LOS ANGELES- well, we are on our way home after an unbelievable 5 days. I’m doubling back to the beginning of our journey.
I worked Tuesday, went home to grab my bags and say goodbye to Tara and Tim, then met Pete, my All-Island Taxi driver to JFK.
Pete was awesome, got me to the airport is about 35 minutes, right in the heart of rush hour traffic. We had agreed to meet at the airport at 6 PM, but we were already getting updates that there were going to be delays. I walked back an forth between the gate and the security points a couple of times.
Karl (the Ace) Ludwig and Razor Ray McGarvey my two co-editors were also my travel partners for this journey. They actually did most of the planning, being that they had both been to Cali multiple times. They got to the airport a little before 7. It was still plenty of time.
The plane was supposed to take off at 7:50 PM, we did not take to the air till after 10 PM. We were going to going to be arriving in LA around the same time our families were going to be getting up for work/school.
The flight was OK. Ray got us seats with plenty of legroom, which was nice. As my habit on long flights, I watched a historical drama. 7 years ago on my way to Italy, I watched Chappaquiddick and The Post.
MOVIE REVIEW- September 5
This was a dramatic re-telling of how Roone Arledge, at the time the president of ABC Sports, and his team covered the Palestinian terror group Black September’s taking of 11 Israeli athletes as hostages on September 5, 1972.
The acting in the film was excellent. Peter Saersgaard (whose name I can never spell) played the legendary Arledge. The best acting came from John Magaro, who played Geoff Mason, the head of the control room for ABC. Ben Chaplin was Marvin Bader, the head of operations for ABC Sports. Leonie Benesch played the German interpreter, who was absolutely essential to the story. They were all fantastic.
Here is my issue with the film, and admittedly it’s a tad unfair.
I have read a bunch of books about the Munich Olympics, watched a boatload of documentaries about it, talked to people who were around when it happened. There was a ton of stuff they left out of this. I realize that you only have a certain amount of time to tell a complex story, but there were a couple things I wish they had expounded on.
I also got the feeling that they made Peter Jennings out to be an arrogant snob. I never got that feeling about him, the accolades he received upon his death were heartfelt. Jennings, prior to his becoming the anchor of ABC World News Tonight, was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. Arledge offered him the opportunity to come to Munich to do some less intense news stories surrounding the Games, almost like a working vacation for Jennings. Instead, as he would later say, he was as close to the Middle East conflict in Munch as he was when he was reporting from the actual Middle East.
But they never mentioned that in the film.
Here’s how I will rate it.. I recommended it to Ray, and he fell asleep 5 minutes into it. I managed to make it all the way through. It somewhere between those two extremes.
We landed at LAX around 1:30 AM PDT. We got our bags, picked up our rental car, and headed to beautiful downtown Burbank. Even though my body was telling me it was 4 AM, and I hadn’t slept a wink on the plane, I was wide awake driving through the streets of Los Angeles. I was somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, and it was really exciting.
We got a couple hours of sleep, then we headed out for breakfast.
This was the epitome of the greasy spoon. But they made a damn good omelette.
Then we headed over to Universal City to visit a couple guys Ace works with at NBC. They showed us around the grounds and we got to see some cool stuff. We had to sign an NDA, so I can’t post any pictures.
We headed to Griffith Park so I could get to see the Hollywood sign. It’s one of things, it’s not super impressive when you see it, but I knew it was something I wanted to see at least once in my life.
We checked out the Griffith Obersatory while we were there. Pretty cool. It was tough parking there, so we had to do quite a bit of walking. Uphill too. I got plenty of exercise out here. Believe me.
We went back not the hotel to do what we really couldn’t wait to do: Head to Chavez Ravine for that night’s Padres-Dodgers game.
First we made a stop on Hollywood Boulevard to check out the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Where we parked wasn’t in what you would call the nice part of town. I was taking pictures while keeping my eyes and ears open. My nose was also open which was unfortunate because it smelled nasty there. Really foul, like a subway station.
But I did get some cool pics..
Dodger Stadium is huge. TV does not do it justice. It’s also very loud the fans there are really into it. It’s true that the fans leave after the seventh thing there’s no doubt about it but the ones who stay they are allowed and they are passionate.
And they miss the hell of a finish.
The Dodgers were winning 3-1 going into the top of the ninth. The Padres scored twice to tie it up. With one out in the bottom of the 9th, Will Smith, pinch hitting for Enrique Hernandez, drove a pitch deep to left field that went just foul. The very next pitch, he went the other way and this time it went over the right center field fence for a walk off home run.
Cue Randy Newman..
Now here's the crazy thing... For 8 1/3 innings we were rooting for the Padres. yes, I was wearing a Dodger hat, and a road gray vintage Dodger jersey (Mike Piazza). But jeez after last October, how could I root for those guys?
But there we were celebrating like we were native So Cals. What can I tell you, the atmosphere, the music, the really nice dude behind us who was over the moon (who we all high-fived) I gotta tell ya, I'm glad we got to see that.
We’ll have more when we get back.
From Los Angeles
Wild Bill
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