Hoffman and I in the Banana Mobile, schmoozing on our cell phones.

The place we're staying in Redondo Beach is a dream. Right on the freaking beach. You hear the crashing waves as you sleep. You can look out the window and see people surfing. It's totally out of control.

After dropping our bags off, we set out for the festival. Say what you will about Hoffman, but he knows how to have a good time. He's brought a CD with Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." and blasts it as we take off up Catalina Ave. He sings loudly with the chorus, "I Love L.A.! I Love L.A.!" I try to join in with the occasional "we love it!" but I just don't rock out like Hoffman. Note to self: try to be more chill.

Okay, not the first time it's been said, but I'll repeat it: the streets in L.A. are nuts. Redondo Beach to Silver Lake, where the festival is, is like 6 miles as the crow flies. Total driving time: 2 hours. Much of that's my fault as the navigator, but in my defense, L.A. streets are unnavigable. The names change suddenly, streets stop then restart, merge unpredictably, diverge on a whim, have multiple names, and generally no logic. (Sample street sequence: 21st, 20th, 6th, 1st, 18th, 17th, 16th ...) Needless to say, we're late for registration ... Hoffman, at the wheel, is ready to strangle me because I can't intuit that even though Sunset Blvd and Sunset Drive are named differently, they're actually the same street. When we try to park, Hoffman accidentally turns into a private lot that requires a token to escape from. We have no token. I have to go into the adjacent building, a Vietnamese Pharmaceutical Dispensary, and buy a token for $2 to get us out of the parking lot. L.A. is nuts. (See Sidebar Rant #1 if you want to hear me go off even more on this topic. Hi, Mom.)

Sidebar Rant #1 I've hit upon the primary problem with L.A. and I can sum it up in one term: lack of nominal/numerical correspondence. Put another way, names and numbers don't line up. Examples: in my map guide (not the "Thomas Guide", though I think the phrase Hoffman and I heard most from Angelinos was, "Oh, I have the Thomas Guide"), the streets have exit numbers listed. On the actual exit signs, no numbers. Before I realized this, I looked at the map and told Hoffman we were getting off at "exit 4A". Nope, no numbers on the exits. So when suddenly the Hollywood Blvd. exit appeared, we had to scramble. Freeway numbers and names don't correspond either. We were given a route by an Angelino that involved taking "the 105". Great, but there are no signs for the 105 going North on Sepulveda. The signs say "Imperial Highway" which is, apparently, a.k.a. 105. Then I thought I had everything figured out and directed Hoffman to "the 10". Bad call. The 10, depending on where you get on, is either the San Bernardino Freeway or the Santa Monica Freeway. What the fuck? I finally realized that this was a bizarre and horrifying pattern when we went to the movies. Our ticket said "Theatre 8", but when we went to actually locate theatre 8 ... yup, no numbers on the theatres. You have to go by movie name which, in these days of one movie on multiple screens can lead to a lot of confusion. I totally understand the reason for this, though. L.A. is a clubby town. You have to know. The streets, missing correspondences, etc., are all to separate the insiders from the outsiders. The insiders will recognize Santa Monica Blvd. going down Ocean Avenue even though there's no street sign. The rest of us will miss the turn and thus demonstrate to the others that we're from somewhere else. They might as well have just slapped a yellow Star of David on our shirts at the airport and sent us on our way.

Tonight's screening is a new film by the guy who made Irma Vep. It's called Demonlover, stars the lovely Connie Neilsen, Chloe Sevigny, Gina Gershon, and some French people, and is about, for a while, industrial espionage and Japanese porn. Then at about the 50 minute mark it goes totally apeshit and becomes confused, confusing, preposterous, stupid, and boring. I'm sitting between Hoffman and our lead actress Celia, who's also out for the festival, and at the end of each third act scene I can hear them muttering "please let it be over, please let it be over". But the movie refuses to end. Until finally, it does.

We hit the evening's party and schmooze like motherfuckers. Hand out lots of postcards, meet some of our fellow filmmakers, including the cool kids from My Life With Morrisey (with which we'll be sharing a DVD label in a few months). The critic from Film Threat magazine says he won't be able to make our screening, which is a bummer. We get tuckered out pretty quickly, still being on New York time, and we're on our way back to Redondo by 11pm.

When we arrive at the apartment, Eddie and Katie are already asleep. We would have to pretty much walk through their bedroom to get to the can, which we're loathe to do. So we head back across the street and piss on the open beach.

I love L.A.

Thursday, September 11th
In the morning, Hoffman wants to go swimming downstairs in the Pacific. As soon as we get to the beach, we can see flocks of dolphins frolicking in the surf not too far off the shore line. Fins, spouting, the whole deal ... those dolphins are really good at being dolphins.

The view from Redondo. Hoffman goes for an A.M. dip.

The day is spent doing touristy stuff. Hollywood Blvd., Mann's Chinese Theatre, the Walk of Fame. There's actually a spot on the Walk of Fame where you can put one foot on Judy Garland and one foot on Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hooray for Hollywood! Check out these photos of us with our favorite celebrities:

We head to the theatre for an Indian picture called "The Truth". There, I try to impress Anisha, a charming young Indian-American filmmaker and recent AFI grad, with my knowledge of Bollywood. I think she's more bemused than impressed, but whatever ... I'm still proud of my spot-on pronunciation of Amitabh Bachchan, and I at least know the name Rajesh Kapoor, even if I blank on his filmography. Anyway, the movie is mixed -- good drama, but a little too long and dark for my tastes.

Then comes the preview screening of Cabin Fever. The writer/director Eli Roth is an old buddy of mine and Hoffman's from film school. Well, okay, mostly Hoffman's. But I knew him. We're hoping he's going to be there so we can catch up on old times and congratulate him on his recent success, but he doesn't show for the screening. Ah, well, at least we get to see the flick ... it's a real piece of work -- a grim and sometimes gleeful collection of ghoulish moments that could easily appeal to certain college-age kids in search of a yell.

The Cabin Fever producer -- another old Hoffman acquaintance -- is there, and is also curating a series of Bollywood flicks. Hoffman schmoozes him up and slips in a pitch for the Bollywood-style comedy we're working on. Dude's into reading it. He's got serious ins with the Bollywood crowd, so that can't possibly be a bad thing.

At the party, I meet a vivacious writer by the name of Tatyana who's got an in with some guy at Comedy Central. She calls him and I end up shouting a drunken pitch for an Ultrachrist! TV series into her cell. When he shouts back, "Sounds great! Ultra ... what is it???" I know we have a deal.

We do a lot of drinking, and on the way I back have to ask Hoffman to pull over on Santa Monica Blvd. so I can take a leak. We're in the heart of Beverly Hills, right by the Beverly Hilton and under a Neighborhood Watch sign and I'm peeing against a tree in full view of traffic. I'm feeling real mellow, but I'm not sure this is L.A.-approved kind of mellow. But fuck it. Pissing in public in Beverly Hills is cool.

Friday, September 12th
Today it's Universal Studios! After selling a few internal organs to cover the theme park admission, Hoffman and I start with a haunted house based on The Mummy. Terri-freaking-fying. The Jurassic Park ride is a hoot. The Back to the Future ride is nauseating. The Terminator 2: 3-D show is hilarious. And on the studio tour we get attacked by both King Kong and the shark from Jaws. Nothing wrong with that.

Always working, Hoffman and I continue to schmooze while on the Jurassic Park ride.

But what really impresses me about the theme park is how consistent it is with the theme thing. You can eat at Snack to the Future or the "Frank 'n' Stein" (signage shows the monster holding a frank and a stein of beer). You park in Jurassic Parking. They actually have Jurassic Park foot massagers around. I used a Jurassic Park-themed bathroom and had a Jurassic Pee. It was pretty cool.

Then at midnight, Ultrachrist! screens. Turnout is good enough ... 'Course half the attendees are people we brought. But whatever. The audience loves it, as usual. From very amused to absolutely nuts for it. Same reaction we always get. So, no complaints, no surprises.

Saturday, September 13th
Wake up feeling like total shit. Spent the 10 hours before the screening last night consuming nothing but vodka, and my brain feels like a spiky cactus fruit knocking around in my skull. We go out to breakfast with our current hosts Matt and his lovely girlfriend. I only order toast and lemonade.

We meet up with a couple of buddies for a screening of Once Upon a Time in Mexico. They're all mixed on the movie, but I enjoy it. The plot is bordering on indecipherable, but the action is fun. I wanted Mexican gunfights, and I got Mexican gunfights. And let's face it: Johnny Depp is God. (For more on my feelings about Depp, check out Sidebar Rant #2.)

Sidebar Rant #2 I'm a huge fucking Johnny Depp fan, and his character in Once Upon a Time in Mexico ("Sands") could be his most impressive creation. I'll boldly say that Sands is one of the ten greatest movie villains of all time. Maybe one of the top three -- ask me again when I've had five years to process it. Fuck, Depp is good. You've never seen a character like this. How does he do it ... create amazing and totally different characters in one movie after another? Maybe it's because I saw the movie with two gay men, but I think I'm developing a crush on him. Anyway, when someone programs a Johnny Depp film festival, I'm so totally there. Just don't make me watch Benny and Joon again.

But the movie is also freaking loud, and I'm so hungover, underfed and jet-lagged that I can barely string a noun and a verb together to make a coherent sentence [a deficiency that won't surprise readers of this diary -- Ed.]. One time I nod my head lightly and it feels like a cherry bomb exploded in my hypothalamus. Hoffman suggests we grab some sushi before the next screening and it's a brilliant fucking call. From the first sip of miso I start feeling better. I throw down tons of yummy fresh strip-mall sushi, some green tea, and I'm a new man.

Tonight John C. Reilly is accepting the "Spirit of Silver Lake" award. Jennifer Jason Lee gives a cute speech presenting the award, some pictures are taken, and we screen Hard Eight, which I've never seen. It's better than P.T. Anderson's later work (if Magnolia is Drama Porn, this is at worst a Drama Lapdance) but I still don't feel much for the characters. Whatever. Reilly is good, and he's who we're there to see.

At the screening, I run into the Film Threat critic -- the one who declined to attend our screening -- and he tells me he got mugged last night, right around the time of our show. Ultrachrist! works in mysterious ways, doesn't he?

The party afterwards takes us to two clubs and the house of Laura, a cool and kooky opera singer (they have opera in L.A. apparently -- live and learn). We limp back to Alex and Big Al's around 4:30am. That's 7:30am New York time -- when I'm usually waking up.

Sunday, September 14th
I open my eyes in the morning to discover I've slept snuggled up on the floor next to a gay man. My morning greeting is a nipple pinch. Not to dis our kind hosts, who were very cool, but the bathroom at Alex and Big Al's is kind of nasty. The shower is covered in mold and infested with ants. I watch them drowning in rivulets of water while I bathe. (Sidebar Rant #3 deals with the ant problem in L.A.)

Sidebar Rant #3 The cockroach thing in New York is common knowledge, though folks usually get it wrong. They think every apartment is infested with roaches, which is not the case at all. A roach infestation is uncommon in middle class housing, and most of us go through our life as New Yorkers seeing only the occasional roach. I've never heard anything about the ant problem in L.A., however, yet they're everywhere. I wasn't in one interior where I didn't see tiny red ants at some point. I saw them in our car. Hoffman at one point changed his pants on a sidewalk on Sunset (long story), and when he picked his shorts up from the pavement -- where they had sat for maybe 40 seconds -- they were crawling with red ants. It was nasty. L.A., please oh please do something about those ubiquitous red ants! Recalling Grey Davis will be a good start, but maybe also spraying or something ...

Today a couple of Hoffman's buddies are taking us "up the coast". I'm very excited after I examine a map, because north along the coast are cool places I've heard of like Malibu and Santa Barbara. That means bikini babes on rollerskates and more bikini babes on rollerskates! As we all pile into the convertible, the guys assure us that they've got a helluva a day planned.

Oy. We do stop in Santa Barbara. Briefly. This is for the "best Mexican food in California". (Sidebar Rant #4 is about the "best restaurant in ..." phenomenon.) It's good indeed, but somehow we get to the restaurant without seeing any beach. We take off from the restaurant, driving deeper and deeper inland as my Bart/Lisa-esque litany -- "are we near the bikini babes yet? Are we near the bikini babes yet?" -- grows increasing desperate.

Finally we arrive at our destination. Solvang. A quaint, Danish-style village. I swear to God. We browse cheese shops. We look at windmills. We buy some fudge. It's the sort of place I'd take my grandmother.

Solvang oozes quaintness like a hemorhaggic fever. And no, there are no girls in bikinis just outside this frame.

Getting back in the car to leave, we realize we're going to be late for our screening. Our guides comment, "I guess we should have skipped Santa Barbara." One says ruefully, "if we had more time, we really wanted to take you to this emu farm nearby. You can feed them right out of your hand!" I don't say a thing. As we depart Solvang, seeing our last windmill, our hosts chant: "Solvang! Solvang! Solvang!"

This is my first trip to L.A., and I have yet to see a single bikini babe on rollerskates.

Sidebar Rant #4 I don't really subscribe to this whole "best whatever food in wherever" thing. "It's the best oatmeal in Amarillo, Texas!" That's great, but ... I've had good oatmeal before, I'll have good oatmeal again before I die ... How much effort do I need to go to to have the "best"? An Aunt and Uncle whom I love dearly once invited me to lunch on First Avenue in NYC because someone told them it was "the best diner in New York City". They were staying on Fifth Ave. I lived, at the time, on Tenth. That's a long fucking way to walk, and frankly, the diner was, well ... pretty okay. But there are a million fucking diners, a million places to get Mexican, a million places to eat oatmeal. I'm totally down with tasting the "best", but if the "best" is across the street, and pretty good is right in front of me, pretty good will probably get the job done. But hey, that's just me.

Anyway, tonight is a couple of screenings. We catch a flick called This Girl's Life, about an Internet porn star. James Woods plays her dad, who has Parkinson's. I like it, because of all the nudity and sex and because I find the performances and direction pleasingly raw. Hoffman hates it for its unbelievable characters and some tone-deaf dialogue and situations. I didn't fault him, but ... hell, both Cheyenne Silver and Sung Hi Lee are in it. There are lots of breasts. How bad could it be?

Afterwards, Hoffman goes to the midnight show of My Life With Morrisey and thinks it's terrific ("it starts out for the first 20 minutes like a typical indie, then turns into a totally insane John Waters pic"). I pass on the movie and do some more drinking and schmoozing down the street with Tatyana and a filmic jack-of-all-trades type by the name of Mark. He's a former computer game designer, so we share the common language of Nerd.

On the ride home I do a little math and realize that I've been consuming about 400 calories a day, not including the copious amounts of alcohol. I vow to have at least 2 actual meals tomorrow.

Monday, September 15th
Finally, the beach! We head for Venice. It's overcast and cold. We see a few pretty girls, but they're practically wearing sweaters. A dreadful disappointment. With no bikini babes on rollerskates around, Venice is just concrete, hotdog stands and beach bums. No one's even working out at Muscle Beach.

After that we start driving up the coast, actually on the coast this time. Up to Malibu where we gawk at the awesome houses and drive up an enormous mountain, getting lost on a couple of private roads. I guarantee we were in the driveways of some major movie stars, but I couldn't tell you who exactly. The mailbox outside Jack Nicholson's place probably doesn't say "Nicholson".

Hoffman in Malibu. That's me behind the camera.

Back home, we're too wiped to go out. No screenings, no parties. We put on the one DVD laying around that neither of us has seen: Michael Mann's Thief. Hoffman falls asleep 30 minutes in. Homeboy's been doing a lot of driving, for which I give him mad props. From his first tentative left turn on day two, he's now become the Master of the Merge, the Friar of the Freeway, the Homunculus of the Haggard Honk.

As James Caan blows shit up on screen, I watch Hoffman snoring away, back in a pacific Eastern land where if you need a bagel you just run downstairs to grab one, and only cabbies have to drive.

Tuesday, September 16th
I map out a route to the airport via freeway, estimating 1 hour driving time. We leave at 6:05am and arrive at the rental car return place at 7:05am. I'm the Nerd of Navigating!

As I write this, we're on the plane home. I'm looking forward to a hot shower, a sleep in my king-sized bed, and long stretch alone with my Internet porn collection.

I'd like to end by giving shouts out to all our L.A. friends old and new, particularly those who extended their hospitality and let us trash their place (or, in the case of places that were already trashed, crash on the floor). Let's hear it for Katie, Eddie, Matt, Anisha, Alex, Big Al, Juan, Christian, Adam, Ann, the Last Broadcast folks, the Morrisey folks, Miss Mae, Laura, Tatyana ... You're righteous Angelinos all, and I have only love for you.

Keep on keepin' on, and next time you're in New York, I'll help find you a great deal on a hotel room.

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