It Was the Weekend that Was

Another lazy weekend.

On Friday, Amy was working late, so I headed over to Santa Monica's Unurban Coffee House to watch and listen to Open Mic Night. Friday nights at the Unurban are one of the best entertainment deals in town. For no cover charge (except a couple bucks for a drink or a brownie) you get to hear an eclectic night full of surprisingly talented performers. Within the space of a couple hours, I heard not only the stereotypical skinny blonde 20-something guitar strummers, but also 60-something blues artists, a string quartet of guitars and mandolins, a country-western singer who kept singing about her friends ("Oh yes, he was a friend of miiine . . . "), and two young women singing Japanese songs in perfect harmony.

On Saturday, after I missed the UCLA-USC game on TV (I couldn't stand to see my team creamed once again. Little did I know . . . .) we scored passes to an event at UCLA: "Marvel Then and Now," an onstage conversation between filmmaker/comics writer Kevin Smith, Marvel legend Stan Lee, and current Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, with cameos from BET head/comics writer Reggie Hudlen and X-Men movie producer Tom DeSanto. Smith was as scatological as always ("Only a bunch of f***in' comics nerds," he greeted us, "would come see this on the night of the biggest f***in' game of the year"); Stan was energetic, if a bit confused (unable to see in the spotlights, he would face Smith when Quesada was talking, and vice versa); and Quesada unfortunately found that his verbal talents could not match the others.

On Sunday, we drove up to Santa Maria to attend a holiday party held by friends. We stayed at the ravishingly beautiful Historic Santa Maria Inn. Unfortunately, the Inn's service was not the equivalent of its looks. We were awakened at around 1 a.m. by the sound of a key in the lock, followed by a loud pounding on the door. It turned out that was a security guard; according to the front desk, the staff had somehow listed the room they rented us as "empty." We woke up quite bleary-eyed that morning for our drive back to LA.