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Published: August 24th 2009
Hollywood Boulevard
My son (a huge MJ fan) poses with Michael Jackson's star on Hollywood Boulevard. Two months after his death, people were still leaving flowers and candles at the site.I have to apologize to Los Angelians everywhere. I was the driver of the teeny tiny toy car doing 35mph on the freeway this afternoon. Despite being directionally challenged, I ventured out on the LA roads by myself to take my sons to a taping of
Wheel of Fortune. We left West Hollywood at 10am. Even though my GPS said it would only be a 20 minute drive, I didn't make it to Sony Studios until almost 11:15. You might be thinking I got stuck in the infamous LA traffic, but you would be wrong. I'm just slow.
I signed up for several tv show tapings, and
Wheel of Fortune was the first. TV tapings make excellent budget activities because the tickets are free and so is parking. Most shows don't take children under 16, but
Wheel of Fortune takes them as young as 8 so we chose that for the twins. About a month and a half before my trip, I started visiting these websites daily looking for tickets:
www.tvtickets.com, www.tvtix.com, www.hollywoodtickets.com, www.ocatv.com, www.1iota.com, www.jampackedtv.com. In addition to the
Wheel of Fortune tickets, I was able to secure tickets for tapings of
Two and a Half Men, and
The Elvis sighting
An Elvis statue draws people to this souvenir shop (one of many) on Hollywood Blvd. New Adventures of Old Christine. Those shows are for adults, so my sister in law will babysit the boys while my husband and I attend them later this week.
My sons really enjoyed the taping today. We watched a few episodes of the show on TV in Buffalo so they'd be familar with the game. They paid attention and tried to guess the puzzles in their heads. It was neat for them to walk onto the Sony Studios lot, we passed a few stages being constructed. I thought it was interesting to see Pat and Vanna in real life. My son think Pat Sajek looks younger in person than he does on TV. Maybe his make-up team needs to do a better job? I don't know
anyone in real life as skinny as Vanna White. She looked like a toy Barbie.
Each show takes an hour to film and they tape 3 shows with breaks in between. We left after the first taping because the kids were getting hungry. If we had stayed, we would have been eligible for door prizes that they raffle off at the end. While I found my way to the studios just fine, I did get lost in the parking garage trying to leave. Like Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer in a classic
Seinfeld episode, I wandered the parking garage for almost 45 minutes before finding the car.
While I had the twins at
Wheel of Fortune, my husband took our youngest back to Hollywood Blvd. to walk the Walk of Fame for himself and see a matinee at
Disney's El Capitan Theater. My little Michael Jackson fan posed in front of MJ's star. Later, they bought a pack of 20 year-old-gum with collectible Michael Jackson trading cards from a souvenir shop on the Boulevard. We had to hide it when they got home, because my 6 year old wanted to eat it.
There are a ton of souvenir shops on Hollywood Boulevard and they all seem to sell the same things. I found colored t-shirts for the kids in one of them for 3/$9.99. White t-shirts were 4 or 5 for 9.99. My children had their own spending money and they used it to buy a mock Academy Award for $8.99, and a real guitar for $39.99. They prompty broke a string on that thing when they got back to the house. We have a week left, and I almost hope they break all the strings so I don't have to worry about taking that guitar back on the plane. Does that make me a bad mom?
Pictures are delayed due to electronic issues but stay tuned, they'll be up soon...
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