Only once every twelve years

Sun nien fai lok! Or xin nian yu kuai, if you swing that way. And to be honest, that’s most of the non-menu Chinese that I know; yes, I was technically born in China, but I came to the States so immediately that I never picked up the language. This might be a good time to start, though—according to the lunar calendar, it’s the Year of the Rabbit! Which, as you may know, only comes every dozen years, meaning I wasn’t even around for the last one. We don’t usually observe Chinese New Year, but Rob made an exception this time and gave us all money in traditional lay see envelopes! Hey, Rob—any chance we can make this an annual thing after all?

You know, I don’t think Damage was supposed to just rip open the envelope and pull out the cash in front of the person who gave it to him. That seems like bad form.

Then, seeing as it’s a special year for bunnies, Rob thought we might like to go to the New Year’s parade in Chinatown, but for once my brothers all begged off, out of concern about the nonstop firecracker noise in their ears. But dedicated professional that I am, I was willing to take this one for the team! Well, and my earplugs!

We had some time to kill before the parade began, and Chinatown being on the small side, it was fairly packed—the sidewalks were crowded, the shops were bustling, festival vendors congested things further, and in Central Plaza, someone my size had to jostle constantly just to catch a glimpse of the performers on stage.

Chinese acrobats. Everywhere I go, Chinese acrobats.

Then around 1 o’clock, we staked out a place on the curb just as the parade was starting. Mayor Villaraigosa—rocking a red changshan—kicked it off, leading the crowd in alternating Chinese and Angeleno chants of Gung hay fat choy! and ¡Felix año nuevo chino! That’s covering your bases.

And then came our main ethnic representative, in the form of...a movie tie-in. This town, I swear.

After that came a series of floats, local dignitaries, marching bands, and even martial artists, but the parade participants who drew some of the most enthusiastic response were the dragon dancers, a number of whom snaked their way down the street bearing dragons in a variety of colors and sizes.

That poor sucker’s just never gonna catch that pearl, is he?

Then there were the lion dancers. My new brothers Menace and Rancor had never seen those before—not even on TV—so before we left for Chinatown, they asked Rob what those performances are like. He told them, “It’s just two guys under a sheet, with one thrusting the head up and down.”

Completely unironically, he said this. It was only when some of us fell over laughing that he realized how it came out.

After the parade, it was time to shop! We meandered around the stores and festival booths, but it was the bakeries we targeted most—so of course they were the busiest of all, but eventually we made it out with the char siu bao Rob promised my brothers as well as enough mooncakes for everybody! Well, except I bought myself an extra one to eat immediately. Hey, I work hard all year, I deserve nice things.

And then despite myself, I gave in to mob mentality and got some of those Party Snaps people were setting off literally every second. Why not, it’s a holiday. Watch your feet—I got a pawful of bang to unleash.

Soon enough, it was dinnertime! Even hours after the parade, all the restaurants were overflowing, so we ended up going with the first place that said they could seat us in under forty-five minutes.

I don’t know what Rob’s getting, but suddenly I want seafood.

...which worked out perfectly, since they were already out of the beef chow fun Rob originally wanted. (Long noodles = long life, according to tradition.) Granted, with this many people they probably ran out of everything before long, so I likely got my scallops with black bean sauce just in time!

And that was it for our Chinese New Year excursion—we had baked goods to get back to my brothers, after all. But not without one last stroll through Central Plaza, now that it was all lit up.

Looks almost magical at night, doesn’t it? They should do a movie about this part of town sometime.

Oh, right.

From season to season

It’s been a fairly quiet autumn for me. Not that I’m complaining after an incredibly busy spring and summer, mind you—it’s just a dramatic change of pace following the middle six months of the year. And I did do a few things outside of Griffith Observatory: For one, I extended my tour of local botanical gardens slightly by finally visiting Conejo Valley Garden. It may not the be most obvious time to go, but some fall-blooming cacti pretty much justified the trip.

I know missing this place during the main tour seems like a gross oversight when you consider what conejo means, but what can I say—Thousand Oaks is a little outside my normal range. Not a bad view from up here, though, even if I never did see any conejos anywhere.

I also went to my first drum circle ever, albeit one for kids at the Remo Recreational Music Center—friends who are parents got me in—so I wouldn’t look completely out of place or get weird smoke in my fur. Think this goblet drum’ll give me a suitable amount of boom?

Or am I in more of a conga mood?

Eventually, I settled on something a little more modest—you know, so as not to drown out the preschoolers with my furious skins-bashing—and joined the circle. Okay, everyone knows “Lust For Life,” right? You know, from Trainspotting?

Aw, man. Busted down to Stevie Nicks duty.

Mostly, however, this season’s been about the holidays! For Halloween, Rob and I made a return trip to Hollywood Forever, where LA’s massive Dia de los Muertos festival is held each year. Hey, why limit yourself to the Halloween palette of orange and black when everything can be a riot of color, right?

The entire cemetery is turned over to the festival, with a good chunk of it reserved for people to construct elaborate commemorative altars to their departed loved ones. Photos and offerings are par for the course, but appearing as costumed extras is where the truly dedicated prove themselves. Smart move with the parasols today, ladies!

Here’s something I don’t see every day: a mausoleum converted into a makeshift art gallery. But in fairness, it was probably even weirder for the people seeing a rabbit stroll through a mausoleum converted into a makeshift art gallery—especially one humming “Thriller” nonstop.

Then as the sun started to descend, out came the Aztec performers, whose dynamic circle dance was exhausting to watch even before you noticed that they were stomping barefoot on concrete the whole time. Ouch. Go soak ’em afterward, guys!

But, of course, the best part of any holiday? Zeroing in on the sugar. ¡Buenos dias, calaveras de azúcar! I promised my brothers I’d bring home as many of you as could fit in this basket. Don’t worry, Rob’ll wheel it back to the supermarket as soon as we’re done.

Alas, poor Yorick. Nom.

Thanksgiving was more subdued, by comparison—just my brothers and me, plus enough friends to handle the cooking. Hey, there’s more in the oven, right? Because we’ll be ready for it after this appetizer turkey.

That brings us to early December, which can only mean two words: Sawdust Festival! But we thought we’d switch it up by going later than usual to see what it’s like after dark—the downside being less shopping time overall, so this better not be anything less than magical...

...okay, yeah. That’ll do.

Our friend Missy wasn’t showing this year, but otherwise, it was the standard assortment of offerings—ceramics, paintings, jewelry, clothing, glassblowing demonstrations, you name it. I guess this would be a bad time for me to scream and pound on the window really hard?

And did I mention the roaming carolers?

Hey, it’s the Star of Beth...oh, it’s just a halogen light.

Then after some quick purchases—and a woman inexplicably mistaking me for a squirrel—we took a swing by Roger’s Gardens. Year in, year out, it’s one of the best places I know for finding anything Christmassy, be it traditional, like these German Christmas pyramids...

...or nontraditional, like these, uh, glitter dwarves. Is this a thing now? Should it be?

Wow. In all my dreaming of a white Christmas, it was never this intense.

Still, there’s nothing like my own home mall—the Grove, back in Hollywood—at Christmas. I know I’m biased, but: I love this view.

And that about takes us up to the beginning of winter proper. Happy holidays from Havvy, Beds, Dam, Kayo, Pan, Venj, Mence, Rane, and me!

Oh, and Rob.

The view from the hill

I swear—no matter how close you get to the Hollywood Sign, in photos it always seems farther away than it appeared in real life. Some metaphors really do write themselves.

And we’re pretty close to it, having come a fair way up the hill. From here, we can see all the way to downtown. Which is actually visible today, under the watercolor smog! How ’bout that.

So as you might’ve guessed, Rob and I are at Griffith Observatory, awaiting sunset so we can have a look around after dark. Originally opened in 1935, the observatory is dedicated to making astronomy accessible to the public, but the building is an attraction in its own right, with its commanding views of the entire LA basin and distinctive Art Deco architecture that can be seen for miles around. On the outside it looks the same as it did seventy-five years ago, but in fact it underwent extensive renovations in 2002—including excavation for a new basement level that required the main building be lifted in one piece on hydraulics—and reopened in 2006.

As for the astronomy part, all’s I know is that there’s a rabbit in the stars but we came too early in the year to see him. Stellar planning, Rob.

Now, while it’s a given in this town that any movie association whatsoever has to be commemorated in some fashion, a lot of things have been filmed here over the decades, from The Phantom Empire to Transformers and who knows what to come. But maybe the most iconic was Rebel Without A Cause, and thus the decidedly nonastronomical James Dean monument here. How goes, Jimmy? People are still writing songs about you fifty-five years later. And Rob avoids the 46 like the plague whenever we go up north.

Heading inside, the first thing you see is...one of these. A Foucault pendulum, which illustrates the rotation of the earth by swinging in different directions depending on the hour. On TV, these things can be used to locate time-traveling islands, but in real life they just knock over pegs at regular intervals, which is...a little anticlimactic in comparison.

Fortunately, there’s something more interesting directly overhead, around the pendulum’s suspension point: Hugo Ballin’s restored ceiling mural, which features images of the gods for which the planets are named—in the lower right corner, you can see Saturn about to devour his children, and above him is Mercury in flight—as well as the signs of the Zodiac. In the lower half of that inner ring you can see the ram, the bull, the twins, the crab, the lion, and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. Very nice.

Over in the west rotunda are a series of star-related exhibits, with emphasis on our very own sun. Some of them only operate during daylight hours; this coelostat, for instance, simply gives an as-is live feed of the sun as it makes its way across the sky.

Sure, it’s not much to look at now, but imagine watching a major eclipse on this thing.

Also open during the day is the camera obscura room, which projects a 360° view of the city from a rotating periscope up top. It’s like I’m flying over LA...well, panning over it, at least.

Down the hall are a couple of models of the observatory, one a cutaway that shows the building’s different levels and then this one, which gives the lay of the surrounding land in Griffith Park.

I love scale models. They’re strangely empowering for someone who has to live in a world dominated by a larger species. It’s like, I AM THE BUNNYGOD. BEHAVE DOWN THERE OR I’LL GIVE THE SAN ANDREAS A HEALTHY KICK.

Then again, humans are hardly larger than rabbits on a cosmic level, as the east rotunda—dedicated to the history, science, and tools of observation—reminds us. We still use optical telescopes, of course, but modern study of the universe is aided considerably by the tracking of electromagnetic radiation—visible light and its six spectral siblings, from radio waves to gamma rays. No instructions on how to use the latter to turn yourself into the Incredible Hulk here, though.

Yeah, I looked.

Oh, har har—Rob snapped one of me on the infrared monitor while I was looking at the EM exhibit. Looks like my nose and paws are a bit cold, but nothing a good toddy wouldn’t fix.

To get from the upstairs level to the new basement, we head down the corridor housing the Cosmic Connection, which portrays the “sparkling ribbon of time” from the Big Bang to the present with a 150-foot timeline studded with some 2,200 bits of donated jewelry, all celestial in nature—stars, suns, moons, and whatnot. Nothing too choice, but I suppose no woman’s giving up the good pieces.

Then in the basement itself—or the “Depths of Space,” it’s called—we have scale models of the planets mounted on the mezzanine. Let’s see, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune...no Pluto? I guess I’m old-fashioned.

Wait, here it is—that cherry tomato-size bit at the end of the rod there. It does kind of make you wanna demote it, doesn’t it?

Oh, and see that big backdrop on the far wall? That’s the Big Picture, a digitally blown-up scan of the universe that contains approximately two million stars, galaxies, and quasars in one continuous image, presented on 3,000 square feet of ceramic paneling. But the real kicker is that this mammoth view is actually produced from only the tiniest sliver of night sky, 2 degrees wide by 15 long—the amount of area covered by holding up a finger about one foot from your face.

...as demonstrated by this strategically placed statue of Albert Einstein down on the lower level. And yes, that’s his index finger. Funny as it would be to have Einstein flipping off the entire universe.

Anyway, underneath each of the planet models is a station with various factoids (the planet’s mass, temperature range, composition, etc.) as well as a floor panel that gauges what you’d weigh there. So on Jupiter, I’d weigh in at...just over a pound. Oof. Looks like I’m hitting the salad bar instead of the buffet tonight!

And while the four moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered were just the tip of that particular ammonia iceberg—dozens more have been found since 1609—we obviously only have the one. But it naturally warrants its own station, back up on the mezzanine.

Moon rock? Oh wow!

With a little time left to kill before it’s fully dark, Rob and I hit both of Griffith’s theaters next. The Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater is a lecture hall that features regular free screenings of a documentary about the observatory hosted by Nimoy himself, but the marquee shows are in the Samuel Oschin Planetarium, with its dome screen and fancy-schmancy digital projector. You can kick back in the comfy seats and go flying through the universe while the movies play overhead.

Ooh. I’m not usually prone to motion sickness, but that last plunge through the galaxy might’ve been the tipping point. You run on ahead—I’ll catch up...momentarily. Urk.

Okay, fresh air helps! And now it’s finally dark, so we can go up to the roof and take another look at downtown now, awake with a million lights of its own, all twinkling in the heat haze of an unexpectedly balmy November evening. Pretty exquisite, if I do say so myself.

So it’s time to go—suddenly I’m in the mood for Holst—but not without one last look at the sky through one of the many smaller telescopes set up along the rooftop. Put in a quarter, point it upwards, and see what you can see.

Well, what do you know—stars.