Daily Iowan

July 8th, 2007

Want a cupcake? Apply for a grant.

Caution! A jaguar is on the loose in this blog!

Ah, pardon, that was just me and my untamed digital camera. Back in the cage, you two.

My past week in Los Angeles was bittersweet — Mom (a.k.a. “Gloria,” “The Gloria,” and “Lew Alcinder”) came to visit for five days of Scrabble, rented DVDs, tourist attractions, and awkward interactions with my totally antisocial roommate. That was all fabulous. However, I missed Jeopardy! at least once when she was here, and that’s like forgetting to take my pill. I toughed it out, twitched all that night, and had violent dreams of Alex Trebek announcing terrifying categories like “Reasons Louis Should Get a Nose Job” and “Ways Kylie Minogue Could be Assassinated.”

All for you, Mom.

The two of us traversed the friendly seven-lane roads of L.A. for places that could appease us both. Gloria’s into crosswords and church. I’m into Kathy Griffin and sin. The crossroads weren’t plentiful, but they were enough:

The Getty Museum

Commissioned for some gargantuan sum, the Getty is a giant, free museum located in the sky. You begin somewhere on Earth by Sepulveda Boulevard, but a tram transports you up a mountain and before long you’re walking from building to building, cloud to cloud. Kind of like in Super Mario Bros. 3 when you enter the spiral castle in World 5 and suddenly you’re in Cloud Land, flabbergasted — except without the raccoon suit. Stop me if my literary references are too complex for you.

Here’s the thing about museums: I plan my suicide in them. Not that there wasn’t fascinating material in the Getty — I learned a lot about Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a court painter for Louis XV, on an audio tour. But God, all that walking and reading. At least books sit still. All this s**t was spread out like a scavenger hunt where no one wins (except for the people who sold me that audio tour — I miss that five bucks).

But the place was gorgeous.

Garden after garden. Buildings and staircases that weaved over a beautiful stretch of hills. The most incredible view of California I’ve seen yet. A killer food court.

If you bring your mom to Los Angeles, go to the Getty. You won’t run into homeless people or hookers — and moms like that.

And now for smaller scale fun:

Pinkberry

If you’re a Perez Hilton fanatic, you know all about it. It’s an ultra-trendy and ultra-ubiquitous chain of L.A. ice cream (pardon me, non-ice cream) eateries with some sort of Korean origin. It looks like this:

The original flavor is lemony, pretty sweet, and if you ask me, just OK. Granted, I’m sure there’s a reason my associates call it “Crack-berry.” There was once a point when I thought Jimmy John’s was “just OK.” Yeah, that was long before I chose Turkey Tom as my confirmation name.

Speaking of which, did you know Jimmy John’s is only in the Midwest? What the hell? Moving on:

Sprinkles Cupcakes

Silly you, you wanted to spend that $3.50 on something other than a cupcake. Not today.

Apparently Sprinkles has made a number of appearances on the E! Playboy bunny show “The Girls Next Door,” which is where you usually get your culinary news. The cupcake joint, which had a line out the door when I was there, boasts different flavors everyday. The favorites seemed to be red velvet, vanilla, lemon, and dark chocolate. That’s astonishing to me, because, uh, I thought the ones I ate were disgusting, and I’m still flinging my pearls about it.

I lurrrrve cupcakes, so disappointment with Sprinkles seemed like an impossibility. But I was terribly let down. Like Blair Witch Project let down. Nearly Wedding Crashers terrible (all you Vince Vaughn fans can suck it, that epic piece of sexist s**t was unforgivable, and I judge you and your North Face bull***t for laughing at any of it).

…but let’s be friends.

How did Sprinkles screw up the perfect dessert? The million-dollar ingredient in a Sprinkles cupcake is, of all things, butter. Ugh, it grosses me out to even recall. The cupcakes were spongy, bland, and very heavy. God, as if I needed another reason to be bulimic. I advise you spend that exorbitant amount of money on something reasonable like Jamba Juice… or anything that doesn’t sit in your stomach like a log swathed in frosting.

Unfortunately that tidbit concludes our California foray for today. We will rendezvous again next week, likely with something clubbier. That’s right, get your fishnets on — if you weren’t wearing them anyway. And knowing you Iowan folk, you were wearing them right under the overalls.

Until we’re “goin’ back to Cali” again, xoxo,

LL Cool Louis

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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