We visited Los Angeles to see the wedding of Emily English and Phil Keith. Emily went to college with my wife Jen and came out to L.A. to explore an acting career a few years ago. She met and fell in love with Phil and there were were. We hadn't met Phil before this weekend, but Emily vouches for him so I'm sure he's cool.

Late Friday night, we arrived at the hotel and met up with Missy Mackey (now based out of San Francisco) and Heather Fry (flying in from Columbus, Ohio), two of Emily's bridesmaids and my wife's former roommates at Ohio Wesleyan. We stayed up talking later than we probably should have, but because of the time cahnge I had no problem getting up to meet some friends from college (Ashland University) out in Burbank for breakfast. Chris Nahumck and Jeremy Freeman moved out to Los Angeles after school and both plan on moving back East soon. Chris is going to get married in April, but I didn't get a chance to meet his bride-to-be.

Jen and I ate lunch at Jerry's Famous Deli in Westwood, an expensive but nice restaurant. Took us about twenty minutes to read through the menu. I don't think I've ever seen so many options. I guess if it's true that a lot of stars hang out there (well, at one of Jerry's Famous Delis anyway,

The view from Graystone mansion was incredible, though I would have picked a less smoggy backdrop of Los Angeles. What do you mean it wasn't a backdrop?

probably the one in Studio City), then it makes sense. Stars can be picky, right? I think I might be picky, too, if I could afford to be.

Jen had never heard of the "Black and White" I ordered, which is a bit surprising to me because I defer to her in all matters ice cream related. A Black and White is a vanilla milkshake poured into a cold glass lined with chocolate syrup on the inside. Yum. I think I've only had one once before in my life. "We can probably make these at home," Jen said. For the life of me it never occurred to me before.

Saturday afternoon, we met up with Fong Lee (another of Jen's former roommates; yeah, I'm like number seven, thank you very much), who flew in from Manhattan, and hung out at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Just five weeks earlier the three of us sat together on the docks at South Street Seaport in New York City when we were there for my Grandma's funeral. We'll have to make plans to meet up with Fong next month in some shopping district in Paris.

There was a guy standing in the middle of 3rd Street (which is blocked off to cars to allow for a safer shopping experience) with a jukebox under one arm and a microphone in the other hand. He sang along with the radio in the wrong key and with the wrong words. It was loud and obnoxious. If it was supposed to be funny, I hope they give that man a sitcom just so I can choose to not watch it. As it was, the best the crowds could do was clear the area around him.

Fong got some Apple slices in a cup, covered with caramel sauce. We got three forks and passed it around as we walked. She was ecstatic. Jen said, "You could make these at home, you know." Fong said, "Really? You really think we could?" I said, "Look in the produce section of your grocery store. I see the caramel sauce there a lot." Fong was dumbfounded. "Really? You really think we could make this at home?" I guess those things don't occur to her either.

A few hours later, I saw a Pacific sunset for the first time. We were at the end of Santa Monica Blvd. To our left was a pier with a ferris wheel that reminded me of the one in Speilberg's 1941. Probably supposed to be the same one. The sunset was a little disappointing. Don't have enough basis of comparison to know whether this was the infamous Los Angeles smog or if it was just cloudy Saturday night. But the effect was the same.

Emily's wedding and reception took place entirely outdoors on Sunday at Graystone Mansion in Beverly Hills--not to be confused with Grayskull, which was where He-Man, not Emily, drew his power. The musicians playing at the ceremony included a harp-player, which you see in movies, but rarely in real life. It was a nice touch.

I'm disappointed that a photo of the reception's keyboardist didn't turn out. He was forty to fifty years old, dressed in a styling suit, and had feathered blonde hair, dark sunglasses, and a tongue that kept exploring a life outside his mouth while he played. I kept thinking that if I ever write film scripts that I'll be pointing to a guy looking just like that and saying, "and this is my agent." If there's a stereotypical "L.A. Look" in my mind, here was its living manifiestation.

Emily's sister and maid of honor gave probably one of the best toasts I've ever heard in my life. She'd remembered--then found--a list Emily had made

My dear wife still doesn't want her photograph to appear online, so she took this photo of me with Fong, an old friend and my wife's former roommate. For those who don't recognize me on the left: I do on occasion dress up like a prettyboy for weddings and funerals. And the last time I got a haircut the lady didn't know what she was doing.

(when she was in grade school) of requirements for her future husband. The bride and groom danced to Sinatra. The food was buffet-style, but they cooked whatever you asked for while you waited. It was amazing. The whole thing was amazing. Very storybook-esque.

On Sunday afternoon, Heather, Missy, Fong, Jen, and I (we all roomed together this weekend) packed up and walked from the hotel to one of the many Starbucks within walking distance. These are women who went to Jen's school, not mine, but I've known them so long now that I don't miss many in-jokes or obscure references anymore. And enough time has passed that now I was involved in some of the old stories they/we talk about.

Just like Chris and Jeremy, everyone's talking about relocating soon or relatively soon (except for Jen and me; I guess we're immune because we just moved). We were all leaving Los Angeles at different times, and Jen and I were the first to need to go. Heather was catching a flight even later than ours, something like four o'clock in the morning local time. Like Jen, she's got classes this week and can't stay. Jen and I spent the night on the plane (she slept, I didn't--big surprise) and pulled into our apartment's parking lot at eight-thirty on Monday morning.

I'm not and have never been a quick study. And I don't know anything about traveling yet. So I can't spend a weekend in a city and claim to understand it. So my observations are mostly musings, and the probability is good that these won't make good generalizations. With that disclaimer, let me just say...

On famous places: Has a song been written about every darned street and shopping center in this town? Ventura Blvd. Santa Monica Blvd. Sunset Blvd. I think I've even heard the neverending Sepulveda mentioned in a song one time. For crying out loud, somebody bus some of these songwriters out of Los Angeles for a day-trip or something.

On the people: The customer service people in Los Angeles are very nice. I stopped at a Walgreen's on Saturday morning (right as they were opening) to buy a prepaid calling card. The clerk went out of her way to find an ad because if I bought a different card at the same price, I would get a second phone card with just as many minutes for free. The waiters and waitresses at restaurants were kind and courteous without exception. Chris says that it's because even service jobs are hard to come by. Everyone's really nice to your face because they fear losing their jobs. I haven't spent enough time in L.A. to be that cynical, but I can see how that's possible. FYI: Chris also said, yeah, there's not much to see in Los Angeles, which is what we used to say about Ashland, Ohio. I'm glad he'll be getting out of there if he's that disillusioned.

On the city's character: Jen, who has traveled much more than I have, says that whatever airport you're in takes on at least a little bit of the personality of the city you're in. In Texas, she says, there's the Mexican and Southwest themed restaurants and stores. In Los Angeles, there's the fake palm trees and you can't tell the difference between the juice bars and the normal bars, because everything is so colorful, open, and smoke-free. If her theory were just a little more encompassing, I would have liked to at least see what an oxygen bar looked like, but there wasn't one that I saw at LAX.

On vanity: While waiting for Fong at the hotel on Saturday, I looked through a weekly independent newspaper for info about Michael Moore's new movie. in Cleveland and here in North Carolina, the pages of weekly independents are littered with offers to increase the sizes of your naughty bits and to decrease the sizes of your everything else, with lasers and lypo. But these are small ads and always in the back. In the L.A. weekly independent I picked up (and I can't for the life of me remember the title of it--though the reviewer loved the new Adam Sandler film while hating Moore's documentary), these ads were in front and took up entire page-spreads. Was everybody beautiful in Beverly Hills? No, but then the non-beautiful people could have been tourists like us.

On the traffic: Not nearly as bad as advertised. Of course i was mostly on the roads in the evenings on a weekend, and Los Angeles freeways do seem to have fourteen lanes each way--but still: drive in New York City even as little as I have, and you'll brush off anything L.A. has to offer.

On celebrity: Chris says when people talk about what they do on the weekends, they talk in terms of what famous people they ran into ("I ate

To clarify: this is where He-Man draws his power, not where Emily got married.

two tables away from Gwynneth," for example; I told him I wasn't sure what they talked about in New York. Probably the food. That's what I would talk about if I lived there.). He says he'd like to start a division, going up to people on the street and asking, "Matt or Ben?" as if though Damon and Affleck had a fight and everyone must choose ye this day.

I'm told Ozzie Osbourne's house was within a mile or two of the Graystone mansion, and, though that's something I might have been interested in when I was in seventh or eighth grade (our garage band did a great rendition of "Crazy Train" that year), now hearing it seems kind of sad. Haven't seen his "reality" show, but I hear it sounds like a stacatto test of the Emergency Broadcast System with all the swearing. I don't know.

We drove by Saks Fifth Avenue (I believe it was Rodeo Drive) and someone pointed out that that was was where Wynona Ryder [allegedly] got caught shoplifting. That sort of thing just doesn't do anything for me.

One way I'll lend support to Chris's theory: while walking around the shops of Westwood, my wife and I wore sunglasses and walked, as we usually do, without glancing around frantically looking for celebrities. And I kept seeing out of the corner of my eye other people looking up at me hopefully (or maybe it was at my wife; yes, that would make more sense), and then looking away again, showing clear disappointment with what they saw .

Was that my imagination? Or did they think, just for a second, that we might be famous? It would make sense that celebrities aren't obsessed with other celebrities, but it would also make sense that most of these people could be tourists. But I think we can safe say if you want to look like you're important, don't be on the lookout for really important people.

Oh, but I'll add one more thing to that. When we were in "layover" (that's a new traveler's term I picked up this trip) in Atlanta, I needed to cross to the other side of a moderately crowded terminal hallway. As I took a step to cross the way, I heard a voice saying "Hold." I looked to my left and there was a short, bearded man in a gray suit and dark sunglasses. He was about fifteen feet away and sticking his arm out me with palm up, as if to tell me not to move. I stood still and watched him, with a silly, somewhat dumbfounded smile on his face.

He never actually looked at me. He just marched on by a few seconds later, pulling his jet-black "carry-on" (more traveler's lingo; do I sound like a seasoned man-of-the-world yet?) behind him. He kept his arm out in front of him until he was to me though. He must've been in a terrible hurry, though I don't think I would have been close to slowing him down if I'd have crossed when he said, "hold." I tracked him with my face until he passed, smiling stupidly the whole time. Thought about catching up and then walking in front of him real slow, but I'm not that much of a jerk. Even if he was someone obsessed with himself, he probably did have somewhere to be.

So the other side of that is that if you want to look important, don't actually think that you're important. That just makes you look silly.

Hope I get a chance to see L.A. again. Forty-nine hours on the ground are not enough time to see the sites (yes, Chris, I continue to believe there are some), and not nearly enough time to see the people we came to see.

by Alex Wilson. This is from an online journal/blog I kept from 1998-2009. Back to alexwilson.com.