Trophies

My Angelino friend, cognisant of my love of upmarket breakfasts, googled “fanciest cafe in LA” in order to identify where to take me. The top result, and thus the scene of our breakfast this morning, was Republique in La Brea.

It’s housed in Charlie Chaplin’s old production office, architecturally somewhere between an upmarket converted stable and a downmarket converted cathedral. It’s so popular that it has a valet service, but the popularity is at least partially deserved as the breakfasts are exemplary. However, given the number of Chinese and Japanese tourists lining up outside to buy cookies and pastries, we weren’t the only ones who googled “fanciest cafe in LA”.

The remainder of the day was spent with shopping, napping and general dithering, culminating with another item ticked off my LA bucket list: a visit to a local comedy club. The only one that had anything suitable was the Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood, who had a compilation show featuring five to ten minute sets by a dozen comedians, so there I went.

My favourite performer was the manic middle-aged blonde who slammed her palms, and occasionally her chest, into an electronic piano keyboard to add a discordant blare to her hilariously dark observations about her life. I loved her riffs on the weirdness of cliched email signoffs (“Warmly”. It makes it sound like I’m sitting in a pool of my own fluids. Sure, why not? “Moist wishes”. “Dampest regards”) Well, it was funnier when she did it, with her painful chords and her Bel-Air Trophy Wife Having an Anxiety Attack demeanor.