Some of you might be aware that I am currently working two jobs now. In addition to Vans, I am now employed as a host at a Hawaiin-themed burger restaurant called Islands.
Having jobs over the last three years or so has prevented me from going to many exciting events and fun trips with friends, usually because I couldn't get the time off. The irony is, I was often prevented from doing such things because I didn't have enough money either. You'd think, if I'm so busy working, there should be cash left over for the fun stuff, right? But of course, life never works out in a simple, logical way.
Anyways, so this week, I was feeling particularly frustrated by my schedule, my lack of money, my lack of adventure and intrigue in life. Tuesday night one of my favorite bands, mewithoutYou, played in San Francisco (this is quite possibly their last tour), and where was I? Hosting "Kids Eat Free Tuesday" at Islands (trust me, it's as bad as it sounds. 50+ tables, all seated with at least two children? Tears and macaroni everywhere). So around 9 pm, when I got off work that night, knowing I wasn't scheduled again at either job until Friday night, I texted my good friend Alex, asking if he would be interested in spending a couple of days in Santa Cruz, CA, with me. He then informed that he'd actually been planning on making a trip to LA soon, to pick up a friend who couldn't afford the plane ticket home to the Sacramento area. I paused to think about this. Santa Cruz is about 4 hours away; LA is about 8 hours away. And Alex had to be back by Thursday night because he had somewhere to be Friday morning. But I decided, hey, it's an adventure, I feel like getting out of town, and this way, I don't have to pay for gas!
So at 9 am Wednesday morning, I embarked on a trip to LA. The drive down I-5 was, in and of itself, mostly uneventful (except for a brief moment where we were driving uphill, on empty, not knowing if there would be a gas station in two miles or twenty miles. Lucky for us it was closer to two, and we made it in the knick of time).
Now my friend Alex is actually a student at Pepperdine University in Malibu, and is just home for the summer. So he is very familiar with that area, and once we arrived in Malibu, he pointed out a few important "celeb" spots. There was Cher's house (he has seen her on multiple occasions shopping at the grocery store), as well as a park that Pierce Brosnan frequents regularly to play with his daughters, a Starbucks where he saw Ashton Kutcher up close and personal, and so on. I'm not particularly impressed by these celebrities, or most celebrities, and the fact that I was only experiencing them secondhand, from Alex's memory, made it all the less interesting.
Around dinner time, when discussing where to eat, he informed me that we were invited to eat at Glen Campbell's house. I'm only vaguely familiar with Glen Campbell, he is not a popular star among my generation, but regardless, he is a famous person, and how could it possibly be that I was invited to eat at a famous person's house?
Well, as it turns out, Glen Campbell's daughter recently graduated from Pepperdine University, and happens to be best friends with Alex's cousin, another Pepperdine alumni.
And so, I found myself in a gated community of mansions in Malibu, and then, Glen Campbell's driveway. I paused at this moment to ask Alex if it would be inappropriate for me to take a picture of his house; Alex didn't think it would be a big deal, but I felt a little strange about it, and so decided not to, so unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of this event.
Glen and his wife unfortunately were on the road, so I did not get to meet them (though Alex has hung out there before, and spent plenty of time chatting with him), but I did go inside the house (very big, very pretty, very expensive) and met his daughter. In the end, we only stayed about 20 minutes and didn't end up eating there, we chose rather to leave with Alex's cousin and eat at a restaurant.
So really, this is all the story of how I almost ate at the house of a famous person whose music I'm not familiar with while he wasn't even home.
But regardless, it sure beats what I would've been doing back home in Sac-town. Right?
September 2017
7 years ago
