Friday, January 13, 2006
Goodbyes, West Hollywood style
Spent a good deal of yesterday in one celebration or another, bidding goodbye to Laura Rosenberg, a longtime work pal and up and coming standup comedienne, who's leaving Our Man in LA's office for a more lucrative position with the Boy Scouts of America.
The first was an all-office lunch at Maggiano's about which the less said, the better. Nothing against Maggiano's at the Grove - it's employed several of my friends over the years - but anytime a laudatory meal ends with the following statement, you know you've got trouble:
"Well, those of us who chose to drink water and not some soda or iced tea owe $23.75. If you did have one of those drinks, you owe $2.50 more."
To be honest, Our Man in LA believes that there's an entire circle of Hell where all you do is calculate - for all eternity - who owes what on a meal at a place like Maggiano's, Marie Callendar's, or any other sit-down family restaurant. The moment someone pulls out a calculator, and starts subtracting and adding the exact amount each person owes for a drink, you've got trouble.
It's not as deep into the cavity of Hell as the movie THE FAMILY STONE, but it's pretty deep.
So on the heels of that meal, a few of us from the office (and Our Woman in LA) visited the West Hollywood hotspot O-Bar to give Laura a proper, alcohol-saturated sendoff.
What was O-Bar like? Basically, it's exactly what you imagine going out for drinks in LA to be like. Picture this. A dark bar and restaurant. Curtains around the booths that you can pull if you need your privacy. White spotlights dancing across the room. Hanging coral mobiles from the ceiling throughout. Thick hardwood tables. A pounding, throbbing dance beat. Bartenders in sleeveless shirts. A men's room three times as big as the ladies' room.
And then at a certain hour, the curtains go down and a projector sends images of all the male characters from the Super Friends doing their derring-do amidst messages like "Guys in tights rock!"
Yeah. OK place, but not Our Man in LA's usual kind of scene. They did make a good mango mojito, though.
The first was an all-office lunch at Maggiano's about which the less said, the better. Nothing against Maggiano's at the Grove - it's employed several of my friends over the years - but anytime a laudatory meal ends with the following statement, you know you've got trouble:
"Well, those of us who chose to drink water and not some soda or iced tea owe $23.75. If you did have one of those drinks, you owe $2.50 more."
To be honest, Our Man in LA believes that there's an entire circle of Hell where all you do is calculate - for all eternity - who owes what on a meal at a place like Maggiano's, Marie Callendar's, or any other sit-down family restaurant. The moment someone pulls out a calculator, and starts subtracting and adding the exact amount each person owes for a drink, you've got trouble.
It's not as deep into the cavity of Hell as the movie THE FAMILY STONE, but it's pretty deep.
So on the heels of that meal, a few of us from the office (and Our Woman in LA) visited the West Hollywood hotspot O-Bar to give Laura a proper, alcohol-saturated sendoff.
What was O-Bar like? Basically, it's exactly what you imagine going out for drinks in LA to be like. Picture this. A dark bar and restaurant. Curtains around the booths that you can pull if you need your privacy. White spotlights dancing across the room. Hanging coral mobiles from the ceiling throughout. Thick hardwood tables. A pounding, throbbing dance beat. Bartenders in sleeveless shirts. A men's room three times as big as the ladies' room.
And then at a certain hour, the curtains go down and a projector sends images of all the male characters from the Super Friends doing their derring-do amidst messages like "Guys in tights rock!"
Yeah. OK place, but not Our Man in LA's usual kind of scene. They did make a good mango mojito, though.
