Bruce Willis – IAMNOTASTALKER

August 12, 2016April 30, 2017

The Blind Donkey from “Revenge”

I stalk so many places, typically in quick succession, that oftentimes a few get lost in the shuffle. Such was the case with The Blind Donkey, an Old Town Pasadena whiskey bar that I visited back in April, shortly before the Grim Cheaper and I headed off to New York, and then promptly forgot about until this morning when I was going through my many stalking photographs. The site made an appearance during Season 4 of fave show Revenge. I still have yet to watch the fourth and final season of the ABC series (I really need to get on that), but had scanned through the episode titled “Repercussions” to make screen captures for my January post about The L.A. Hotel Downtown. While doing so, I spotted The Blind Donkey in a scene and, though I had never actually set foot in the watering hole at the time, recognized it immediately.

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The spot that now houses The Blind Donkey has been the site of countless eateries over the years. I never dined at any of them when I lived in Pasadena, but I did walk and drive by the space on a fairly regular basis when shopping in Old Town. I even caught a movie being filmed on the premises once, so the place is quite memorable to me. More on that later, though.

The Blind Donkey opened its doors on November 7th, 2012 (my mom’s birthday!). Prior to that time, the space housed Café Atlantic, then Brenart Café Restaurant Gallery, then Brenart Restaurant & Wine Bar (similar name to its predecessor, but a different owner), then Dish Bistro & Bar. Like I said, it has been through a large succession of tenants in a short period of time. It looks like The Blind Donkey is here to stay, though.

Though the establishment boasts several backers, including Ryan Sweeney (the restaurateur behind The Surly Goat, Der Wolfskopf, and Verdugo Bar), The Blind Donkey was actually the brainchild of Pasadena native/whiskey aficionado John Bower.

The watering hole is known for its large stock of whiskey (over 65 varieties), French fry offerings (The Blind Donkey takes its fries very seriously – there are ten variations on the menu), and hearty fare. I opted for the Veggie Burger, which came with cheddar cheese, jalapeno ranch (I was a little skeptical about the dressing as I am not a fan of spicy foods, but it turned out to be uh-ma-zing!), sautéed mushrooms and onions, and a homemade pickle. The bartender who served me could not have been nicer and everything I sampled was fabulous, so it should not have come as a surprise when the space loaded up almost to capacity shortly after I arrived. Lucky for me, I showed up to grab lunch right when the restaurant opened at 1 p.m. on a Sunday and had the place completely to myself (empty eateries make for better photographs), but within twenty minutes all of the bar seats and most of the tables had been filled.

In the “Repercussions” episode of Revenge, Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann) and Jack Porter (Nick Wechsler) discuss the return of David Clarke (James Tupper) over beers at The Blind Donkey. Though I had never actually been inside the space at the time, I recognized enough of what was shown outside of the windows to know where filming had taken place.

I fell in love with the bar’s exposed brick walls and industrial décor on sight and immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list. I am happy to report that The Blind Donkey is just as striking in person.

Back when the space housed Brenart Café Restaurant Gallery, it made an appearance in the 2007 action film Live Free or Die Hard.

It is through the restaurant’s side window that John McClane (Bruce Willis) and Matthew Farrell (Justin Long) watch fake news footage of the United States Capital Building being destroyed. In the scene, John and Matthew are standing in Kendall Alley, which runs along the west side of the eatery.

The window that John and Matthew looked through is still intact and is denoted with pink arrows in the images below.

I actually saw the Live Free or Die Hard scene being filmed very briefly. In late November 2006, I was driving out of the One Colorado parking garage, located just across the street from Brenart Café Restaurant Gallery, and while paying at the ticket booth, looked up and was shocked to see a battered and bloodied Bruce Willis standing in the alley right across from me! Because there were cars behind me and I was heading back to work (I was a personal assistant at the time), I could not stop to watch, unfortunately. But the image of Bruce standing mere feet away always stuck with me and brought a smile to my face every time I ventured past the Brenart space.

While scanning through Live Free or Die Hard to make screen captures for this post, I was floored to spot The Novel Café, from Little Black Book, make an appearance. I was less than floored when I discovered shortly thereafter that the coffee shop had since closed. I loved that place! A Groundwork Coffee Co. now inhabits the spot. I will definitely be checking it out the next time I am in town.

The exterior of The Blind Donkey is also seen briefly in the Season 11 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Target Rich.”

On a random side-note – while scanning through “Target Rich,” I was floored to see that a scene took place outside of my favorite store, Lula Mae, which is located at 100 North Fair Oaks Avenue!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Blind Donkey, from the “Repercussions” episode of Revenge, is located at 53 East Union Street in Pasadena. You can visit the watering hole’s official website here.

December 9, 2010December 8, 2010

La Quinta Resort & Club

Brace yourselves, my fellow stalkers, ‘cause today’s post is going to be a long one! As I mentioned yesterday, the Grim Cheaper and I spent this past weekend in Palm Springs and we came to do so thanks to an extremely serendipitous course of events. Last Wednesday night, I was curled up on my couch reading the December issue of fave publication Los Angeles Magazine when I came across an advertisement for La Quinta Resort & Club which stated that Frank Capra had written the screenplay for It’s A Wonderful Life while staying at the legendary hotel. In honor of the iconic movie, the resort was featuring an It’s a Wonderful Life-themed Christmas celebration each night throughout the month of December. I, of course, just about had a heart attack upon reading those words and immediately informed the GC that we would be making a trip out to the desert in the coming weeks. Well, not five minutes later, my mom called to inform me that she and my father were heading to Palm Springs for the weekend and that she had booked a room at . . . you guessed it – La Quinta Resort! Talk about the stars aligning! She asked if the GC and I would like to join them for the weekend and I started packing my bags pretty much right then and there. Smile

The resort, which was originally named Hotel La Quinta meaning “country retreat”, was first opened in 1926 by Walter H. Morgan, heir to the Morgan Oyster Company fortune. Morgan had moved from his native San Francisco to the Palm Springs area in 1921 after purchasing 1,400 acres of land in what was then known as “Happy Hollow”. He decided to use that land to build an intimate and exclusive hotel where his rich and famous friends could be pampered while escaping the hustle and bustle of the city. He enlisted Pasadena-area architect Gordon Kaufman, who is most famous for constructing the Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia and the L.A. Times Building in Downtown Los Angeles, to design the hotel, which was to be modeled after a Spanish hacienda. The retreat, which consisted of 20 individual casitas, a restaurant, a lobby, and a nine-hole golf course (the Coachella Valley’s first golf course, in fact!) was constructed at a cost of a whopping $150,000. The resort officially opened to the public in January of 1927 – although Morgan had hosted a select group of his friends there in December of the previous year – and became enormously popular over the next decade and a half, mostly due to word of mouth among Los Angeles’ elite, and counted such stars as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Robert Montgomery, and Erroll Flynn as its guests. World War II sadly took its toll on the hotel, though, thanks to gas rationing which prevented people from traveling long distances. In 1942, the property closed its doors at which point the US Army took over and the Army Tank and Army Air Corps Division made use of the premises. After the war ended, the resort was sold and once again became a popular getaway for the rich and famous, as it remains to this day. A private airstrip even had to built on the property to accommodate those guests traveling by air. In 1982, the City of La Quinta was incorporated, becoming one of only two cities on the West Coast to be named in honor of a hotel. The other? Beverly Hills, which became incorporated in 1914 and was named after the Pink Palace, aka the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Today, La Quinta Resort & Club, which is a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Collection of hotels, is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL retreat consisting of 796 different rooms and suites, most of which are individual single-story dwellings or “casitas” situated around sprawling courtyards and pools. And even though the resort is staggeringly HUGE – besides having 796 rooms, it also currently boasts 23 tennis courts, 4 restaurants, a 23,000-square foot spa, 41 pools, 53 Jacuzzis, and 5 golf courses – somehow the property has managed to maintain an intimate, small hotel-feel. Because the rooms are spread across a vast 45 acres of land, the grounds are extremely quiet and private. So private, in fact, that it almost felt as if my parents, the GC, and I were the only people on the property the entire weekend. So love it!

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Upon check-in, we were given a booklet which not only detailed the hotel’s legendary history, but also listed many of the luminaries who have stayed there over the years. It was at that moment that I knew that La Quinta was my kind of place! Smile Just a few of the stars who have vacationed there at one time or another include Drew Barrymore, Danny DeVito, Jim Belushi, Annette Bening, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Simon Cowell, Casey Kasem, Diane Keaton, Ben Kingsley, Ginger Rogers (who got married on the property in 1953), Harvey Keitel, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Ray Charles, Harry Connick Jr., Neil Diamond, Cyndi Lauper, Justin Timberlake, Al Pacino, Matthew Perry, Tom Hanks, Katherine Hepburn, Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Gregory Hines, Shirley Temple, Mark Wahlberg, and Bruce Willis. I could literally go on and on and on! Several presidents have also checked into the hotel over the years, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Calvin Coolidge. And numerous sports stars have also stayed there, including Andre Agassi, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Roger Clemens, Roger Federer, Wayne Gretzky, Ken Griffey Jr., Magic Johnson, Joe Montana, Bruce Jenner, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer. I was most excited to find out, though, that the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, had once visited the hotel!

Well, let me tell you, once I heard that MJ had vacationed there, I became ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with finding out exactly which room he had stayed in. So, I immediately sought out the resort’s concierge and ended up speaking with a woman who literally could NOT have been nicer. Truth be told, though, EVERYONE at the hotel was INCREDIBLY nice! Anyway, the concierge told me that she was fairly certain the hotel had a detailed list of what particular rooms various celebrities had stayed in over the years and that she would try to track it down for me. And track it down she did! And even though Michael Jackson was not named on the list, due to the fact that it hadn’t been updated in quite a few years, the concierge did some research and managed to find out exactly where he had stayed during his visit – Room 735, otherwise known as Hacienda Grande. YAY!

So, I, of course, immediately dragged my parents right on over to stalk it. According to the concierge, Hacienda Grande is the resort’s largest room and boasts its own living room with a fireplace, an entertainment center, a dining room, kitchen area, a separate master bedroom, a private pool, a private Jacuzzi, a carport, and a private walled patio. Oh, how I wish we could have seen the inside of it!

The concierge also told us that Britney Spears had stayed in Room 225 – El Presidente – while at the resort. El Presidente is the resort’s presidential suite and it consists of a one-bedroom casita AND a one-bedroom guest house, along with a parlor room, a dining room, a kitchen area, two bathrooms, a fireplace, and a private patio, pool, and spa. Actors Jerry Lewis and Cliff Robertson have also stayed in Room 225 in the past.

The concierge also told me that in each room where a celebrity has stayed, the hotel has put a replica of that celebrity’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame on display. How incredibly cool is that? (And yes, you can call up and ask to stay in the “Drew Barrymore” or “Mark Wahlberg” room, for example.) My mom happened to book Casita Number 936 for our stay and I just about died upon opening the front door and seeing the above-pictured star on the wall. As it turns out, Robert Wagner had once stayed in our room! SO INCREDIBLY COOL! Especially since my grandma had gifted me with his autobiography Pieces of my Heart: A Life last Christmas and I absolutely LOVED it.

Casita 936 was absolutely gorgeous and consisted of a king bed and a queen-sized sleeper sofa, a fireplace, a HUGE bathroom . . .

. . . and an absolutely ENOURMOUS private walled patio which boasted gorgeous pool and mountain views. I seriously did not want to leave!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Frank Capra wrote It’s A Wonderful Life while staying at the resort. The legendary director/screenwriter first came to La Quinta in the late 1920s while writing the screenplay for It Happened One Night. After the movie won a staggering five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay, Capra became superstitious, calling the hotel his “Shangri-La for script-writing”, and returned there to pen many of his subsequent screenplays, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, You Can’t Take It With You, and, of course, It’s A Wonderful Life. Frank, and his wife Lucille, always stayed in the same room while vacationing at the resort – Suite 136 in the San Anselmo Casita – and their room is now marked with both a memorial placard and a memorial bench. According to one of the staff members that I spoke with, the very typewriter that Frank used to write those famous scripts is still on display inside of the room! So incredibly cool! The staff member even offered to take me on a tour of Frank’s former casita and to show me the typewriter, but when he radioed to get a set of keys brought to him, was told it was occupied. Such a bummer!

As you can see in the above picture, the theme of the resort’s month-long winter celebration is apparent as soon as one sets foot on the property!

As you turn into the resort’s long, palm tree-lined driveway, you are immediately greeted with a large saying “You are now in Bedford Falls”, which looks EXACTLY like the sign that was featured in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. So incredibly cool!

The resort’s Plaza area is awash with Christmas decorations . . .

. . . which, thanks to thousands of Tivoli lights, only gets more spectacular at night!

The pathway leading to the Plaza is decorated with hundreds of candle-lit luminarias, as you can see in the above photograph.

And there is also a HUGE, 43-foot white fir tree flanking the front of the property.

Best of all, though, is the fact that the hotel projects It’s A Wonderful Life onto the wall of the Plaza’s Salon de Fiesta each evening!

Oh, and the front of the resort is also rigged to “snow” each night, which you can kind of see in the above photograph. SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

Legend has it that Irving Berlin also penned the song “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” while staying at the historic hotel and, as fate would have it, we happened to walk to into the lobby on Saturday night while some carolers were singing that very song. I cannot tell you how cool it was to be sitting in front of the resort’s roaring fireplace, hearing Berlin’s famous words being sung while looking out at the very landscape that inspired them!

I am fairly certain this goes without saying, but I honestly cannot recommend stalking La Quinta Resort & Club enough! It is a truly magical, truly unique place and I loved every minute of being there!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: La Quinta Resort & Club is located at 49-499 Eisenhower Drive in La Quinta. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. Frank Capra stayed in Room 136 in the San Anselmo Casita, Robert Wagner stayed in Room 936, Britney Spears stayed in Room 225 – El Presidente – and Michael Jackson stayed in Room 735 – Hacienda Grande.

June 22, 2010June 21, 2010

Casey’s Irish Pub

One location that I have been wanting to stalk for what seems like ages now is Casey’s Irish Pub (aka Casey’s Bar & Grill), a historic Downtown Los Angeles watering hole that has appeared in COUNTLESS movie and television productions throughout its more than thirty year history. I first found out about the bar over six months ago while doing some online research on locales featured in the first X-Files movie and the place has been high up on my “To Stalk” list ever since. But until this past weekend, I had yet to make it there. My delay in visiting the bar was not for lack of trying, though, believe me. For some reason, every time my fiancé and I found ourselves in the area, Casey’s Irish Pub was, unfortunately, closed. I’ve lost track of the amount of thwarted Casey’s stalking attempts that were actually made, but, trust me, the number is higher than you can count on one hand. Thankfully though, this past Saturday night, fate finally intervened and my fiancé and I found ourselves just a few blocks away from Casey’s during a time when the bar was actually open! YAY! And, even though I was in a fairly bad mood at the time – unfortunately, there is still some health drama going on with my dad and I also recently found out that one of my closest friends is ill, so it’s not exactly a happy time for me – we decided to stop in anyway. And I am SO glad that we did, because my spirits were lifted almost immediately upon walking through Casey’s beveled-glass doors.

The two-story building where Casey’s now resides was first constructed in 1916 and originally housed a general store on its street level and a Turkish bath on its basement-level. In 1924, the general store and bathhouse were closed and an upscale restaurant named B&M Cafeteria was opened in their place. The former general store space was transformed into B&M’s main dining room and the former Turkish bath location became the kitchen area. In the years following, the restaurant went through numerous changes of ownership and several different restaurant incarnations, until 1969, when it took on the name of Casey’s Irish Pub. Casey’s owners had the two-level property completely revamped, most notably moving the entire structure thirty feet back from the street in order to make room for an enclosed basement-level patio. After changing hands – but not its moniker – a few more times, in 2007 Casey’s was acquired by the nightlife development company 213 – the very same company that was also responsible for restoring the popular Cole’s Restaurant a few years back. (Once again I must apologize for the ultra-blurry photographs that appear in this post. I STILL cannot figure out how to use my new camera and I am growing seriously annoyed! UGH!)

Casey’s Irish Pub is absolutely HUGE (over 10,000 square feet!) and features a gorgeous mahogany bar, hand-pressed tin ceilings, a live-music stage, a dart room, a billiards room, and several private event areas, including the “Captain’s Quarters” (pictured above). Not only is the bar’s ambiance fabulous and unique, but the food is also INCREDIBLE, despite what the reviews on Yelp state. As I’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, I am an INCREDIBLY picky eater, especially when it comes to chicken, and I have to say that Casey’s serves up some of the best food in L.A. My fiancé and I especially loved their famous pub fries – which are an absolute must-have while dining at Casey’s – and their Cobb salad. The staff there could also NOT have been nicer and one of the bartenders even went so far as to take me on a little mini-tour of the place, which is how I got the above-pictured photographs of the Captain’s Quarters. 🙂 Love it!

The thing I was most excited about, though, was the fact that Casey’s not only serves champagne – and good champagne, at that – but they serve it in old-school champagne glasses, ala the kind Marilyn Monroe was always pictured drinking out of. So darn cool! I honestly can’t recommend stalking Casey’s enough!!!! I can pretty much guarantee its a place that stalkers and non-stalkers alike will appreciate!

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Walking through the doors of Casey’s Irish Pub is truly like stepping back in time and it is not very hard to see why filmmakers have returned there again and again over the years to capture the place’s unique ambiance on film. And, thanks to the bar’s definite New York vibe, it is most often portrayed as being in a city other than Los Angeles. In 2002’s Mr. Deeds, Casey’s stands in for the New York bar where Babe Bennett (aka Winona Ryder) went to drown her sorrows after being rejected by Longfellow Deeds (aka Adam Sandler).

In the first X-Files movie, Casey’s appeared as the Washington, D.C. bar where cutie Fox Mulder (aka David Duchovny) met Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil (aka Martin Landau) for the first time.

Ironically enough, though, for the scenes which supposedly took place outside of the bar, producers filmed at a different location entirely, yet they chose to use the actual Casey’s name on the exterior signage. Casey’s real-life exterior is pictured above and, as you can see, it is located below street-level and looks nothing like the exterior shown in The X-Files.

In 2006’s 16 Blocks, Casey’s stood in for the New York bar where Detective Jack Mosby (aka Bruce Willis) celebrated his birthday.

In Charlie Wilson’s War, Casey’s was featured as the Washington, D.C. watering hole where Congressman Charlie Wilson (aka Tom Hanks) took his lady friend Joanne Herring (aka Julia Roberts) for a drink before leaving on a trip to the Middle East.

In Good Night and Good Luck, Casey’s pops up as the New York bar where Edward R. Murrow (aka David Strathairn), Fred Friendly (aka George Clooney), and their co-workers wait to read the reviews of their just-aired See It Now television special about Senator Joseph McCarthy. Ironically enough, according to the movie’s DVD commentary, Casey’s was one of only two non-studio locations used in the filming of Good Night and Good Luck – the other being the Masonic Temple in Pasadena.

In 1998’s Fallen, Casey’s stands in for the Philadelphia bar where John Hobbes (aka Denzel Washington) met up with his cop friends Lou (aka James Gandolfini) and Jonesy (aka John Goodman) after the execution of a notorious serial killer.

In The Deep End of the Ocean, Casey’s stood in for the Chicago, Illinois restaurant where Detective Candy Bliss (aka Whoopi Goldberg) took Beth Cappadora (aka Michelle Pfeiffer) for a bite to eat a few weeks after Sam, Beth’s kidnapped son, was returned to her. Both the interior and the exterior of Casey’s were used in the flick.

Casey’s has also been featured in numerous episodes of the television series Mad Men, including the Season 1 episode titled “The Hobo Code”, where it stood in for P.J. Clarke’s, the famed, real life 125-year old watering hole located in Manhattan.

Casey’s also popped up in the Season 2 episode of Mad Men titled “For Those Who Think Young”, as the spot where Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) is shown eating a steak and eggs breakfast after learning from his doctor that he is not in the greatest of health. The bar was also apparently featured in an episode of CSI, although I am not sure of which particular episode.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Casey’s Irish Pub is located at 613 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant is open from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. each Monday through Wednesday, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. each Thursday through Saturday, and from 3 p.m. to 11 a.m. each Sunday. You can visit the official Casey’s website here.

December 18, 2009December 18, 2009

Nakatomi Plaza from “Die Hard”

Because we are currently knee deep in the middle of the Christmas Season – which just so happens to be my favorite season 🙂 – I decided to focus my next few blog posts on locations featured in holiday movies. And what better way to start off those Christmas posts than to blog about Nakatomi Plaza, the main building featured in the 1988 movie Die Hard. OK OK, so yes, it can be argued that Die Hard is not your traditional holiday flick, but because the entire movie takes place on the night of Christmas Eve and because Christmas music is played throughout, I deemed the production to be holiday-blog-worthy. 🙂 As surprising as it may sound, I had actually never seen Die Hard until just this past October, when my friend Robin came to visit and pretty much forced me to sit through the movie in its entirety. And, let me tell you, after it was over, I was just itching to stalk the Fox Plaza building in Century City, which stood in for Nakatomi Plaza in the flick. Fox Plaza, which measures 492 feet tall and houses a whopping 900,000 square feet of office space!!!, is the current headquarters for the 20th Century Fox film corporation. The Plaza was designed in 1987 by architects William L. Pereira, Scott Johnson, and Bill Fain. Pereira was also responsible for designing such landmarks as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim (LOVE IT!), and the Geisel Library – named after Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss – on the campus of UC San Diego, which just so happens to be my alma mater! 🙂 Geisel Library has actually been featured in several productions, including the movie Killer Tomatoes Strike Back, but I’ll save that information for a future post 🙂

Die Hard takes place, pretty much in its entirety, on location at Fox Plaza. For the movie, both the interiors and the exteriors of the building were used. I am fairly certain, though, that the interiors of the actual Nakatomi offices, where the holiday party scenes took place, were sets that were built on a studio soundstage on the 20th Century Fox lot.

Unfortunately, most areas of the building that were featured in Die Hard are not accessible to the public. In the second aerial image of Fox Plaza pictured above, the pink arrow depicts the entrance to the building that can be viewed from the street and from where I took the photographs featured in this post, while the purple arrow denotes where most of the filming of Die Hard took place. As you can see, they are on opposite sides of the property.

The areas of Fox Plaza used in Die Hard include the building’s porte-cochere,

the revolving front doors of the main entrance;

the front desk;

the elevator bay;

and the main lobby, which we were able to snap a few photographs of through the building’s front windows. While taking said photographs, my fiancé and I were confronted by a VERY angry security guard who was obviously wearing his underpants too tight that day, because he literally came running after us to inform us, not so politely I might add, that if we did not vacate the premises immediately, we would be escorted off the property and our camera confiscated!!! I’ll never understand why people like that get so bent out of shape at us stalkers! If you’re going to put your building in a movie – in what is arguably the most famous action flick of all time, no less! – then you’ve gotta expect that people are going to want to stalk the place! It’s only natural. Geez! 😉

And, while the roof of Nakatomi Plaza was completely blown off at the end of Die Hard, that, of course, did not take place in real life. A scale model was used during the filming of the explosion scene and I am happy to report that the real Fox Plaza roof is one hundred percent intact. 😉

According to Wikipedia, the lobby of the Fox Plaza building was also used in the beginning elevator scene from the movie Speed, but that information is actually incorrect. After recently re-watching Speed, it is clear that both the interior and exterior of the Gas Company Building in Downtown Los Angeles were used for that scene. If you compare the above pictured screen captures to these photographs of the Gas Company Building, you can see that they are a perfect match. I must say that I was more than just slightly peeved to discover this erroneous information on Wikipedia, being that the encyclopedia website has apparently banned my blog from being cited as a source, deeming me “unreliable”! LOL So let me get this straight – I’m considered unreliable, but the douche bag who put up the Speed information is completely credible! Nice job, Wikipedia! Way to sift through your sources! 😉 Also according to Wikipedia (so who knows if this information is correct), Fox Plaza was featured in the 1994 movie Airheads and a cartoon rendering of it was shown in the Season 7 episode of Family Guy entitled “Fox-y Lady”. The building was also used as the law firm where Anthony LaPaglia worked in the television series Murder One. And, in real life, Ronald Reagan set up his main offices in the 34th floor penthouse of Fox Plaza following his presidency.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Fox Plaza, aka Nakatomi Plaza, is located at 2121 Avenue of the Stars in Century City. Please remember that Fox Plaza is private property, so if you decide to stalk this location, DO NOT trespass, or you will be escorted off the premises and your camera confiscated. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya! 🙂 The Gas Company Tower from the beginning of Speed is located at 555 West 5th Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

November 23, 2009December 16, 2009

My Coffee With Andre – Agassi, That Is!

A few years back, an email entitled “You Know You’re From Los Angeles When . . . “ which was comprised of a list of “Only in L.A.” scenarios circled the World Wide Web. My personal favorite item on the list was number 28 which stated, “The guy at 8:30 in the morning at Starbucks wearing the baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney actually IS George Clooney”. LOVE IT! Well, Thursday morning, I had my very own “Only in L.A.” moment at a local Starbucks, when I realized that the guy in front of me in line who looked like tennis superstar Andre Agassi actually WAS tennis superstar Andre Agassi. As it turns out, Andre was in town for a book signing at my fave bookstore, Vroman’s, and was grabbing a quick coffee beforehand. So, of course, for my blog’s sake, I just had to ask him to take a picture with me. I was a little nervous about doing so, though, as just a few weeks prior some friends and I happened to run into Bruce Willis while dining at the Jerry’s Deli on Beverly Boulevard. We had the good fortune of finishing our meal at pretty much the exact same time as Bruce and when we found ourselves in the valet line next to him while waiting for our cars, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind posing for a photograph with us, to which he replied “Doubtful.” Being that my question pretty much warranted either a yes or a no answer, I’m not even really sure what he meant by that, but needless to say I did not get my photo. 🙁 He did shake our hands, though, so I guess that’s something. So, when Andre Agassi said that he’d be happy to pose for a picture with me, I was absolutely elated! A man who I am guessing was his publicist took the above photograph of us – which is arguably the worst photo I’ve ever taken in my life LOL – and afterwards said “I think you’re going to like this one!” I laughed and replied, “Well, being that I’m not wearing any make-up right now, I’m not so sure”, to which Andre said, “Well, I’m not wearing make-up either, so we’re even!” LOL LOL LOL Three other women were in Starbucks at the time that all of this took place and, let me tell you, Andre’s presence caused us all to act like a bunch of giddy little school girls. I’m pretty sure the noise level inside Starbucks increased more than one decibel while the four of us fawned over him. My three new friends also asked for their pictures to be taken with Andre and he happily obliged. In fact, he was so incredibly friendly and gracious I almost couldn’t believe it. He even waited patiently while I tried to figure out how to use the camera on one of the girl’s iPhones. And, to top it all off, when I was on the way out the door a few minutes later, Andre looked up from his espresso and called out “Bye!” Sigh! What a nice guy! I am so going to have to check out his new book now!

Seeing Andre on Thursday got me thinking. Everyday I receive emails from readers seeking advice on how and where to spot celebrities in L.A. And, while I did write a post about celebrity hot spots earlier this year, I realized that the best advice I can give on seeing a famous person in Los Angeles is to just simply KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AT ALL TIMES. The truth is you just never know when or where you might spot a celeb. I’ve seen stars in such mundane spots as the grocery store, Target, Rite Aid, the mall, Joann’s Fabrics, and Michael’s Craft Store. And, of course, at Starbucks. Other celebs I’ve spotted at various Starbucks in the L.A. area include Sophia Loren, Bradley Whitford (on three different occasions!), Jane Kaczmarek, Britney Spears, Peter MacNicol, Maxine Bahns (from The Brothers McMullen), David Strathairn, Danielle Panabaker, Mark D. Espinoza (who played Andrea’s husband Jesse on the original 90210), Kevin Dunn, Jamie Lynn Spears, who was with her mother Lynn Spears, and Reese Witherspoon. Although to be fair, Reese wasn’t actually at a Starbucks when I spotted her. I saw her walking out of a yoga studio located directly next door to the Starbucks I happened to be walking into. But that still counts, don’t you think? 🙂 Being that I visit a Starbucks on average of three times a day, though, I guess my record of seeing celebs there isn’t actually all that good. LOL But my point is that when you’re in L.A. you just have to keep your eyes peeled at all times! And always, always have your camera with you! 🙂

As if to further drive this point home, while doing some shopping at Larchmont Village with my fiancé on Saturday afternoon, I happened to spot both Anthony John Denison, who plays Lieutenant Flynn on TNT’s The Closer, and Owain Yeoman, who plays Detective Wayne Rigsby on The Mentalist (pictured above), dining at restaurants across the street from each other. I, of course, noticed both actors immediately, but my fiancé walked RIGHT BY them completely oblivious. Honestly, I think they both could have come up and bitten him on the nose and he still wouldn’t have realized who they were! As I mentioned above, you just gotta keep your eyes open!

And let me just say here that I was completely struck by how much better looking Owain Yeoman is in person than he comes across onscreen, as was the case back in August when I saw him during a filming of The Mentalist. I mean, even my fiancé had to admit that the guy looked quite a bit different in person. 🙂 And even though Owain is one of my new celebrity crushes, because he was eating lunch when we spotted him, I didn’t want to bother him for a photograph. But, as luck would have it, when driving away from Larchmont Village, my fiancé happened to get stuck at a stop sign RIGHT IN FRONT of Owain’s table, so, I just had to snap a quick pic. 🙂 Owain definitely noticed me taking his photo and didn’t seem too happy about the situation, but being that he is oh so dreamy, I just couldn’t help myself. 🙂 Sigh!

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Starbucks where I ran into Andre Agassi is located at 408 East Colorado Blvd., in the Paseo Colorado Shopping Center, in Pasadena. Larchmont Village, where I spotted Owain Yeoman and Anthony John Denison, is a quaint little shopping district located on North Larchmont Blvd. in between Beverly Boulevard and West 1st Street. Anthony John Denison was eating at Louise’s Tratroria, which is located at 232 N. Larchmont Blvd. Owain was eating at Le Petite Greek, which is located at 127 N. Larchmont.