Easter in Hollywood

What a strange, strange place: on the street a block from where I stayed, there were regularly loads of transformers, batmans, jokers, Johnny Depps, and Elvis's walking around, waiting for people to pay to have their picture taken with them. And a guy painted gold who danced by jerking his jaw in different directions.

Honestly, I found the transformers utterly frightening. It's like stormtroopers--when you can't see anything human below the plastic, I want to run away.

I've really never been to any place like this. When I was walking to mass one evening, crowds were gathered in front of the Chinese Theater for the premier of GI Joe. There was a constant murmur of excitement in the crowd. And periodically an actor would arrive and get out in the middle of the street and the murmur would elevate to screams and photographs before returning to its idling level.

And, at Easter, there's also the oddness of the Catholic Church--the foot washing, the kissing of the cross, the statement that someone who died is not dead (not entirely unlike Elvis). (The kissing of the cross is still the most un-modern, un-American activity I engage in every year.)



I like the place where the movie stars left their hand-prints and footprints. (The actresses' footprints are sometimes the front of a shoe with a dot for the heel--see Rosalind Russell below.)









The weather was certainly Easter appropriate--it was full-fledged spring with flowering trees and flowers everywhere. Birds of paradise (bird of paradises?) are the flower of the city of Los Angeles.

This was actually downtown, not in Hollywood:

So was this:


 The rectangular pool to which this head is attached is supposed to be the spine, and the steps are the leaves of the book. I'm assuming that attaching this head to the pool is a play on the word, "spine."