Belmont University

June 18, 2009

Los Angeles

ChrisWe started out our first day in Los Angeles with a tour of CBS Studios in Studio City, CA, where they film shows like Entertainment Tonight and CSI: New York, while in the past other shows like Seinfeld and Gilligan’s Island. Entertainment Tonight’s Canaan Rubin showed us around many of the sets, studios, productions rooms, editing bays, and all the people that come together to make a show go on air.

This experience helped us get insight into the human hands that go into the finished products we see and experience throughout every day of our lives. Before our eyes, we were meeting the people and watching them edit a cultural artifact that would be sent out very shortly thereafter to many corners of the world. I will pick back up on this discussion further down on this blog, as I need to get into the rest of our time in Los Angeles.

Group ETFrom Studio City, we hopped on the 101, took the Malibu Canyon Road exit, and within half an hour, we had reached coast number two on this trip. Weaving around the mountains on the two-lane road, we came around one corner to just barely make out the deep blue in the distance. We barreled through a tunnel and a few seconds later, we were staring at the Pacific Ocean. It was a sight of much relief for all of us. By Day 11, we had reached the West Coast. We stopped of for a few minutes to rest, talk, and meditate (for me, with the accompaniment of Sigur Ros’s “Með Blóðnasir”, a two-minute song that has walked with me through many experiences over the past few years).

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