a busy friday

Saturday, August 07, 2004, at 11:06AM

By Eric Richardson

Busy day yesterday... I worked from home, which allowed me and Miggles to meet Kathy, her sister, Magilla, and D4 at McCormick's and Schmidt's for lunch. They were celebrating 12 years downtown by selling lobsters for $12. I'm not normally a lobster person (too much work... give me a steak any day), but $12 is a steal so that's what I got. The place was packed, as you would expect. The wait wasn't bad at all to get seated, but our waiter really wasn't on top of his game. He was slow, dropped a couple things, and brought me a pepsi after I asked for a coke (if you say, "Is a pepsi ok?", I'll say no and get something else, but I'll like you a whole lot more than if I ask for coke and you bring me a pepsi bottle). But whatever, $12 lobster.

After lunch I worked for a bit longer. The plan was to go up to Griffith Park around sunset to show Kathy's sister the view from up there. They were going to pick me up downtown and then we would head over from there. But an hour and a half or so before they were to pick me up I got it in my head that I wanted to head over to the ALDO on Melrose (right near Fairfax) and pick up a pair of shoes I was eying last time I was there. So I decided to make things fun, and to get this done without driving. It's only about 9 miles, but I would have had to deal with the 101, parking, etc, so driving over there really wasn't going to be worth it.

So I took the subway. Now, an astute reader at this point will say, "Hey, there's no subway station near there." And they'll be mostly right. The nearest station is Hollywood / Highland, about a 2 mile trip (mostly) north. But what's 2 miles among friends? I grabbed my skateboard (purely for transportation... i suck at skateboards) and headed over to the Pershing Square Red Line stop. The train came quick enough, I took a seat (it was a pretty full train, but not standing-room only), and we were off.

I got off at Hollywood/Highland, went west on Hollywood to La Brea, and then went south from there, enjoying the gentle downhill. A right on Melrose, a bit farther avoiding the pedestrians and outdoor tables jutting into the sidewalk, and I was there. I think in the end it took me a little under an hour door to door. It would have been quicker if I had biked, but the plan was to still get picked up and that would have been unwieldy.

After buying the shoes I was still running ahead of the others, so I took back off east on Melrose, figuring I'd just get as far as I could to shave distance off them picking me up. I actually ended up making it all the way to Western, which is the street we were taking up into the park, and Kathy picked me up at Western/Melrose.

Total distance covered on the skateboard was about 5 miles, I think. It was a beautiful day out and good exercise, so I was all for it.

All together now we went up to Griffith Park, got cool pictures of the sun setting next to the Hollywood sign, and then exited out the east side of the park headed for Pasadena to see a movie.

We saw Garden State at the Laemmle Playhouse. It was a great movie that really needs to play wider.

Finally we tried to get some pancakes downtown. We ended up successful, but not to the extent we had desired. The new downtown IHOP closes at 10pm, the Pantry was too busy to start serving pancakes (even though they usually do so around midnight and it was 12:45am), so the only remaining option was Dennys. Not normally my first choice, but the food was good and they were amazingly quick, so I can't complain.

Tonight we're off to the Dodger game, which will be my first this season. I'm a slacker.