I arrived in LA on the Tuesday afternoon before Spotfest III fortunate enough to be able to combine a bit of business with the weekend activities of the Spotfans. Tuesday night it was a meeting with a client. For those who may not know, in early April I finally decided enough was enough of the corporate world of doing nothing but sitting in my office for 8 hours a day and started my own business of corporate web design and site hosting. But I digress...

Wednesday I made my way over to Creative Light Entertainment to check out the newest digs of Scott, Troy, Rich and Brandy. After having been fortunate enough to have visited them in their other digs I must say that this is my favourite so far. It's upscale, nestled in a great office building at the edge of Beverly Hills. It was there I learned the secret plans of what hopefully will be spreading around Hollywood in the near future. Hint: remember this place?

Wednesday afternoon I met up with Vicki at the hotel and we went to meet some of the local fans; Harry Zink, Bishop^, and Jimbo for dinner at a restaurant on Melrose before going to see Matt Wagner's newest pre-Broadway engagement of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Jimbo was detained; he was going to be late and would meet us for dessert later, Harry (of course) was late as was Bishop^ by a little bit. While Vicki and I were chatting at the table waiting; I was people watching out on Melrose Ave and I noticed a familiar person walk by.

I had come several thousand miles, picked the restaurant myself so what were the chances of encountering someone who wasn't going to dinner? Pretty slim but nonetheless Alan Heitz (aka TheROAR) happened to walk by the restaurant on his way to grab a drink before his class at the Groundlings. We had a good chat and caught up on his latest commercial he had just filmed.

Thursday Another client meeting and then some site seeing around town then back to the hotel to wait for the fans to start arriving. Angel was the first to arrive mid afternoon and we made plans to go to lunch. So being the know it all of SoCal I decide we'll go to Jerry's Deli in Westwood for lunch.

I got lost. ME - Mr. LA Tourist - got lost. My pride took a severe beating.

I recovered quickly though and immediately thought of Steven Spielberg's Restaurant Dive at the Century City Plaza Mall.
It's funky; it's cool and they have great dipping sauces with French Fries as an appetizer.

Thursday Evening was spent waiting for my friend Mark to arrive (his plane was over 2 hours late).

Friday Donning my Julie McCoy hat early; Linda, Jim, Mark and I headed out to Hollywood to Mann's Chinese Theatre to do the Walk of Fame and cement footprints thing in the morning then a dash down Sunset Blvd to Pacific Coast Hwy and the Pacific Ocean. Then back to the hotel to get ready for the party.

THE PARTY Imagine a neighbourhood in the hills where the roads to get you there will give you whiplash because they are so twisting and turning. Imagine houses built on platforms jutting out from the sides of these hills held up by slanted toothpicks which dig back into the hillside. One other thing to imagine about this neighbourhood - this is Earthquake country. These people are not normal. This is Harry's neighbourhood - need I say more.

We were guided to the house by Ri's well placed signage.

Only Harry Zink could have a party at his house and post banners for Armegeddon (the movie) but I was just wondering if he was trying to tell me something. :-)

I'm sure you know who was at the party. The photo album has all of our best pictures so I won't bore you with a listing of attendees. I liked this party because it was casual. Yes, we had a couple more spotmates at last years party but this year we had time to chat, play pool with them and hang around without loud obnoxious music, without people from the bar sneaking in to try to grab a t-shirt or food, without the general hassles of having it in a commercial venue.

Here's just some of my favourite moments from the party: