Pilgrimage to Mraz

I have been to California three times this semester. Driven between Phoenix and Los Angeles six times in the past four months. It's my favorite state and one of my favorite places in the whole world.

For Halloween, I was able to take a last-minute trip to Westwood with my best friend/ex-roommate/wifey to see Jason Mraz and to stay with my two best friends from high school.



This is kind of how it went:


Listening to Jason Mraz for well over six hours, windows down, sunglasses on.

Feeling that the Pacific was near, even though we couldn't see it. Smells of the coastline and gasoline and the foods that I grew up with.

Seeing Nicole's Westwood townhouse for the first time and rushing to get our costumes together.

High school best friends wondering who let us grow up and get so old so quickly.

Amy Winehouse running around Westwood with a vampiress and a toilet.

Seeing high school classmates. Laughter and hugs and ridiculous statements.

Saturday was, without a doubt, the best day of my life. That sounds trite, I know, but it was one of those perfect, laid-back, full-of-adventure days that I wish could last for weeks. Mariam and I decided to hit up Hollywood Boulevard, never dreaming that we would need jackets. It poured and our jeans were soaked to the knees as we rushed over Walk of Fame stars in search of an umbrella.


We finally found one in a corner drugstore, where the owner gave us Halloween candy. We stopped at Cafe Audrey for paninis. We wasted the afternoon at Sephora. And then we went to the concert.

Please let me stop and gush about Jason Mraz. Jason Mraz was the soundtrack to my first San Francisco roadtrip at age sixteen. One of the few CDs I had left in my Jeep after my CD case was stolen during my senior year in high school. He sang me lullabies during my dorm days of college. And I was silly enough not to go to one of his shows in Tempe on an idle Tuesday during my first year of college, because "Oh, he'll go on tour again next year."

That was THREE years ago.

I was fiercely anticipating this concert. Mariam and I fought tooth and nail for two tickets, any two tickets, and ended up with PIT SEATS. We worried that they wouldn't arrive in sufficient time to allow us to drive to California. We crawled across the desert to see this show.

The joy of legitimately having concert tickets and pit wristbands was almost too much to handle.




This is kind of what you would have seen if you had been there:

I think that Jason Mraz is incredibly talented and it was a lovely way to pass an evening in California. I am a girl of too many words but I can't find quite the right one to describe how talented I think Jason Mraz is. It was a beautiful night.

Side note: One of Jason Mraz's opening acts was a British band called Two Spot Gobi who look like a bunch of guys that would hang out with my brother. They are phenomenal. The kind of music I would put on repeat and blast as I drive around during the afternoons at home. They have this very harmonic reggae/folk/ska sound. Also, they don't have keyboards and it doesn't sound empty. I'm sold. I came home and bought all of their music, which is a huge sacrifice, because I never buy music (I am always, always, always illegally downloading music; RIAA's enemy number one right here). But these guys are worth spending money on. Mariam and I got a chance to talk to them after the show and they're great.




Things I've Decided:
- I want to play more music with more strangers.
- It's going to be very difficult to convince me that I want to live anywhere other than California when I grow up.
- If at all possible, when I grow up, I'm going to sell my car.
- California has a much higher percentage of beautiful, friendly, fascinating people.

Running Away to Hollywood

I'm not very good at staying in the same place. Here's a quick rundown of all the places my heart has called home in the past four-ish years:

- El Dorado Hills, CA
- Puebla, Mexico
- Tempe, AZ
- Granby, CO
- Oshakati, Namibia
- Dijon, France

And that's not counting all the times I moved between California and Arizona or all the tiny European countries that stole my heart when I hurricaned through them during Spring Break.

I'm a girl who tends to run away. The odds of me running increase exponentially when there is not an ocean within six hours of me and the temperature is routinely over 110 Fahrenheit.

Tempe was killing me and I had to make a break for it.

Luckily, one of my best high school theater friends was in "Les Miserables in Concert" at the Hollywood Bowl. He is wickedly talented and this is one of the biggest shows he's ever been in. I couldn't miss it and I didn't want to. I needed to get out of Arizona.

Alicia and I stayed up way too late the night before and sleepily installed ourselves in her car. A few lovely hours later, we were in my beloved California.

Firstly, I have to apologize to Hollywood. For well over a decade, the only memory I had of Hollywood was that once on a family vacation, a crackhead tried to climb in my mom's Jeep and my brother and I were pretty much scarred for life. And scared straight at the same time. So Hollywood and I weren't on the best of terms.

However, I think Hollywood's a lovely little town. Alicia and I took pictures of all the stars on the Walk of Fame. I even brought my Nikon FM10 and played photographer for the day. This was 1) out of necessity, because my digital camera passed into the great beyond while I was in Ireland, 2) rather silly, because I'm not really that great of a photographer, and 3) exciting for me, because I feel like shooting with film gives me more integrity and less of an opportunity to morph into an out-of-control narcissist who only takes pictures of herself and her friends all day long.

Here is what I learned in Hollywood:
- My hands are the same size as Elizabeth Taylor's
- And Julie Andrews's
- If I fail out of my classes, I can always move to Hollywood and sing on the street
- Or dress up as Wonder Woman and parade around all day
- Or bellydance on the corner. Which sounds shady. And probably is. But believe you me, I can do it better than the lady I saw on Hollywood Blvd.

And here's why I really love Hollywood: I found the most amazing cafe I've seen since I left France. And they had PANINIS, which I crave, oh, about every 3 minutes. And it was beautiful and cozy and I never, ever wanted to leave. If you don't go to Cafe Audrey next time you visit Hollywood, you're totally missing out.

Alicia and I made our way to the Hollywood Bowl, which evidently is outside. Who knew?

Les Miz was AMAZING. I've seen it on Broadway before, and I thought that this cast was much stronger. Or maybe it was the direction. Or maybe it was the fact that Tristan Rumery, the kid that I grew up with and shared a stage with about 12948172 times, was onstage. I don't know. But I loved it. And I cried all through the second act, as usual.

And then, as if the night couldn't get much better, I got to see Dan and Phil, two other smalltown boys who I grew up with. That made the weekend absolutely perfect. I love those boys and I've missed them a lot. I don't know how to describe how nice it was to see them.

The next morning, Alicia and I woke up, ransacked the hotel room (They had free RAMEN! We HAD to steal the free ramen!), and made our way back to the desert.

It was an amazing weekend and it should at least hold me over until Labor Day :)