First stop was the Grammy Museum at LA Live. I've been wanting to check it out for over a year, and was running out of time since the Michael Jackson exhibit will be closing soon and I wanted to see that. So, we handed over our $10 (thanks to the AAA discount ;) and spent a good 90 minutes wandering the three floors of the museum.
One of the coolest things is the "Crossroads" table, which is like being on Star Trek or in Minority Report, swiping images on a giant table to activate graphics and audio that tell you about just about ANY genre of music you could EVER imagine (seriously!).
From there, we went to the MJ exhibit, which had a lot of video of his Grammy moments, a light up floor like in the Billie Jean video, numerous sparkly jackets, gloves (but not THE glove), handwritten lyric sheets, and the suit he wore on the cover of Thriller -- he was even super-skinny then, which is really frightening considering how much tinier he seemed before he died. Anyhoo, it was cool to see, but I kinda expected there to be more to it.
As we finished checking out the main exhibit on the 4th floor, we found this bit of awesomeness -- the Songwriters Hall of Fame listing -- near the stairs leading down to the 3rd floor:
...What makes this more awesome (or odd) is that they felt the need to tell people that David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills were in Crosby, Stills and Nash (duh!), but didn't feel the need to ID Jon or Richie? (Or whoever Galt Mac Dermont is? Okay...)
Other cool things in the museum: "The Dress" J-Lo wore to the Grammys in 2000; a guitar smashed by Kurt Cobain; the carbon-fiber, temperature-resistant cello Yo Yo Ma played at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics; a thank you note from Elvis' real estate agent; and handwritten letters and lyrics from Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin ... Oh, and a telegram from Mick Jagger explaining to NARAS why he couldn't be a presenter on one of the mid-'70s awards shows because of the Stones' Australian tour and the possibility of airline delays. LOL!
Our one appointment of the day was at 5pm at Staples Center. I had to go "select-a-seat" to get myself out of the evil section 205 that only has ONE aisle entrance (which equals a super-PITA during hockey intermissions if you are on the aisle, like I was last season). I luckily found two seats two rows lower across the aisle in section 206, which has TWO aisle entrances. Hopefully that will be less annoying. We also got to tour the Kings locker room...sadly there were no Kings in it at the time ;) It's super-deluxe with a main room (left pic) for putting on gear, a hang-out room with a kitchen and TV where they probably have team meetings, and then a back locker room where they lock up their normal clothes and valuables during games. Fans were writing all over the white boards and I found the message below on the right to be especially poignant :)
From Staples, we headed back to LA Live to Rosa Mexicano, the one place Diana will drink alcohol at, which is odd considering it's REALLY STRONG alcohol (in the form of a really good pomegranate margarita). They have good guacamole too if you ever stop in.
By then it was after 7 and starting to look like it might rain, so we went back to 7th & Fig and hopped a train home. But I will be back to wander again... there are so many good places to eat and discover down there... like there was NO line at The Pantry when we walked by, but we weren't hungry anymore. I need to eat there someday.. it's an LA Landmark!
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