Ready…Break

Another weekend in the books and we ended it in style, one game out of first place and strolling along the streets of Beverly Hills. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

The weekend started Friday night with a visit from a few cousins and their friends, who unfortunately saw one lousy game. I sat with them for the first inning when the Marlins scored 3 runs after 3 batters. The next run wasn’t scored until I came back to say goodbye in the bottom of the ninth. One run wasn’t enough obviously and the boys in blue lost their 2nd straight.















Saturday seemed more promising, and included a visit from Lauryn's friend from high school, Joy, and my friend from high school, Devin, who took in his first Dodger game with the Lukin’s. Lucky for Dev, the game went extra innings – bonus baseball! Of course the Dodgers still lost, their 3rd in a row, but there was a highlight on the horizon, literally, as all fans were treated to an 80’s themed fireworks. Songs from Soft Cell to the Boss gave the bombs bursting in an air a soundtrack to explode to and made the entire show worth the wait. And worth a 2-hour drive north from Sunny Diego.















On to Sunday and Lauryn and I began a day’s worth of culinary treats reminiscent of our dining adventures on the road with the Ravens. Our first stop was Swingers of Hollywood, which featured bacon, eggs and a celebrity sighting to start the morning. The sunny side up star was Scott Caan of Ocean’s 11 fame (and just happens to be the son of James Caan). EDITORS NOTE: The sightings are never confirmed, neither of us are going to go up to anyone and ask if they are who we think they are, but in LA, when you see someone who looks like 'so-and-so', its a pretty good bet they actually are 'so-and-so'.

Next stop, big surprise, Dodger Stadium. But there was a shock in-store, a 6-run first inning! Talk about Dodger Baseball. Just look at the line score of Matt Kemp, who happens to be on my fantasy baseball team and bat leadoff on Sunday. 3 for 4, 2 runs, 2 rbi’s, 2 stolen bases. Nice work, and a big 9-1 win. With the struggles of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Dodgers enter the All Star Break just one game out of first place. One game! Cause for celebration, right?



















So Lauryn and I did what any good new-to-Los-Angeles/still-sort-of-tourists would do – we headed to the Hills. Beverly Hills. We shopped, just briefly – bought a lamp (I love lamp) and then headed to dinner under the sunset at Il Pastaio. Authentic Italian, I think, but it was damn good. A caprese-lobster ravioli tag team for me. Shrimp-mango salad-halibut duo for Lauryn. And 3 glasses of Riesling to wash it all down. Couldn’t get any better, right? Wrong! That’s because we plugged our next stop into our Garmin and headed west towards the UCLA campus and a little hole in the wall frozen yogurt mecca – The Big Chill. The line wrapped around the block but we managed to sneak our way in. The result, yellow cake flavored froyo with cookie dough topping. It tasted as it good as it sounds. And being a game out of first at the Break, with a few days off to let it soak in, that sounds pretty good too.