Shenanigans!the story of my Mondays
So as you may already know, I only go into work at 6 a.m. from Tuesday to Friday because I still work the Saturday overnight Web posting shift as well.
Yes, I work on Saturday nights. And so it's kinda lame to have to hear about other people's Saturday-night adventures that mostly happened while I was in the office. (I work until 1:30 a.m. on Sunday.) But over the past few weeks, I've become part of an informal little group that does even cooler things on one of my real days off, Mondays.
Allow me to introduce you to the goings on of the Monday Shenanigans Club, as we call ourselves. We're a bunch of Coachella Valley and/or Inland Empire folks who don't work on Mondays and use the first day of everyone else's work week to go and do crazy cool stuff around Southern California.
Oh hey, LA!
The name of our little group was coined on a trip we took to Burbank a few weeks ago to go see a taping of The Jay Leno Show. We got to see Rod Stewart, Serena Williams and a "Headlines" segment that included a reference to my favorite militant group of all time, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front:
Then, last week, we went to Hollywood to see not only the sights — like the Hollywood sign and, of course, the headquarters of the TV Guide Network — but also a screening of Heath Ledger's last film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
We stood in the rush line at the AFI film fest and got in to see the screening at Grauman's Chinese Theatre — the real one, not the Chinese 6 next door where a lot of the fest's films were being shown. The theater was freakin' beautiful, and the movie was really good. Then, afterward, as we were chillin' out where all the handprints and footprints and such are out in front, we got to meet Verne Troyer (aka Mini-Me) who was in the film and came to the screening:
Oh, and we also said "Oh hey!" to South LA and got epic ice cream sandwiches from Diddy Riese in Westwood before trekking back to the desert.
With Monday Shenanigans, it's a slightly different crew every week as people are available or unavailable. Those LA trips were both orchestrated by Ashley, a TDS copy editor, although she couldn't attend the latter. But Jodi, whose Monday shift Ashley was working, did go that day... as did Kyle, one of my friends from high school who also now lives in Southern California and has most Mondays off.
From creationism to capitalism in Cabazon
Anyway, today's adventure was one that kept us closer to home. As Aldrich says, we encountered both creationism and capitalism in Cabazon.
After driving by the Healing Field in Cathedral City, we made our way to the Cabazon Dinosaurs, the site of Brian's Big Adventure a few months ago.
Well, in case you haven't heard, for the past year and a half now, the landmark dinosaurs that appeared in Pee-wee's Big Adventure have been part of a creationism exhibit that tells you all about how humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time because the earth is only 6,000 years old.
But more important than all the creationism biz was the fact that we got to create a sand castle in one of the play areas they have there!
Also, our visit to the dinosaurs reminded us of Dinosaurs, the Saturday-morning show we all watched growing up that had the baby who always said "Not the mama!"
Oh, and we also got prizes one our way out for being good kids. I am not even kidding. (Click here to see more dino pics!)
After we left, though, we went to a decidedly more modern locale — the outlet mall. There we bought things like corn-cob holders, belts, wallets and pants... and really yummy hot pretzels.
It was yet another epic Monday Shenanigans Club win. And who knows what we'll do next?