No Biz, Like Show Biz

Living in LA is surreal sometimes. Hollywood, in my mind, was always sort of disconnected from real life. Now, I live right down the street from it and the fake, plastic world overlaps with my real world. We go to school, church, the grocery store with people who work in the entertainment industry, like, names and productions you might actually recognize! It's still a little weird for me. It was funny, we have a gym on our complex and this guy is a trainer who's often there when we are. Mark asked me one day, "Do you think he's one of those struggling actor/personal trainer stereotypes?" Sure enough, next time we were in there, a Pizza Hut commercial comes on the TV and the trainer's like, "Hey! Look, it's me!" I couldn't stop myself from doing a cartoony double-take. He was on the tv and in front of me at the same time...too weird!





These yellow signs are everywhere around here. I noticed them when we moved up here, they were always the same size and color with a black arrow and text right side and upside down so the sign could be flipped either direction. They usually say something similarly obscure to this one ("Edgar" and "Wife4sale" are others I can remember off the top of my head). I wondered about them for several months, "Were they some new type of advertising? Why have I never seen this before? Finally, I pointed one out to Alicia, who grew up around here and she explained that they're directions to filming sites for the crew and cast. They have to be sort of obscure so random people aren't tipped off to exactly what's being filmed. Ah hah! It makes so much more sense now! It also explains why many mornings I hear voices shouting over loud speakers not too far away and sometimes random noises/crowds following the voices...they've been filming talkies in my neighborhood!

For this and so, so many reasons, this is a strange place we live in.