I know, I know. More travel. Nick and I headed out to L.A. last week to visit our friends Ron and Brandi, and to get a general feel for the city at large. And wow, is it large. Flying in at night, all we could see was a massive tapestry of lights extending to infinity in every direction. It's the size of a small country, I swear. Anyway, aside from wishing that I was Superman so that I could just fly to my destination instead of having to deal with the airports and the TSA and all that, I really have no complaints about the trip. It was relaxing and the weather was heartbreakingly mild. Here are some photos from our time there.

This is Ron and Brandi's daughter Maddi, being adorable and spazzy on the beach.

Check this out. Remember the movie Mars Attacks!? There was a part where Lukas Haas was working in a donut shop, watching on the television as the aliens stepped out of their spacecraft and drew a slow, dramatic circle in the air. "Wow," he said, "he made the international sign of the donut." This was the actual building from the movie. Oh yeah, and they have really good long johns.

Here are the famous La Brea Tar Pits. They are still bubbling and, oddly enough, smell strongly of tar.

This was a little grotto we found at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

And these were some lovely monuments in the same grotto.

As you can see, this cemetery actually backs up against the Paramount Pictures backlot. You can see spotlights and other equipment jutting up from behind the wall.

Yes, this vault houses the last remains of the beautiful and notorious Rudolph Valentino, from such films as The Son of the Sheik (1926) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Incidentally, Valentino died in the hospital of blood poisoning, because the doctors were so afraid they would make a mistake on him that they delayed treatment until it was too late. Way to be professional, guys.

As I understand it, this is only a monument to Johnny Ramone, not his actual grave. Still, I think it's pretty cool.

Last up. You can barely see it, but the Hollywood sign is also visible from the cemetery. It's far away and shrouded in a heavy haze, but it's there. Trust me.

So that's it. We came, we saw, we took cheesy tourist photographs. L.A., baby!