Birthday Fun

This year, my birthday fell on a Monday. While that might be a major bummer for folks who work 9-5, it was a wonderful treat for me: I had the whole day off!

The fun began after the show on Sunday night with a bowling adventure at the Hollywood branch of Lucky Strike Lanes. While not planned as a birthday party, the fun stretched on past midnight & I was serenaded by those in attendance as we played a rousing game of beer pong.

Lenny rolls a spare

Nigel lines up his shot at beer pong

As I was, apparently, the only one in attendance who went to state school - my team kicked butt.

Costumed characters were still prowling Hollywood Blvd. posing for pictures as we left the bowling alley - we had to stop for birthday snap!

Bright and early Monday morning, Roy and I loaded up the car and headed out to meet Jeff Brewer at Knott's Berry Farm! Knott's Berry Farm began life in the 1920's as, just as the name implies, a road-side fruit stand. (In fact, it was at Walter Knott's stand that the term "boysenberry" was invented to describe the three-way cross of raspberry, blackberry and loganberry that Knott received from fellow berry-grower Rudolph Boysen.) In the 30's, to help make ends meet, Cordelia Knott began serving chicken dinners. Mother Knott's chicken became a sensation and long lines of waiting diners developed. To entertain the crowds, Walter built a ghost town of buildings relocated from actual western ghost towns. In the 1940's the first rides were added and Knott's Berry Farm became the nation's first theme park! Today, the theme park is run by the good people at Cedar Fair and the berry jams and jellies are marketed by Smuckers, but Cordelia Knott's fried chicken is still served at the park.

At the entrance to Ghost Rider - the park's wonderful wooden roller coaster.

The lines at the park were so short that we had ridden all 9 of the park's coasters before we broke for a lunch of Mother Knott's famous fried chicken!

Jeff, Roy & I took a ride around the park on a stage coach

Yup, an actual stage coach formerly used on the Butterfield Overland Mail route!

There were also plenty more traditional amusement park rides...

After we had worn ourselves out on roller coasters, Roy and I bid Jeff farewell and continued south on I-5 to Anaheim. We met up with Matt Allen, Dumas, Karl & Nikki at Angels Stadium to watch the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim take on the Detroit Tigers. It was a beautiful night for baseball with two great pitchers headed to the hill: Jared Weaver for the Halos and Justin Verlander for the Motor City Kitties. The game turned ugly in the away half of the 7th inning when the Angels surrendered 7 runs to fall behind the Tigers 10-0. The Angels' faithful streamed for the exits. But then, he appeared:

The infamous Rally Monkey!

The Angels rallied with 4 runs in the bottom half of the 6th inning and scored 3 more in the 8th. They even went so far as to bring the tying run to the plate in the 8th inning, before letting the game slip away from them with a final score of 10-7. The giant halo would not light this night.

The view of the mountains over the centerfield wall

The view of Angels Stadium from our seats.

Renovated in 1997 & 1998, the Big A is 4th oldest active ballpark in the majors (behind Fenway, Wrigley & Dodger Stadium). It's also the 13th Big League Ballpark I've visited and the 29th (and final) park I visited on while on tour.

Bobby Abreau smashed a homerun in the 8th to trigger these fireworks and a show by the fountains in centerfield

w/ Matt & Dumas outfitted, as usual, for teams not playing at the park we were sitting in...

Tuesday morning, my birthday weekend of fun concluded with a visit to Paramount Studios. Movie magic was being made just blocks from my apartment in Hollywood (in fact, Paramount Studios built the apartment complex I stayed in as company housing), so Roy, Karl and I could walk to the studio from my bungalow.

Paramount Studio's Bronson Gate

What is now Paramount Pictures began in 1912 with the creation of two companies: Famous Players Film Company founded by Adolph Zukor, and Lasky Feature Play Company founded by Joseph Lasky. In 1914 both men began releasing movies through a third company, Paramount Pictures created by a theatre owner in Utah to distribute films nation-wide. In 1916, Zukor managed a three-way merger and soon became the driving force behind the business, eventually pushing out his other partners. Paramount moved into lavish new production studios on Marathon Avenue in Hollywood in 1926 - the core of the modern studio. Today, Paramount is the only movie studio with a lot in Hollywood and is the oldest operating studio. Paramount took over the adjacent RKO lot when it acquired Desilu in the 1960's and eventually expanded it's lot across Marathon Avenue to Melrose, resulting in the city within a city that is the Paramount Lot today.

The Hollywood Sign is visible above the Paramount sound stages

Our tour was a really interesting glimpse behind the scenes of modern movie and television production with a good bit of history thrown in as well. All of the sound stages at Paramount bear plaques listing the many hit films and shows filmed within, titles like Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments and Bing Crosby's "Road" movies share space with Cheers, Everybody Loves Raymond and I Love Lucy (though RKO kept less detailed records so where, exactly, Citizen Kane and other RKO classics were filmed is less sure). Our tour guide pointed out Lucille Ball's bungalow dressing room as well as the office of Edith Head and Rudolph Valentino. The most interesting part of the tour, however, was the backlot where large outdoor scenes are filmed. The day we visited, Criminal Minds was preparing to shoot a scene on "New York Street", Paramount's urban backlot.

"New York Street" can be redressed to look like almost any urban environment and features building of all kinds of architectural styles found around American cities, but it had a very New York feel - there was a building that could easily have been my own apartment! The buildings are funny though, round a corner and the style of the building may change or the building may turn out to not have another side at all!

I really enjoyed the peek behind the scenes and the reminder that very little in movies is actually what it appears to be. Making movies is all about controlling what, exactly, the viewer sees. A film doesn't need a whole building, just a facade. That facade might have appeared in hundreds of TV shows and films, but some clever redressing will render it unrecognizable. The interiors will be filmed somewhere else and on another day, but it will all be made seamless in the editing room.

w/ the iconic Paramount water tower at the end of our tour

I never expected to celebrate 3 birthdays on the Spamalot tour, but all three have been fun. (I've celebrated with tiki drinks in Portland, cheese steaks in Philadelphia and, now, fried chicken at Knott's Berry Farm.) All three have been representations of the locale where I celebrated, but none more so than my great birthday weekend in LA this year.

JV