What to Do While Your Car is Getting Brake Pads - A Photo Essay

Well, if your Toyota service department is in Culver City, you spend the next three to four hours there. And that's what I did on one of my holiday vacation days. Lingered around the former home of MGM. The place where movie musical magic was made. The town where Judy Garland first put on the ruby slippers. The gutter where they probably found Joan Crawford drunk on more than one occasion. Culver City, with the demise of MGM in the 70s, had fallen on hard times. But, Sony has taken over that lot and now the entire surrounding area is booming with restaurants, movie complexes, and even the Kirk Douglas Theater. Join me as I walk around the nabe.

The austere location of the Culver Studios, which used to be home to David O. Selznick's company. If you look closely at the beginning of "Gone with the Wind," this is the house you will see. I'm not sure if much is filmed there anymore. Lucy and Desi owned it for a while in the late 50s after they purchased RKO.

Here's the recently restored Culver Hotel, which is famous because this is where all the midgets were staying while they were playing Munchkins in "The Wizard of Oz." They supposedly trashed the place. If you're thinking this is a little small for a hotel, you probably know why they rented rooms to midgets. There is an Oz display in the lobby complete with an empty vial of Judy's diet pills.

To play off the nearby film connections in Culver City, this very nifty multiplex was built. There is where I killed even more time that day by seeing "Marley and Me." When you go to an 11AM show, you can actually see just how senior citizens are out and about on any given day. More than half of the people in my screening room had walkers. A bargain matinee price and a few ramps means these folks are all set.

Here are the headquarters for Sony Pictures, but this building doesn't do justice to the history contained on the studio lot behind it. This was the old MGM backlot and you can smell the history all around when you tour it. You can also still smell a little gin from the days when John Barrymore was filming "Grand Hotel" there. The whole place feels regal and holy.

I guess this fountain is a tip of the cap to the MGM lion, but it was also an incredible waste of water since I was the only one there at the time.

In the 80s when all the Lorimar primetime soaps were filmed at Metro, this BBQ place was apparently the big lunching hole for all the actors from "Dallas," "Knots Landing," and "Falcon Crest." It would have been cool and maybe a little scary to have seen Jane Wyman chowing down on a basket of baby back ribs.

I found this little oddity as I was crossing a street and I now realize why the senator from Arizona lost the Presidential election. Is this the only signage he could afford?

Everytime I get my car worked on at this Toyota place, I always do a walk-through of this Trader Joe's. It is always jammed and I'm still confused about the allure of this super market. It's a great place to go food shopping if you do nothing but consume a diet of party snacks. Six different kinds of olive tapenade is overkill to me. Plus there's not a recognizable brand name in the house. I don't get it.

Dinner last night: Chinese buffet at Hop Li.