What a change 4 and 1/2 years makes…

Sebastian says: “The fireworks were cool!”

I would have to agree. The show at the LA Coliseum is an hour long and has an amazing finale. AM & I were talking and neither of us can remember anything so grand from our childhood experiences. They started abruptly with a small, short barrage of the loud variety and I thought Sebastian was going to demand to leave immediately. But he stuck it out and by the end he was having a great time. Below is the grand finale of the event — not the best quality of video but you get the picture:

And there are some new pictures up, too.

We made another trip to the La Brea Tar Pits yesterday and had a good time poking the tar and looking at the fossils. The helpful excavators working on project 23 directed us to an exceptionally gooey deposit that was bubbling up with the sticky stuff and AM & Sebastian were fascinated by it. That isn’t to say that I wasn’t, only that I tend to be a little clumsy and didn’t want to get too close, lest I become the latest victim of “the the tar tar pits.”

There are some photos of our day here and we’ll have some more this week as Sebastian is graduating from kindergarten TOMORROW! Check back soon!

We made the trek to the spider pavillion at the Natural History Museum yesterday and I must say it was impressive. The crowds were much lighter than at the “Pavillion of Wings” exhibit, due both to a USC game at the stadium next door (I imagine, at least, that parking is at a premium around Exposition Park during USC football) and to the inherent “ewwww” factor normally associated with spiders. An interesting factoid, though, is that there are about 40,000 species of spiders in the world and only 28 are considered “potentially dangerous” to humans. Still, I wouldn’t want this crawling on me:

Ugh

We took Sebastian for his first ever haircut today, through screaming & tears & trepidation. Rather than seeking out an overpriced joint that caters to kids or settle for the mediocrity that tends to be Fantastic Sams & the like we settled instead upon Sweeney Todd’s Barber Shop on Hollywood Blvd. It’s a three-chair shop that serves as a step back in time. Old copies of Playboy, Modern Drunkard and Atomic Ranch filled the magazine rack, the water cooler was an actual glass 5-gallon number and the barbers themselves were straight out of the fifties, dressed in crisp white with impeccable hair (one with a picture-perfect pencil mustache) who knew all about the shops that once dominated downtown Los Angeles, alongside tattoo parlors that disappeared after the sixties. They were extremely patient with Sebastian’s reluctance to sit in the chair and we finally decided that it’d work well if he sat on my lap in the chair. Craig, a middle-aged man with a faded forearm tattoo I couldn’t quite make out and thick-rimmed black spectacles, told us the story of his first plane ride when he was three & a half flying out of Ontario airport — he didn’t want to go, broke away from his dad and ran around and around the airplane, forcing the pilot to chase & catch him. Once they wrangled him back onto the plane he got to ride in the cockpit after that, and even got a pair of wings. Sebastian didn’t react much to the story and kept his eyes shut tight for much of the time, but the tears stopped and he handled it like a trooper. He says he doesn’t like his haircut, and AM is a little sad to see his long locks go, but I think he looks quite sharp and the short back & sides will be much better for the summer. I’ll take him back alone next time — AM felt a little out of place in such a boy’s club (though they made us all feel welcome). It is another way I can live vicariously through my son… I mean, it’d be a little weird for a bald guy to hang out at a barber shop, right? Anyway, there are some pictures up now of his trip to the barber and from the past few weeks. Enjoy as always!