Pictured

I started the morning early with a trek up to Griffith Park, which the internet told me would be a convenient spot to get a good photo of The Nerd and the famous Hollywood sign. I parked next to a sign offering very solid advice: never give a wolf a cookie.

Unfortunately it turned out that the difference in scale, and in distance from the camera, made it impossible to get a picture of The Nerd and the Hollywood sign in shot and both in focus.

We would have to see about fixing that at a later date. However, I was able to get a picture of him with a famous movie star.

I adjourned for breakfast at Mel’s Diner on Ventura Boulevard. It’s a vintage diner with all the classic details, from the sugar dispensers to the jukebox selectors at each table.

I order the bacon, cheddar and green onion waffle with fried chicken, with bottomless coffee. When I order something similar in Australia, I get one or maybe two chicken thighs neatly sliced on top of a modest waffle. In the US, I got this:

That’s four huge pieces of fried chicken, and a waffle the size of a dinner plate. I ate half of it then, in classic American tradition, got a box to put the remainder in and ate it later for dinner.

In the evening, I was able to realise another one of my goals for this Los Angeles vacation and go to a late night session at a jazz dive. The dive was the Baked Potato, a fifty year old institution in Studio City.

There were stern warnings posted everywhere that photographing and filming were strictly forbidden, so I only got a shot of The Nerd enjoying the ambiance rather than the show. However, once the show started even the performers were taking photos of themselves, so maybe the warnings were not so strict after all.

The show was good. It probably tells you everything you need to know when I note that the band played for more than an hour but only did four songs.