Living the movies

After my big day at Universal Studios I had an unexpected surprise back at the Hostel. There was a large black American girl my age staying there which surprised me because she was from Santa Monica. Apparently her housemate partied so hard and so late at night that she couldn't sleep, so apart from staying a few nights a week with her family, she often checked into the hostel for just a night of rest. She had told him (and I quote) "I didn't think white boys could party so hard !!!".

Her lifestyle seemed crazy, because although Natalie was a generous and gentle hearted woman, she had no trouble asserting herself at all on behalf of others (she is an Aust. size 22 at least and works with the homeless-oh the irony to be staying in a hostel). One conversation with her and I felt I was in the audience of Oprah. She called me "girl" a lot, told me that her oldest Southern relatives were unlikely to speak to me at all on account of my skin colour, Australian or not, and laughed richly, long and heavily when I showed her my pair of pink rubber beach thongs marked "Rivers soft thong".

After 20 mins of chatting quite happily in a stifling room, I invited her to come out for a drink, given it was such a mild evening. She said that she had all her share at once the week before but would come along to hear more about those "Manly" Surf Lifesavers "There's boyz on a beach called Manly? Heh heh heh". I have never seen such a large woman wear such little shoes and still balance well.

We ended up, weirdly enough at the English pub called The British Bulldog, decorated strangely full of pictures of bulldogs. It was a bit surreal seeing the last of the sunset glow of the Pacific ocean (in Australia the sun rises over the Pacific), being served at a bar in a British-themed pub by a tall American who writes commercials in his spare time.

In America and Canada if you take a seat at the bar a lot of the time other people will talk to you, with the bartender generally being the focal point of conversation, much like in the UK and Scotland. It was there that Natalie and I got chatting to Roman, a self-employed businessman who also made short films and took acting class in his spare time. We had the acting "stage vs screen" debate but I realised quickly that I had picked my battlefield badly if I thought I would win that one in Tinseltown.

Disneyland was put off until Friday and I took some time to check out Santa Monica and get better orientated. The Santa Monica pier is famous. It became more famous when Forrest Gump ran from one end of the country to the other, going through the archway sign and ending at the pier. There is a Ferris Wheel and Carnival Games there, as well as the "Bubba Gump Shrimp co." named after the movie. It was the first of many moments in LA where life imitated art rather than art imitating life, and where I truly had the feeling I'd stepped into a movie.

If my life was a movie, what kind of movie do you think it would be? Most of you have been following my travels long enough to have an opinion on this one.