Day 35: Los Angeles, CA and the Malibu Colony

Day 35: July 4th, Los Angeles, CA and the Malibu Colony. The day began at the Benjamin house where James showed off his Lemonade stand. A true entrepreneur, he would operate his stand in front of the house, serving fresh squeezed lemonade to passers by. This would fund his addiction to Legos. He was very proud of the fact that he was able to buy certain Lego specialties using his own money, earned at the Lemonade stand. I think that this provides him an excellent connection between work and reward and should be encouraged among today's youth. James is extremely creative with Legos and he not only builds the prepackaged designs but comes up with his own designs which are very functional, symmetrical, and innovative. I think his dream job would be to build Lego monstrosities at LegoLand.

For breakfast, I managed to meet up with a good friend from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). We went to school together, were roommates for a time, and were active amateur radio operators. Greg and I also engaged in an adventure or two. On one trip, we took my 1990 Volkswagon Golf and drove from NY to West Virginia for spring break. We were counting on warmer weather, but that wasn't quite south enough I guess. We camped out, rode our mountain bikes, and operated ham radio from the car and campsite. I remember knocking on a farmer's door asking permission to camp on his property. We woke up to snow on our tent, a rude awakening for college students seeking a real spring break. In another interesting episode, we traveled to the Shawangunk preserve, a rock climbing paradise near New Paltz, NY. Greg taught me how to climb there, and we stayed at his dad's cabin in the woods. Once again, we brought a shortwave ham radio rig along to make some contacts, but unfortunately, we neither had a microphone nor morse code key. In true McGuyver form, we fashioned a morse code key out of two butter knives, tapping the knives together to transmit. We made several contacts. One of our contacts sent us a QSL card, which confirms the communication. On it, he wrote "Thanks for the buttery QSO (contact)" in the notes section. Greg now works for the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena and designs Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) arrays. Yep, a rocket scientist.

Today, I would also be treated to a real Hollywood fourth of July. I was staying with friends Larry & Diana Benjamin, and Diana has a friend that owns an exclusive Malibu beach house. The house is located in the Malibu Colony, a strip of very private Malibu beach that features homes owned by stars such as Sting, Tom Hanks, Howie Mandell, Bill Murray, Linda Ronstadt, Jeff Bridges and many others. Oftentimes, you see these stars just strolling along the beach. Beach access is through private homes only, so it is a very exclusive spot. While I'm not one that necessarily becomes star struck, it was very entertaining to share the beach with the colony residents. I witnessed beach parties, the likes of which I had never seen before. Jim Carey threw a huge beach party bash, but I never did see the man himself.

Larry, Diana, James, and I pulled up to the Colony and found a parking spot a block or so away from the party we were attending. As we walked along the row of beach houses, I noted that the portion that faced the street were rather unassuming. In fact, some of them were just small ante-houses in which the larger beach house was further inside. The other interesting detail I noticed was that many of the homes had private valet services parking cars for party goers. It was difficult not to miss the Valet Girls (obviously a play on Valley Girls), an all-girl valet service that was servicing one of the homes. The reason for valet parking is that there is limited parking along the road, and I'm sure many of these party-goers are used to the royal treatment. Luckily, we came early enough to find a spot for ourselves.

Our hosts owned a lovely Malibu beach house situated a few doors down from Sting's house (which rents out at $25,000 / month) and the house that hosted Jim Carey and Jenny McCarthy's fourth of July party. There was a large turnout at our beach house to witness the fourth of July festivities. I met a diverse mixture of people that included a recording artist and a scientist who manages an instrument aboard one of the Mars Rovers! Of course, I was more impressed with the scientist and marveled "How cool is that, you work on a different planet!" He expressed interest in my little trip around the country and thought that was impressive, but it is hard to top a title like "AstroGeologist"!! There was a lot of food and drink to be had and many people to meet.

Larry and Diana weren't sure how I would interact with this diverse group of people, but their questions were answered when they stumbled upon me surrounded by a crowd as I wowed them with magic tricks. I had them eating out of my hands, kids and adults alike. The most amazing photo I've seen of me presenting a card trick was taken by Larry. As the deck falls, the top card is supposed to be flipped over by the motion of air and should sit on top of the deck face up. Larry caught this perfectly as the card began turning mid-flight. After performing these tricks, one of the party-goers asked for the deck and performed a few amazing tricks of his own. We ended up becoming a tag-team magic show and drew quite a crowd. He taught me several of his tricks which ended up being some very subtle slights of hand that were advanced beyond what I was doing. Unfortunately, I couldn't master them in the short time he had to demonstrate them to me, and I don't remember them now.

A tradition for this particular party was to dig a huge pit and to present the challenge of trying to jump across the abyss. The pit is dug down deep enough to hit the water level, which ended up being about 7 feet. It took most of the afternoon to complete in shifts. Larry, Diana, and I each put some time in to shoveling out sand to complete the pit. Once the pit was complete, the vaulting competition began in earnest. A line was formed in which kids and adults both had a long running start and made their best attempt to leap across the crevasse. The pit was wide enough that nobody made it across, although some of the stronger jumpers came close, landing on the far edge. The smaller kids didn't have a chance, but they would jump and literally vanish into the pit below. It was a little bit unnerving, but the soft sand below provided adequate cushion. There was a long line of jumpers waiting to jump the "pit" until dark, some from the neighboring homes. There was an overly-tattooed rock-star who jumped, but I have no idea who he was.

Next came the fashion show, another tradition. The girls put on their finest and strut along the beach. The paparazzi start shooting off photographs, wondering who these famous girls are. We shoot our own photographs and the girls are in their glory. There were all sorts of poses: girls holding their hats, girls whispering to each other, just the girls of Malibu beach. It was just like a scene from the TV show "The O.C.".

Larry and I walked the full length of the beach to marvel at some of the homes and the parties being hosted there. We discretely took some pictures, and I found it amusing when a little boy ran past us and said "No Pictures!" Clearly, he was the progeny of one of Malibu's famous denizens and was trained to run from the paparazzi. We had no idea who he was and didn't really care. We were easily able to identify Sting's house based on its southwestern adobe architecture. While we didn't run into any stars along the way, we marveled at some of the magnificent architecture built right along the beach. Also, some of the outdoor parties were obscenely opulent, featuring beachside seating on outdoor couches enclosed by flowing sheets. DJ's could be seen mixing dance tunes, waiters catering gourmet food right at the beach, and security guards were subtly keeping out the riff-raff. One of these parties was hosted by Jim Carey and Jenny McCarthy. Jenny was sporting her new black bathing suit, and Jim, ever the comedian, later emerged wearing her bathing suit, much to the amusement of the paparazzi. I almost built up the courage to start entertaining guests at Jim's party with card tricks, but it never happened.

As the sun set over Malibu beach, we lit a fire on the beach and awaited the fireworks. I had seen the fireworks barge move into position earlier. It was almost directly across from the house and not very far away. This was to be an impressive Hollywood show, with a beautiful full moon as a backdrop. I snapped this photograph of our fire and our host kneeling down in his red, white, and blue shirt. Moments later, a video camera recorded the same scene and it ended up being shown on CNN as part of a montage revealing the fourth of July festivities at the Malibu Colony. In that video, you can clearly see our fire and our host in his red white and blue shirt (Check out the scene beginning at 0:36).



Finally, the fireworks began and we experienced a spectacular show. The show was accented by the full moon which hung in the distance as an eerie backdrop. When the show ended, we packed our things and began to say our goodbyes. It was a long and enjoyable day, and I'm sure Larry and Diana's son James was exhausted from launching himself into the pit all day. We left the house and started our way towards the car. As we did so, we passed many of the homes on the road and could see that there was a flurry of activity by the valets. We passed the Jim Carey party house and a valet pulled up to the house shouting "Black Porsche .. Black Porsche" .. Since nobody spoke up, I said "Right here!" Unfortunately, they weren't buying it. What a delightful time with the Benjamin's and a truly unique LA experience.