The band had a fair bit of free time during their first few days in LA, but sadly I am probably the world's poorest host when it comes to showing people around town. The only thing I'm worse at is taking pictures. Anyway, here are some pictures of me taking the band around town, sorta:

Our house is in Granada Hills, which is the northernmost part of the San Fernando Valley (as in the Valley, of Valley-girl and porn-capital fame); immediately behind our neighborhood there's a county park that primarily consists of near-desert hills which are not super entertaining or challenging but afford a nice view of said Valley and the smog of the Greater LA metropolitan area. Pollution aside, it does help you appreciate how very green much of the Valley is, especially for semi-urban sprawl.

Left to right: Grayson, Dan, Mark, and Aidan.

This is Mark valiantly attempting a 5-minute sketch of the non-descript and haze-obscured Valley skyline.

Mark with my brother-in-law Jason, my sister Justine, and my mom.

Later on that evening we found ourselves in a combination laundry-coffee shop in Culver City, where we discovered a classic multi-game Neo Geo cabinet. Arcade machines are basically irrelevant at this stage in the evolution of video games, but anyone who has a clear memory of the early 90s or earlier is going to get a little recidivist tingle of joy any time s/he sees a working cabinet.

Everyone save Grayson maybe (and he was still pretty into it) was immediately transfixed by the cabinet--Dan had this wide-eyed expression of feral lust for maybe 20 minutes going, surely except for when I destroyed him at King of Fighters ('97 I believe), during which occasion he must have been wearing a face of unadulterated shame. I can't say for sure because I was too busy basking in the warm glow of the victory screen.

Mark and Aidan playing Puzzle Bobble (is that not the same game as Bust-a-Groove?), which they really got into.

In fact Mark and Aidan were so into it that they found a website where you can play it online through some ingenious use of Flash and/or Java, and they were playing it basically continuously except for when they were sleeping, and except for when we we were all dealing with some of the more absurd events of the evening, to be described shortly.