LA film fest (again!)

I keep forgetting we've been in LA for over a year now. When it came time for the annual LA Film Fest again, I was pretty surprised...and now I'm having deja vu blogging about it.

This year's "haul":

• Somewhere Between (a documentary following the lives of a few Chinese teenage girls who were adopted by white families in the US)
• Unraveled (a documentary following Marc Dreier, a high powered lawyer who stole millions of dollars from companies and was only overshadowed by Bernie Madoff)
• Natural Selection (a funky indie comedy about a conservative Christian wife who gets tangled up with her husband's no-good son) 
• Another Earth (an indie sci-fi movie [that's not really sci-fi] about a girl who tears a family apart after a drunk driving accident and tries to redeem herself)
• Love Crime (a French movie about living out the American Dream)

The two winners of this year (in my own personal competition that follows my own personal tastes) were Somewhere Between and Another Earth. They were both spectacular and definitely worth seeing. I think N really disliked Another Earth, but I'm becoming a huge fan of indie sci-fi films nowadays...and I think I may have gotten him to reconsider.

Somewhere Between, though, was the all-out CHAMPION. I bawled almost the entire movie...and I'm really not that much of a movie-cryer (although I've noticed that as I get older it happens more frequently). I cried within the first 30 seconds of the film in the opening scene! Although the focus of the movie is on a very narrow slice of America, the girls' experiences can be extrapolated to the overall Asian American experience (especially for women). While the girls in the movie can't find their genetic roots, 2nd generation Asian Americans struggle with the idea of the "motherland" and questions of "where are you from?" in a parallel way. What does it mean? How much does it matter? Should I try to find out? Do I belong here?

I'll go out on a limb and say that these adoptees' struggles/conflicts could be the 2nd gen AsAm experience simmered down to its very concentrated (and, in some ways, very much literalized) core.

Anyway, that was an overly academic stream of thought. Watch the trailer!:

Griffith Park

One of the great things about our apartment is our proximity to Griffith Park. It's a humongous park with lots of hills and great trails to hike. We've been a few times, but we really haven't taken advantage of it as much as we should. Dogs are allowed, but not off-leash (sadly). Stewie absolutely LOVES it there. Right when we drive in, he starts sniffing like craziness and scrambles to get out of the car. Parking is always easy and everything is so accessible!

A selection of photos from our trips there:

After every trip, we have to spend lots of time pulling burrs, leaves, twigs, grass seed, and other various foliage out of Stewie's fur:

finally...a real los angeles taco truck!

I am completely ashamed that it took me and N over a year of living in LA to finally eat from an authentic taco truck. And I'm not talking about that fusion crrrap (I don't want any kimchi in my tacos)...I mean the real thing. There are two trucks just a few blocks from us: one parked at an old abandoned gas station and another at a closed auto repair shop. We've probably driven by both over a hundred times...each time thinking to ourselves, "why haven't we eaten there yet??" Finally, FINALLY, we walked (how not-LA of us) down to the truck at the gas station to get some real food:

N got a barbacoa burrito and I got a carnitas burrito. This was our first time eating at a taco truck, so everything about the trip was interesting. Each burrito came in a little Styrofoam tray with some really fresh-tasting tortilla chips, a lime wedge, a grilled Serrano pepper (at least we think it was a Serrano), a piece of raw radish, and what seemed like a par-boiled carrot:

An interesting combo of flavors all around. The pepper was awesome tasting, but also pretty darn HOT. The tortillas that wrapped the burritos were so pleasantly thin--I have a perpetual problem with the wrapper-to-filling (or bread-to-filling) ratio of foods, as I always think there's too much tortilla compared to the meat. But this one was perfect. The carrot and radish seemed kind of random to me, but I found myself naturally eating my way through them...probably to bring some freshness/bitterness to the very savory burrito. It was pretty great. I'm sure we'll be back soon.