So last night I took my little boy to see the Wiggles in Anaheim. Even though I’ve seen their videos ad nauseam, I have to admit I was looking forward to it, and we had a really good time. We were within 50 feet of Jeff (the purple Wiggle) at one point.
Cut to this morning. I’m going to assume familiarity with the geography of Southern California in the following, but it’ll probably make sense even if you don’t know the area. I had to go to a meeting in Huntington Beach this morning. I got out of Huntington Beach at about 9 am, and drove out onto the 22 freeway to go up to my office, which is in El Segundo near the airport. I noticed a big limo on the road. (I know, 25% of the cars on LA highways are limos, but I was still starstruck from last night, so bear with me.) I knew last night was the final Wiggles show in Anaheim, so I thought, what are the chances this limo is hauling the Wiggles up to LAX, perhaps to jet back to Australia? (Damned slim, but again, I was starstruck.)
I decided, what the hey, I’m gonna follow the limo. I tailed it all the way onto the 405 and up to the vicinity of the airport (about 20 miles). I figured by this time the limo had to be headed for the airport, so I planned to follow it all the way to Departing Flights. It would only be about 10 minutes out of the way to my office.
The limo got off the 405 at Rosecrans, well short of the airport, and I decided not to follow it. My guess is that it was some actor headed to the Manhattan Beach Studios on Rosecrans, where they film crap like “CSI: Miami”. On further consideration, I know it wasn’t the Wiggles, because according to their website they’re doing a show in San Diego tonight, so there would be no reason for them to be heading north. Unless…they were going to Manhattan Beach Studios to do some kind of filming this morning. But now I’ll never know.
Is this one of those questions we should avoid answering honestly if we don’t want to forfeit our subscription fee?
Of course, speaking as someone who will be taking his three-year-old to see the Wiggles in San Jose in a week, I was originally going to castigate you for not having memorized their touring schedule yet.
My God, we both need help.
On a related note, I have a question for you and/or any parents of toddlers. We bought tickets to the show when they were first available, about a month and a half ago. Since then, my son has moved away from the Wiggles–he doesn’t want to watch the show, listen to one of the many CDs, and won’t touch any of the $150 worth of Wiggles toys he got for Christmas–and now resides firmly in the Blue’s Clues sphere of influence. Should I be apprehensive that he might not enjoy the concert all that much? Or will he be awestruck by the live show in front of him? This is his third Wiggles concert, by the way.
When I was 18, I was driving on 635 in Dallas and spotted a tourbus. I looked up in it and someopne looked familiar (there were non-blacked-out windows on this bus). It was The Psychedelic Furs! I was going to their concert that night, and I was going out to eat/drink before the show. The bus exited and pulled into a Holiday Inn parking lot; I followed them. They got out and went into the front door, straight to the bar. I went in after a couple of minutes and went up to them and “hey you’re the Psychedelic Furs!”, and they actully asked me to jion them, so I had a couple of drinks and chatted with them.
They were nice and they said I could come around after the show. I did, and hung out in the bar with John Ashton and um, smoked a doobie in the parking lot (this was 1981; Im sure the statute of limitations is up). About half the group and I went across 635 to a Pepperidge Farm Outlet store and got a bunch of sweets (thosed Brits and their sweets!). Pretty fun for a small-town kid from Arkansas at the time.
So, as long as you’re nice about it, it’s ok to stalk a little, I guess…
Or at least I was, back in high school. Bored teenagers, hadn’t been driving for very long. After the movies closed (me and my friends worked at the movies) we’d follow any old limo we saw. Usually ended up lost in a residential area of Newport Beach. Damn. It sometimes turned out to be just the limo driver going home.
But it kept us entertained, so I can totally relate.