Category: Places

My flight to Geneva leaves tomorrow morning at 7:50, an ungodly hour to begin 24+ hours of delirium shuffling through airports, getting groped by stink-eyed security drones, squeezing into airline seats designed for anorexics, all the while wondering why I’m not home asleep in bed, or watching Archer reruns while sipping a delicious Kamikazee.

No Oscar Tour would be complete without the famous Nominee Cake! As the 2011 Tour winds down, so do the nominees and assorted guests, at least for one evening. Held again this year at Ron's house, the party was fun, intimate and warm, despite the rainy weather outside. And of course, we all got sugared-up feasting on the nominated films - literally!

One of the highlights of the week was a morning spent at Disney's Animation Research Library (ARL). Housed in the non-descript former feature animation studio, the library houses more than 65 million pieces of animation art representing over 80 years of work from Walt Disney Animation. If you love animation, or have any sense of animation history, then the Disney ARL is a little slice of heaven. Actually, it's the whole pie.

If it’s Friday, it must be Pixar. And as most would attest, a visit to Pixar is pretty special. In no particular order, we met John Lasseter, crawled around the infamous Love Lounge, drank Scotch with Andrew Gordon in the Lucky 7 Lounge, met up with Oscar-winner Ralph Eggleston and his mending broken finger, had lunch with Roger Gould, screened the nominated films for 235+ staff, saw concept art, original models and other visual goodies from several films and talked to Bob Peterson. And, we bought Girl Scout cookies in the Pixar lobby. Quite the day indeed.

Like intrepid but warmly dressed explorers venturing into mysterious but GPS-identified territory, our group set forth into the crisp morning air in search of our first tour stop, the new Walt Disney Family Museum. We caught a break – the rain had stopped, at least for a few hours, leaving behind a beautiful sunny sky. We weren't so lucky later in the day - we were pounded by rain and hail.

In a couple hours we’re off to the Disney Museum and then over to Skywalker Ranch for the rest of the day and evening. It’s funny – in all the years we’ve been doing this annual tour and get-together with the animated short nominees, this is the first year I’ve gone on the northern California leg. One thing or another has always kept me in LA. I’m excited, though my room is freezing. I should drag this room heater back home – it would make a great air conditioner for my office.