Saturday, August 05, 2006

HOLLYWOOD!!!!!!

So today was a VERY VERY VERY awesome and exciting day! We got to travel around the entire Hollywood area and the tour guide was an Emmy Award Winning writer. He’s worked on a lot of popular TV shows, most popular being “The Facts of Life”. The tour wasn’t your average tour because Columbia College rents out a bus and we all went as a small group with our awesome tourist.

When we started the tour today, we arrived at the Chinese Theatre. The theatre is fun because it is obviously a huge landmark for the Hollywood area. We got to see a lot of the famous stars on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame” and in the theatre lobby we saw handprints, footprints, and signatures of other famous people such as Shirley Temple, Whoppi Goldberg, R2D2 and Darth Vader, and many more!

Right next to the Chinese Theatre was the Kodak Theatre, which is the newest home to the Academy Awards. Ironically, the Kodak Theatre is across from the original hotel where the Academy Awards first started off when they premiered “back in the day”. There wasn’t much to see at the Kodak Theatre – it’s HUGE, but there’s not too much to actually look at when nothing is going on and there aren’t TV cameras everywhere. BUT, if you are observant, you can find stars floating around. I myself, found two today, and only ONE did I share with the rest of the group because I thought it was funny. Who were the two people, you ask? Here goes:


1. Johnny Depp. There was a guy that was walking around as Mr. Depp and he was impersonating what he looked like in Pirates of the Caribbean. As he was taking pictures and ripping off tourists, someone gets out of a nice black car and says “mind if I take a pic with you?” He took a picture with the impersonator, smiles at the ground, scribbles some autographs, and gets back in a car. Total time: less than 5 minutes.
2. Kobe Bryant. On the way back to Monclair, we were in the bus and I noticed a large group of people. I got out my camera and started watching what was going on. A BIG TALL DUDE flew out of this door with security all over. He started signing autographs and such, and I questioned our tour guide about who that was. He looked and we both discovered it was in fact Kobe Bryant.


Continuing on with our tour, we went to a famous park that is reserved for special rich people. We parked on the side of the road and walked up a long dirt path to the BAT CAVE where the original Batman movies were recorded. When we arrived, we noticed that the area was fenced off as a “HOT SET” from FOX Productions. Our tour guide was boggled because it had not been there a few weeks back. After he talked with security, he got permission for us to scope out the area and see all the neat stuff that was being set up for recording a FOX TV show that is returning for it’s second season called “BONES”. It was amazing and I got some cool pics.

From these hills and the location of the BATCAVE, we also got some of the best shots possible of the Hollywood sign. (Pictures coming soon)
As the tour continued, we had the opportunity to travel to Beverly Hills. Wow. There’s not much for poor little boys from Wisconsin. In Beverly Hills, “poor” is defined as anyone that does not accumulate a general profit of more than $5 million. The exciting parts of Beverly Hills were seeing some really nice cars, seeing the hotel from the movie “Pretty Woman”, and seeing the Post Office used in “90210”.

The most exciting part of the trip was this next exciting paragraph. We got the unique opportunity to see where one of the biggest and greatest Hollywood stars was born. We even had the opportunity to walk into the house so we could even say we’ve BEEN to the place where this very famous star was born and even worked for a few years of his life. Who was the star? Mickey Mouse. Disney’s original desk and office is seen a little ways away from Hollywood Blvd and is only known to most locals, but it’s definitely a cool site to see.

As the tour continued, we traveled to a grave yard known as “Hollywood Remembers”. (On the way, we passed the location where the girls for “America’s Next Top Model” and “Joe Millionaire” stayed.) This is a place where a lot of famous (mostly older, but some newer) stars in TV and film are buried. Some names include:

The (Bob) Barker Family
Carl Switzer (from “The Little Rascals”)*
Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, etc)
Some lady that died on the Titanic that had a nice chunk of change
Johnny Ramone
Hattie McDaniel (famous star from “Gone with the Wind”)
Hannah Chaplin (Charlie’s mommy)
The DeMiles – famous paramount directors (some of the originals)*

* means they were Masons (labeled on the tombstones)

To end our beautiful tour of Hollywood, we stopped at a store called Amoeba. This store is amazing. I spent $60 on 10 DVDs (one was the SURVIVOR: SEASON 7 box set that values at $50!). It was AMAZING and so much fun!

That’s about all for our here in Hollywood for today. It was obviously a big and busy day, and tomorrow we will be traveling to Universal Studios, which I’m really looking forward to.

Pictures and more video coming soon!!

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