Day 10

We spent the day in and around Hollywood, but we stayed at a Best Western fairly near the airport. I'm not sure exactly where we are - all I know is that there are bars on all of the store windows and doors for as far as the eye can see from our hotel. Before we left, Pee Wee accomplished a good deed at the continental breakfast. He had just made himself a waffle and was getting ready to sit down when he saw a little girl attempting to cook her own. The girl's dad was busy trying to work with his other two kids, so Pee Wee sized up the situation and handed his waffle over to the little girl. The father was relieved and grateful at the same time.

Then on to Hollywood. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be my last trip to Hollyweird. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad  we came but I don't think the urbaness and the craziness is for me. We went to the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum - my first ever wax museum. It was fun, we learned some neat things about some famous people, and we took some "interesting" pictures.

After getting waxed, we spent an hour at the Hollywood Bowl, which was a good move. The place is huge and has a lot of history. It seats I think 18,000 on the famous hillside that has been home to concerts for many many years. The public is welcome to tour the place, but not today - there is a concert tonight and there was a rehearsal going on when we arrived. But one thing we've learned on our trips is that if you act like you belong somewhere then there's a good chance you will get in. And that's just what happened - we walked up the hill toward the seats past a couple of checkpoints, then we nodded to a couple of young ladies with badges on, and then we were in. We sat down and listened for a while to the rehearsal for tonight's concert which is a tribute to Ray Charles. But after ten minutes or so, we looked like tourists again so we were asked to leave. But we accomplished what we came for.

Then we made it back to Hollywood Blvd in time to start our bus tour - the TMZ tour. I think we both felt out of place during the two hour tour - I know I did. I mean the historical things we learned - they don't really matter - at least not to me. Like this star being arrested at this bar, or that star got in a fight in this intersection, or these reality stars like to dine at some particular restaurant. Now what we learned and saw this year at Yosemite and Death Valley, and other years in places like Gettysburg, The Field of Dreams, the Grand Canyon, etc. - now those places matter! The one picture I took on the tour was this car - I don't know what it is but it supposedly goes for about a million $.

But there were times when we had a lot of fun today. Probably the most fun I had was with a new friend by the name of Tony Torres. We saw him on the corner last night selling bus tours - he saw Pee Wee's Grayson wrestling shirt which started a conversation because he was a wrestler in California. We passed by him on his corner 6 or 7 times and even bought our tour tickets from him. By the 4th or 5th meeting we had become friends. I even helped him out on a sale and I'm counting it as a good deed. I walked up when he was making his sales pitch with two guys and I ranted and raved about how good the tour was (even though we hadn't been on it yet). Tony winked at me because it pretty much sealed the deal for him.

We saw more wackos than we did last night - I guess they come out a little early in the day. Like one guy dressed only in gold underwear who laid down on the sidewalk and sang songs with terrible background music and an even worse voice.

The last event today happened tonight back at our hotel. Pee Wee met up with one of his old wrestlers by the name of Rusty Joiner. Rusty was a great wrestler on Pee Wee's Shiloh team around 1990 and now lives in LA where he's an actor - you may have seen him in Dodgeball. He was "Blaze" on Ben Stiller's team. Rusty came to the hotel with his wife - it was great listening to Pee Wee and him reminisce.

Tonight is the last day of our 2012 adventure - that is if we make it to the plane in time in the morning. It's been great - we'll still be looking out for good deeds, but landing in Atlanta is going to be nice.