Venice (CA)

Paul did a great reading tonight at Good Luck, a bar in Silverlake with a faux-Chinese feel -- lots of red lacquer and dragons on the ceiling. It's a wonderful place for listening to literary readings, unusually quiet, and the audience really takes the readings in.

So we've spent the weekend in L.A., at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the great meta-museum in Culver City; at the somewhat derelict Culver Hotel, with its handsome lobby and decrepit rooms (well, ours is anyway); on Abbot Kinney in Venice, watching the beautiful and beloved dogs being taken out for shopping and brunch; walking out on the Venice Pier on Washington Boulevard (see the photo above) and going to the terrific Small World Books; driving our rented bronze Prius -- leg room! the pleasure of environmental responsibility! -- down the light-washed canyon of Sunset Blvd at night through West Hollywood.

Around the corner from Good Luck is the Vista Theater, a fantastic art deco moviehouse, and below is a shapshot of the ticketbooth -- gilded, covered with heiroglyphics, like a sacred entrance to the temple of illusion. Lotuses are etched onto the glass of the doors on either side. Tonight they were showing The Wrestler.