Now, when your parents are in town, it always pays to take them to the Getty musuem, it’s beautiful, impressive, and best of all, free!  It sits on a mountain top in the Santa Monica hills, between all the wealth of Bel Air and Brentwood, to the west you can see the ocean, and to the east all of LA stretching out before you.  It was a beautiful day today, though I was wishing for socks and shoes…my chanclas will have to be traded in for the year I think, that’s always a sad sad parting.

Anyways, here is the getty from the gardens:

Built of travertine from italy, the blocks are hung from a steel frame…took the architectural tour with my folks of course, I never take the tours normally but this was worth it I think.  We spent half the time just wandering around the outside…look at this thing!

what is she doing?  What?

As you go in there’s this famous statue by Giacometti which I like a great deal, it’s disturbing of course, I’m not sure if humanity can really be reduced to this but it makes you think, it’s like reading Sartre or Camus and staring at a harsh reality and wondering what it is that animates us to be so much more than this…I think we are.

Mr. John Paul Getty did not buy this of course, it was acquired only recently… Mr. Getty preferred Monets and french porcelein and period furniture like this:

Is it a bed? A couch? a bed? a couch?  It does look like fun however, they shouldn’t cordon off enormous monstrosities like this, I would pay serious money to jump on it!  Or kip down for a night with a bottle of wine and a big-screen plasma tv (unless I was allowed company.  Definitely room for two up there!).  The guard did not seem bribable however, he didn’t even think I was funny, he was like one of those London guards who keep a straight face no matter what you do to them… There was a whole set of pink china as well, I suppose it was immensely valuable but uglier stuff you couldn’t imagine, had lots of pictures of silly courting couples in rural scenes…but around that time my dad developed some bad gas, he doesn’t like china at all.  Anyways, he’s allowed since he is missing most of his colon, but it is not pleasant for any of us, less so for those not related to him who don’t know he’s missing most of his colon.  We headed back out to the open air….

There was a Van Gogh – Irises, he is my favourite painter…a nice Degas, a Brueghal showing the sermon on the mount with all classes of tiny little people going about their business in an amazing and amusing way…it’s quite a nice museum actually.  We missed the drawings sadly, too much to see entirely.  Still, the place is highly recommended.