Getty. Hey, I finally went.

I used to joke about how I've lived in LA for more than two years and had yet to visit the Getty Museum. Well, I finally did it. But not on my own merit.

Thom, Melissa, Samantha and Bobby presented themselves at my door Friday night. We had an entertaining evening at the Santa Monica Promenade, most of the regulars were there; bowls-on-head guy, girl with the chinese "ting, ting, tang, tang' string instrument, rollerblading Arab with the electric guitar, silver painted robot guy, bucket drummer Geronimo Gaspar and street dancers, yelling Christian evangelist and a pissed-off crowd, tap dancing kid in tuxedo and clay sculptor without a fixed price.

After doing the length of the Promenade, we headed back for the apartment and chatted until 2.

I woke up the next morning and it smelled like breakfast. The gang had been up for a couple hours. I rubbed my eyes awake, put some food in my belly and we were off to Rodeo Drive to see if it was all Samantha thought it would be.

After Rodeo Drive, we were off to the Getty Museum, the white building perched on the hill that separated the valley from the other side of the valley. I was reminded of the Getty's bad parking problem as we searched endlessly for a spot, spiralling further and further down the parking lot like a screw in the ground. We found a spot close to the core of the earth, hopped into an elevator to take us to the surface and hopped into a levitating tram that took us up to the museum on a pocket of air.

The architecture at the Getty was pretty neat, a definite paradise to the abstract photographer who loves to squeeze texture out of light and shadow. Unfortunately, we were graced with the noon sun when we arrived at the Getty so most of the buildings were "glared-out" into a big blob of white.

I was really disappointed by the photography exhibit but the other works more than made up for it. This one painting of a guy in a tavern caught my attention. The painting featured an old guy in shabby winter garb at a table blowing his soup, and another guy leaving the table. Apparently, the guy who was leaving was doing so because he believed that a person who blew both cold and hot air; cold air to cool his soup, and hot air to warm his hands; could not be trusted.

I guess when you're in a group and there are mixed interests, you either end up seeing everything or very little of anything. Seeing little of the Getty is still seeing a lot. But knowing that I had not seen it all, I left in reluctance, with a pledge to return.