Lung... Tinsel town is warming up for the spring twould seem...
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