Universal Studios

So LA was an almost wholly a negative experience.  The only thing we could be bothered to do was The Universal Studios Tour.  I'm glad we did this.  We took a shuttle out to Universal City and wandered through the various areas designed to separate idiots from their cash.  And yes, I include me in this.  

It's very impressive.  You wander through the imposing Universal Studio gates, with their trademark globe circling behind you, and are instantly greeted by ROUSING MUSIC.  The sort of music that Superman flies to!  The sort of music that Indy kills Nazis to!  The sort of music that ET um - also flies to.  

It's terribly exiciting.  Or at least it is for the first 10 seconds and then the ROUSING MUSIC starts to sound vaguely silly as you STORM the local Burger shop and DEMAND a bottle of water before making your THRILLING escape into the checkout line.

I'm making it sound like I didn't like it.  This isn't true.  I love such silliness and was impressed and bewildered as we passed the huge "The Mummy Returns" props that they had on display.  And I'm sure you would all love it too, so long as you manage to avoid the extremely irritating street performers.  

God, what is it about street performers?  If you are a street performer and you are reading this, let me make something perfectly clear to you.  WE ALL HATE YOU.  WE WANT YOU TO STOP.  RIGHT THIS INSTANT.  

I’m not even going to start in on mimes, because we all know mimes are irritating.  I think they know it too, and have terrible childhoods or something that makes them want to inflict misery on the rest of us.  

Then there are those statue people who clog up pavements by posing on a bucket and not moving for three-quarters of an hour.  Why people stop and watch this is beyond me.  He’s NOT GOING TO MOVE and worse, YOU ARE ENCOURAGING HIM.

I want all readers of this paragraph to do something for me.  The next person you see posing on a bucket, push them off and steal their money.  If we all do this, then hopefully they will bugger off and not move in the privacy of their own homes or some f*cking thing.

But the irritating street performers were not about to spoil our day.  Caro and I wandered around, marvelling at the Western-style street, and stopping off to listen to a concert by some Blues Brothers impersonators.

Then we went on the Studio Tour, which consists of being put into little carts and being ferried around the various sets.  I always feel sorry for the people who are employed as guides.  It must be exhausting to have to be enthusiastic for a living, in jobs where you only get paid if you insert several exclamation marks into every sentence.  "I'm gonna take you to the HAUNTED set now - no-one DARES go in there but I think it'll be okay!!!  WUH-oh!!  What's that???!!!  Oh no!!!  This is REALLY scary, guys!!!  THIS has never happened before!!!!"

And so on.  Really.  Jesus, what a job.  Exclamation mark, exclamation mark.

On the tour we got to see the "Psycho" house which looked suprisingly little and homey when it's not in black and white, also "Delta House", The Munsters' homestead and various Western, European and Mexican villages.  (Interesting note:  Did you know that they used to build western streets while little doors for heroes to come out of so that they looked bigger and stronger than they were in real life?  IN ACTUAL FACT, John Wayne was only 4 inches high.)  So it was all very interesting and I had a few laughs, mostly at Caroline's expense as she was sitting by the edge of the trolley and got soaked by the parting of the Red Sea, then attacked by Jaws.

After all this excitement we wandered into the CineMagic experience, where you get to find out about special effects and I was distraught to discover that De Loreans can't really fly.  The presenters at this exhibit show you exactly how all the fakery is done by getting audience members to "star" in little movie segments.  There was an amusing Sound Effects Guy who was saying goodbye to his previous audience as we wandered in:

SOUND EFFECTS GUY: Okay!  You've been great!  My best audience ever!  I'm being TOTALLY INSINCERE there New Audience People!  It's YOU I love!!!


Amusing Sound Effects Guy picked Caro out of the audience to demonstrate some stuff ("Hey where ya from??  Really??  I'm from New Zealand too!!!  Nah!  Just foolin'!")   

On stage, she was given the task of being Eddie Murphy's farts in “The Nutty Professor 2”.  This is a job for which she was ideally qualified, and she certainly doesn’t require a wind machine if you catch my drift.