The Madonna Inn

Weehaw!!! Dylan and I started our little mini vacation today - more on that in a second.
This morning I went to the Egyptian Theatre for a joint meeting of the Planning Department and the CRA. Both entities are working on plans for Hollywood - CRA's "Urban Design Guidelines" and the Planning Department's "Hollywood Community Plan." Both documents aim to specify the type of development that can happen in Hollywood moving forward, attempting to set standards that will make sense as the community continues to grow and redevelop. It was interesting hearing the plans, but it seemed like a lot of the community members were not happy about certain aspects of the plans. I guess that's inevitable.
I got to leave work a little early so I could ride the subway up to North Hollywood to meet Dylan. We had decided to take a little trip up to San Luis Obispo, to stay at the Madonna Inn and see Margaret Cho, who is one of Dylan's idols. I love her too, but must admit that I really didn't know much about her before Dylan and I got together. Anyway, he had seen that she was playing at the Madonna Inn and the tickets were cheaper than the show in LA (which was at the Wiltern, and we've already seen her there) and he was able to get second row seats! Since we're not going anywhere for the holidays this year, we decided it would be nice to have an early get-away and just make a long weekend out of it.
I've always wanted to stay at the Madonna Inn since I first heard about it years ago after moving to LA. It's this family-owned hotel that this guy, Alex Madonna, built in the 1950's because he did construction and stayed at a lot of very unremarkable hotels when he was working on the road. He wanted to build a hotel that would be a unique, special place to stay at, so he made his hotel have different decor and themes for each room. It also has a central building that houses restaurants, shops, and a lounge.
We had hit horrible (but typical) LA traffic on the 101 and Dylan started to stress thinking we might not get there on time, but as soon as we got past a truck that had wrecked near the 405, the traffic opened up and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way up the coast.
We got to Santa Barbara as the sun was setting on the ocean, and then headed north on a highway I'd never been on before, going up into the mountains with a gorgeous view. I played my album for Dylan to listen to and it was great to hear it as we wound our way through mountains on a dark highway. Dylan said he loved all the songs and one of them he said he'd never heard yet!
We ended up getting to the Madonna Inn with plenty of time to spare before the show, so we checked in and went to our room, the Lucky Rock. It had animal print carpet, rock walls (with some gold foil wallpapered walls), a big king sized-bed, and a rock shower... it was really cool! Then we headed to the bar and got Bubble Martinis, which were made with Three Olives Bubble Vodka, which is bubblegum flavored and very delightful!
Finally, it was time to go to the show. We walked over to the "Performing Arts Center" which is really just a big shed type building with a really nice facade but on the inside it looked like something where you would go to a county fair or something. It was a good crowd though, and our second row seats were amazing. The opener was this guy John Roberts and he had all these wigs he would put on and do different voices and characters, he was really funny and we loved him. Then Margaret came on and everyone went wild! She was so hilarious! She had so many new jokes and stories, some of them about being on Dancing with the Stars, and some about her new home in the south. Towards the end of her set she performed some songs off her new music album and did an encore by playing the acoustic guitar and singing a song, which I thought was amazing.
We walked back to the room but we were hungry and the restaurants at the Inn were closed so we had to drive to a Taco Bell. Back in the room, we were pretty tired from the long day so we watched some TV and fell asleep.