L.A. is all about the lines...

As the title of this post suggests, I have been waiting in line, ALOT! If it isn't the constant line of traffic, or waiting in line (by choice admittedly) for the story supervisor and production desginer of Up!to sign my poster or the TWO lines I had to wait in for The Tonight Show is Jay Leno. Needless to say, if you are coming out here or are out here and are unaware - BE READY TO WAIT IN LINE!

Thursday night I had plans! Now this is exciting because I don't really know anyone in LA so the fact that plans were made is tre exciting! I met up for drinks with my friends John from Lionsgate at a awesome pub called The Cat 'N' Fiddle in Hollywood. I met John last December when I came out and interviewed with him for a intern position at Lionsgate. While the internship didn't come about as we both had hoped we remain in contact. He is a great person to know. He is really nice but tells you how it is in this business. He has a lot of advice to offer to willing ears (aka mine) and is proving to be a good friend and mentor. I have to add that I felt like such a grown up meeting for drinks after work. I'm lovin' 21!

Friday I had arranged to stop by and meet my ABC co-workers and I have to say that my summer is/going to be awesome! I work in the ABC building which is next to the ANIMATION building. I feel like such a bad ass scanning an idea in and entering through a gate to go to work everyday but Friday. Anyway, Steve, Miami Alum and ABC employee that gave me this internship introduced me to a ton of people today - secretaries to security guards. I think there was a Shannon, Zack, and Kelly there but I probs wouldn't be able to tell you who belonged with which name.

I spent a good amount of time there meeting with HR to get all of my paperwork figured out. I also had the opportunity to talk with the woman who is incharge of interns at ABC/Disney. They have a great program. They have so many interns spread out over all of the departments but they have events planned throughout the summer for the interns including lectures by the Execs to movie nights at El Capitan Theatre ( which is where Up premiered). I am SO excited because I will be able to meet more people!

After the business was taken care of, it was suggested to me that I head over to the Disney lot (via the skyway that connects the two) and go check out the Up event that was being held on the lot. Well, needless to say there were balloons EVERYWHERE! They had puppies and kitties that were up for adoption and raffles and games and pictures with the dog Dug in the movie. It was so cool. They also had yummy looking cupcakes but I was unable to secure one due to my decision to stand in line to get a movie poster signed by Ronnie Del Carmen ( Story Supervisor) and Ricky Nierva (Production Designer)/ Well I was told by an employee that the wait would be an hour and a half, which I couldn't believe and I felt like I was standing in line for a ride at Disney World but there weren't any FAST PASSES for purchase. Well, I found out that the reason it took them so long to sign peoples books and poster was because they were also drawing in them. So I ended up waiting for 2 hours (which is fine because I have nothing better to do) to get a poster for me and a poster for my sister Meg signed. If she reads this she is probably super pumped, if she doesn't she will be happily surprised when she gets it in the mail. By the way the inscription that was written on her poster says this: To Meg! You have the BEST sister in the universe! & I don't know you but I met you amazing sister, you are lucky! Truer words have NEVER been spoken.

Celebrity Spotting

I think I am starting to get the hang of this LA thing. I don't have to use my GPS as much...bingo! However, the traffic still SUCKS! It takes me an hour to get to and from New Regency. At least when I start ABC next week I will be 5 minutes away (with traffic).

I moved into my new place on Monday...its nice in a good neighborhood. This is the first time I have had a TV in my room...I LOVE IT! Some of you may think that because of this I never leave my room but you are wrong...sort of. I don't have many friends yet so my room is a nice place to chill.

I didn't have to work on Tuesday so I decided that I would attempt to get on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. With a little guidance from my friend Chad (NBC Universal employee) I set off in the right direction. Its the LAST week of the show with Leno so I had to stand in line at Guest Relations at 6:45am for the ticket window to open at 8am. I was probably the 25th person in line so I thought the odds were good. While in line I met this nice Dutch couple who were so friendly, especially since I was alone. I got a ticket and decided to wait for the 9am Studio tour. It was a solid 1 hr and 10mn tour with one other person around the wardrobe, prop and set departments as well as the Tonight Show set and Access Hollywood Set...pretty cool. After the tour I went home, ate, showered ( i had to look good if I was potentially going to be on tv) and I went back to wait in ANOTHER line to get INTO the studio. I got in line at 11:45am (mind you they would let us in at 3pm). It may sound crazy to get in line so early but they over distribute the free tickets so you have to get in line so you ACTUALLY get in and some people had been in line since 8am when we got the tickets. So I was about 30th in line and I waited forever. The nice thing was not 5 minutes after I sat down in line did the nice Dutch couple come and wait in line too! So they were good line buddies, holding my spot if I needed to go to the bathroom or get something to drink/eat and they offered me cookies (they obvi knew me).

Once I got into the show I got an AWESOME seat!!! I don't think it could've been better. I sat next to the head writter's wife. She was nice and told me who people were on set. On the show that day was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwight Yoakam. Both were great. Arnold talked ALOT but there was a lot to cover especially since just that day the CA Supreme Court upheld Prop 8- the ban on gay marriage.

Today (Wednesday) I went to work at New Regency. Great day! I had my badge and parking pace so I no longer had to go through the visitors side but instead the employee side! Cha Ching! On our way to lunch on the lot (before we went through New York) we passed Abigail Breslin (the little girl in No Reservations, Little Miss Sunshine, and Deffinetly, Maybe). I was really excited about that. At lunch we watch soccer/futbol and exchanged numbers and I became BBM(Blackberry Messenger) contacts with Thom and Alvern. After lunch we stopped by to see the famous Fox duckies. Literally, everyone is crazy about the ducks. I also ran into one of execs who gave me my internships and had a nice 45 min chat with him. Alverne and Garrett decided we needed a break from scanning so we decided to take a snack time and head to the vending machines across the lot. Low and behold when we walked out the door the 3 of us were laughing and chatting and were brought to silence when none other than Tina Fey walked by us. I was like a few inches away from her. After she passed we looked at each other and screamed/laughed "THAT WAS TINA FEY!" Of course she could hear us.

Tomorrow I am getting after work drinks with my friend John from Lionsgate and I FINALLY heard from ABC HR. You will be happy to hear that my background check and credit report are being looked at. Because as I said when we were walking up to Tina "I'm really sketchy." I seriously said that a little louder than I should've but we were joking around about my background check.

Things are falling into place!

First Weekend in CA... Traffic, Housing and Exhaust(ion)

My first week in CA and at New Regency is successfully completed…with a few bumps of course. So I work at New Regency on Mondays & Wednesdays and I will start working at ABC starting June 1st on Tuesdays and Thursdays (that is of course if their HR department decides to finally get in touch with me, which they haven’t yet). Here is how my first week in LA looked:

Monday - New Regency
7 am- 8am: Wake up in Pasadena at Kris Newcomer’s hotel room (the first place I crashed)

8am-10am: Drive from Pasadena to Culver City (took me an hour). Find something to eat ( thank you Starbucks with parking lot). Almost ran a red light due to nerves and dropped my breakfast on the ground. Salvaged some of the breakfast then proceeded to spill peanut butter onto my black pants. Awesome it’s not even 10 am yet!

10am- 1pm: Arrive at New Regency (pass the cowboy mural on Fox Studios back lot). Meet my fellow interns in the story department Tyler and Thom. We decide to digitize the script library at New Regency. That means scanning and logging over 15,000 scripts…damn. So we start…

1pm-2pm: Lunch! Tyler and Thom take me to one of the many restaurants on the lot and we meet up with some other interns and assistants. They also take me to the studio store where there is all this fun merchandise and DVDs for sale with a discount! Yay! Be proud I didn’t buy anything…yet. I will have to go back and buy the DVD of Heidi with Shirley Temple that I have been thinking a lot about lately.

2pm-7pm: Digitize scripts. Took a break part way through and Thom showed me around the lot via golfcart. I felt so legit. Go back to New Regency and continue digitizing scripts and realize that this is going to be a long summer. However, I did meet some more cool people and learned the art of binding scripts and the different ways the execs like them (crucial knowledge).

7pm – 10:30: Go to Ali Newcomer’s place ( in Pasadena) and hang out with her roommate Becky and watch Gossip Girl.

Tuesday – Off day
Woke up incredibly early due to the ridiculous amount of light coming into the living room window (we all know that I need total darkness to sleep). Got up and went on a 15 mile bike ride with Becky (big bike enthusiast) to the Rose Bowl. Very cool but now my butt really hurts. Around noon head over to Culver City to find the place I saw on Monday to get my pants hemmed. Found it( Go me!). Then realized I have no idea what I am going to do all day. After numerous time of calling my mom to get addresses to Kinkos I went to Kinkos and printed some stuff off and used the internet. By the way, finding the Kinkos took me over an hour because I have no idea where I am going. Oh also, at Kinkos they had there own little parking lot, which I happily found a spot in. Unfortunately, when I walked out I noticed that my car was semi-blocked by a Ferrari. The valet at Kinkos ( oh yea Kinkos has a valet guy) spent 10 minutes maneuvering my car out the spot since he didn’t know how to turn on and move the Ferrari. Once I got into my car and started driving I had no idea what I was going to do the rest of the day. Then Rico, the guy I am living with, said we should meet at his/our place at 8:30. So I needed to kill time until 8:30 – therefore, I decided I would go see a movie near my new home. After calling my mom to Google theatres near my new place it was decided that seeing a movie at Universal Studios AMC theatre would be the closest place.

Well if you haven’t been to Universal Studios then you may not know that it is a theme park area with a lot of shops on the City Walk and a movie theatre. Parking was $12 – I parked on the Curious George level. Hehe. I decided to see Star Trek but the next showing wasn’t for another hour and a half so I pulled out my blackberry and called up Megan and began walking around. While walking and talking I saw the famous Universal Studio fountain and decided to sit by it since it was such a nice day out. Once I sat down and set my purse down I must have turned because next thing I know is that my purse is in the fountain starting to sink to the bottom. I notice it THANK GOD and pull it out. Now picture this. I am still on my phone, looking horrified with a giant Longchamp full of water (the purse was unzipped of course). I needed to dump the water out but my purse had a lot of stuff in it (including an iPod, a book, my alteration ticket for my pants, my wallet, gum, etc.) so carefully/inconspicuously dumped my purse upside down and a miniature tsunami came out. So my already semi-broken iPod was now really broken and my book, wallet and alteration ticket were soaked. At that moment, I thought the Universe was out to get me…creative pun eh? Universe at Universal Studios…hahaha.

So I saw Star Trek and decided that I love Chris Pine. Going to the movies in CA is very different than going to the movies anywhere else because people clap not only at the end of films but also in the middle when something awesome happens. They also stay for the credits, most likely to see their friends and family that helped make the movie. After the movie I headed over to see Rico but he couldn’t meet with me since he had tickets to the premier of Terminator and the movie wasn’t done yet. By the way Rico works at Warner Bros. as a CPA. So I went back to Ali’s place and hung out with Becky.

Wednesday – New Regency
7am – 10am: Wake up. Get ready try to go to breakfast place down the street but it was closed so I went to Jamba Juice. Proceeded to spill my Straberry Surf Rider on my jeans in the parking lot so I went back in got another one (free of charge, thanks Jamba) and put another pair of pants on. Remember I living out of my car so grabbing another pair of pants isn’t difficult.

10am- 1pm: Two more interns are here today Alvern and Garrett, cool people. Digitize scripts while reading Whispering Witches (a novel I copied/scanned on Monday and kept because the email attached to it said it “the next Harry Potter”). Grab the golf cart during a long script and head over to building 99 to get my ID and parking sticker. I look really tan in my picture.

1pm-2pm: Alvern invited me to his Disney party on Sunday saying that I “would make a great Hannah Montana”.( This is a party to mock Disney so when I was offended by being called Hannah Montana, Alvern assured me that it wasn’t an insult and that he was going as Raven Symone from That’s So Raven). Lunch with the gang this time Lindsey an assistant from Fox Searchlight joins us. Talk about Idol, the Lakers and other things I don’t have interest in.

2pm-5pm: Back to digitizing scripts and reading my book (by the way it is NOT the next Harry Potter).

5pm-6pm: Broke the Xerox machine I was scanning. Note: don’t push the red button inside the machine. Went back to the Bullpen (that’s what is says on the placard outside the door) and talked to Thom(who was logging), looked for Waldo and Wanda in Where’s Waldo? Hollywood Edition and read Whispering Witches. Mind you the other interns are on the rest of the machines in the office doing work. Thom told me to enjoy the break.

6pm-7pm: Shari, an assistant, came in and wanted some scripts scanned, logged and more copies of each. I was on the job. Went back to my broken machine and fixed it somehow and got back to work.

7pm-8pm: In traffic, making my way to Burbank to get to Rico’s to sign my lease. It took forever.

8:30pm-11pm: Driving up the 5 to spend my Memorial Day weekend in Paso Robles with my parents. Almost fell asleep at the wheel.

Thursday - Off day @ Paso
Bottling Per Cazo’s reds today. We had to hand cap all the bottles on the first batch since the machine couldn’t get the seal tight enough. Mom and Dad sucked at this but I will say it is harder than it looks.
Thursday night jerry rigged a blanket over the ginormous window in my room so the sun doesn’t wake me up when it rises.

Friday - Off day @ Paso
Slept in til 9. WOOO! Made cookies without a mixer (couldn’t find one so I used a wooden spoon). The “old fashioned way” as my mom called it. Then Maddy (the dog) brought a dead bunny into the house. EEEK! I REALLY didn’t want to touch it but no one else was here so I double bagged my hand. Even with the bags I couldn’t bring myself to ACTUALLY touching it so I grabbed the newspaper and carefully slid him on. Successfully disposed of without my hand touching its body. Unfortunately, I then I had to wipe up the blood that dripped in the laundry room.

Enough of that talk.

It was QUITE the week and I am ready to move in on Monday and have a real closet instead of the back of a car.

Now that I am officially a Californian and no longer a full fledged Minnesotan I feel that I need to blog. Apparently everyone out here is blogging ( I'm sure that there are people other places blogging too), it is the IT thing to do; therefore, I am going to give it a wack. I intend to use this as a tool for my friends and family not in LA to follow my VERY exciting life (haha, I am already sounding LA snobby). Also, if I am able to stick with this (fingers crossed) it might one day become a very successful book, film or TV show...stranger things have happened.

My mom, golden retriever Maddy and I set out on the 1 day 3 hour journey (thank you google maps) from Edina Minnesota to Los Angeles California. The drive wasn't too bad we had two books on tape to entertain us( The Glass Castle and In Sunburned Coutnry). Maddy was a pretty good traveler but would signal that it was time to get out of the car by crawling into the front seat and sitting on Mom's lap (this happened multiple times). Throughout the drive we were calling and emailing numerous people about craigslist housing ads. After searching high and low, West Hollywood to Pasadena, I found a nice place in Burbank. I will be renting a room with a bathroom from a 30 something Philipino man named Rico, and his 77 year old father with bad health lives there too. It sounds interesting but I promise it is way better than it sounds. I move in Memorial Day! Finally a place to put all of my shit. I am currently couch surfing and living out of my mom's Acura MDX - NOT FUN!