The Bear's Progress
SkeptoBear's trip to James Randi's Amazing Meeting 2004
Day Four
Los Angeles tourism. It's not just Universal Studios.
Hollywood! Who could resist that combination of real glitz and tinsel, fake glitz and tinsel, sleaze, glamour, more sleaze, famous faces, people who look like famous faces, and façades of reality? A whole town based on illusion and making people believe things which are not so. The attraction to a group of skeptics was obvious. So it was that after shaking out of their heads the cobwebs left behind by a night of magic, Kentucky distilled beverage and chardonnay (plus 9/10 of a jeroboam of Krug), the team set off for breakfast somewhere along Hollywood Boulevard. And what sights they saw! Genuine LAPD officers in a side street shaking down some stereotypical gang members, complete with 'do rags on heads, with one up against the wall assuming the position while a policeman used a nightstick on the insides of his knees to encourage him to 
put his feet further apart. Groups of tourists wearing headphones so that they could hear their guides tell them that the star with "Marylyn Monroe" on it was there to commemorate an actress named Marylyn Monroe in case they couldn't work it out for themselves. Spongebob, walking down the street attracting no attention at all. Workers setting up a red carpet and lights outside Grauman's Chinese Theater in case someone famous wanted to go to the movies at lunchtime.
One of The Bear's companions holds all sorts of coloured belts (including some black ones) in various martial arts (she is very handy to have around in a bar fight) and she was delighted to find a star belonging to Bruce Lee. SkeptoBear and the other traveller, who is a jazz musician of note (that note being an open A-string on the guitar), wanted to see the stars belonging to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Someone said that these were in the sleazy part of Hollywood Boulevard. As the current location was about as tidy as a red-light district the day after the fleet docked it was decided that anywhere where you had to go armed and wear gumboots could be struck off the itinerary.
After breakfast the real day's work began, which was a visit to the Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits. (SkeptoBear initially thought that the good folk of Los Angeles could not spell but he was soon convinced that "Brea" was correct.) One of The Bear's companions had made a special trip into the middle of Los Angeles some years before just to go to this museum and had found that it was closed on Mondays, Monday being the only day he could get there. As this day was also a Monday there was a certain amount of pessimism in the air, but like all good skeptics the group waited for the evidence to come in. Luckily, the people who run the place now open it on Mondays, so everyone was relieved.
This museum should be on everybody's must-see list when they visit Los Angeles. It houses about four million objects recovered from the tar pits in the surrounding park, although not all are on display, of course. These are not true fossils (which are bones replaced by mineralisation) but are actually the preserved bones of countless animals which have died in the pits over tens of thousands of years. One exhibit contains the skulls of dire wolves showing evolution of the species over a period of 40,000 years. Some people have claimed that it is not possible to detect evolution over such a short time frame, but the museum has about 4,000 complete dire wolf skeletons and dating of the specimens is accurate enough to show that characteristics did in fact change as conditions changed over time. One amazing find was that camels had once lived in the area, but they had become extinct long before anyone in Europe even knew the place existed.
When SkeptoBear sat on the floor at the Page Museum and looked at a diorama showing just that bit of evolution which had been found in the La Brea tar pits outside, he remembered that just two days before he had been on the veranda of the Museum of Creation and Earth History at the Institute for Creation Research. What was in front of him demonstrated that it would take a bear of even less than little brain to believe that all of this stuff had happened all at once and barely yesterday. Later he relaxed on a bristle-cone pine tree in the park outside and remembered that some of these trees have been dated as being older than some people say that the universe is. It was just as well that the Institute for Creation Research was closed when he went there or there might have been trouble and temper tantrums.
Here are some more pictures from inside the museum. Do not miss a visit if you are in the area.
 Sabre-toothed cats (not tigers!) |  A mammoth |
 More mammoths and camels |  A sloth |
After the museum it was time for shopping, so the group moved on to Rodeo Drive. They had the feeling that the budget might not stretch to actually buying anything, and when the man from Cartier came out into the street and made pointed remarks about people licking the windows of his shop they realised that it was time to go. Time for lunch, actually, and where better to buy lunch than the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, location for the film Pretty Woman and (according to the film) somewhere where you could bring your "niece". If "nieces" were welcome then surely a bear could get in. As an aside, the dress rules at the Beverly Wilshire are less stringent than at The Magic Castle.
The cost of the meal was actually reasonable, considering the price of a glass of the (magnificent) house chardonnay and the number of flunkeys who fussed over the lunching group. Lunch came to just less than the price of tickets into Universal Studios, but it was worth every cent to see The Episode of the Doggy Bag. Yes, folks, a lady at the next table asked if she could take the remainder of her meal home. The staff sprang into immediate action, packed the leftovers into cardboard boxes, brought the boxes back to the table on a silver tray, and presented the lady with hotel branded carry bags to take the boxes away. This is service. Only after lunch did the team discover that if you order Devonshire Tea in this fine establishment, not only do you get a wonderful display of pastries, scones and other baked things, but you get a real teapot with a real tea cosy on it. It was immediately resolved that all negotiations with film producers about the cinematic version of The Bear's Progress would be held over tea in this outstanding restaurant.
Lunch filled the afternoon because there was not enough time to do much more sight-seeing before catching the plane to Las Vegas. Actually, there was plenty of time until then, but when you have to allow two hours for airport security time can become short. Back to the hotel to collect the luggage (except for the charger for the Palm PDA - try to describe one of those to a Spanish-speaking housemaid when you ring from another city to see if anyone has found it), through the rush-hour traffic to give the car back to Hertz (leaving only one souvenir inside the car), through security (using only five plastic trays for the X-ray machine - computer, computer bag, carry-on bag, coat, plus one for wallet, money, phone and glasses), and finally onto the aircraft. At Las Vegas airport SkeptoBear became highly enthusiastic about the slot machines, but he was eventually convinced that there was no need to rush because Las Vegas has a large number of these machines. Almost as many as Sydney, in fact.
The real fun began when the group arrived at the hotel. To book at this hotel had required an email, another email when the first one received no response or confirmation, an international telephone call after the hotel emailed back to say that they don't take reservations by email, and a second international call to the organisers of Randi's conference to tell them that the hotel was hopeless and could they please try to get some confirmation of the bookings. They rang back and said that everything was settled. The one constant thing in all the attempted booking process was that two rooms would be required for six nights (The Bear could share - the lady and gentlemen who are both married but not to each other could not). The tired travellers arrived at about 11:00pm to be told that the bookings were as follows: one person for two nights who would then check out and come back for four nights, one lady (and Bear) for three nights, after which everyone would be in the one room. After much impassioned discussion it was agreed that nothing could be resolved by the night staff and everyone would have to wait until someone who knew what to do came to work the next day. Computerised room keys were issued, Amex card details and signatures were recorded, and everyone set off for their separate rooms. Did I mention that one traveller had to make the long trek back to reception carrying his bags between buildings because his card key would not open his room door?
At last, everyone was able to get to sleep. It had been a long and tiring day, and tomorrow promised no rest. Las Vegas! Fleshpots!
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