Kelvis Korner Blog

Luis and I went last night to check out 9 to 5 the Musical at the Ahmanson Theater! I've been wanting to see this since Goldstar put up tickets to their preview. They were sold out! Since then I've been checking everyday to see if they post more tickets. The play is here until October and then it goes to New York where it will hopefully be in Broadway for a long time.

The minute Goldstar put some more tickets up I grabbed them! The Ahmanson has to be my favorite theater. The Pantages is beautiful and it's right in Hollywood, but there is something about the energy in Downtown that makes this theater special to me! I would definitely live in Downtown. It's changed so much and it's on the up and up! The Mark Taper Forum just reopened recently, so I'm excited to see what events come to that venue! The plan was to go home from work, get ready and take the metro. When I took a shower it was hot as hell. I didn't want to take the bus all the way to the subway station so I just drove in.

There was crazy amounts of traffic on Sunset but it turned out it was because there was a game going on at Dodger Stadium. Once I avoided that area it was smooth sailing. Right when I got a couple of blocks away from The Music Center, Luis called that he emerged from the subway station. He was coming in from the red line in North Hollywood. I thought the parking was going to be crazy expensive but it turned out to be only $8.00. And there were about eight floors of parking underground! So that was nice. One fast escalator ride up to the surface and I was right in front of the Ahmanson.

I went to will call to get our tickets. We had about 30 minutes before the musical started so I decided to get some snacks because I was starving! We're never early to these events so we were spoiled! When it was time to sit down, our seats were pretty good. They were upstairs towards the back, as is usual with Goldstar, but you could see the stage perfectly. The price of the tickets were $34.00 for each ticket. Which was a nice deal!

The show was absolutely breathtaking. I enjoyed the music, the acting, and the stage and props. It has to be the most advanced stage I have ever seen in a Broadway play. Things came flying in and out, and as the actors moved, the set would move around them. It was very cool! Act I was very true to the movie, which I loved, and Luis hated. All the great lines from the movie are there! Act II strayed away from the movie somewhat. I would have to say that my favorite was Act I. The songs were fun, and the acting was top notch. Allison Janney wasn't the greatest singer, but she was great in it! My favorite part is when they dream to kill the boss and she is dressed up in a Snow White costume. It's priceless!! Dora Lee was played by Megan Hilty and she was phenomenal. She sounded like Dolly, looked like Dolly, and was an amazing vocalist.

I loved one of the songs that Dora Lee sings called Backwoods Barbie. It's also on Dolly Parton's new CD and it was the name of her Musical Tour that I got to see at the Greek Theater! It was amazing to me that Dolly wrote all the music for the Musical! If you are in LA before the play leaves for NY in October, definitely check it out!!! The audience was so alive which tells me it's going to be an audience favorite!



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I was inspired to take the Beachwood Canyon Hike Sunday today after Take-a-Hike did it yesterday. I meant to go with them, but once again, I overslept! The hike was amazing. You go past Sunset Ranch, and you wind up all the way behind the Hollywood Sign. You get to see amazing views of the Valley and Hollywood!

Check out all the pictures at my Facebook Beachwood Canyon Hike.



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Luis and I headed to uWink for some food and some games. I had heard about this place from my old neighbor Paul. He used to work at Hugo's, and hook us up with free food all the time, and then he moved on to uWink. I never got a chance to visit uWink while Paul was working there since now he's in the Bay Area. Which reminds me I have to text him sometime. Luis and I were excited to go because we got a buy-one-get-one-free entree coupon. You can't beat that shit!

So we headed over to Hollywood and Highland where the uWink in Hollywood is. uWink was started by the creator of Chucke Cheese. The premise is that you sit at these tables and do everything through a computer kiosk. You order all your food and beverages through the computer and then there are games that you play with people in your party and with the whole restaurant. The idea sounds great but....

The games were pretty lame. There were no games that Luis and I could play against each other. The restaurant-wide games were few and came around like once every twenty minutes. It was either a trivia type of game or a photo quiz. After you've been in the restaurant for a while, the games get locked and you can unlock them only if you pay for tokens. I found this really lame because the games were lame. I would never pay for these games. The free games on Yahoo are better. Seriously. And my screen froze every 10 minutes. That was a nice added element of surprise.

The worst part about the whole ordeal was the food. It was mediocre at best! I had a burger with fries. The burger was ok but it all fell out and was messy. The fries tasted like crap you can fry at home from the freezer. Luis had a burger and mashed potatoes and the burger had the same issue as mine, messy and it was all over the place. His mashed potatoes tasted like instant!!! GHETTO. And can you believe this, they did not have any honey mustard. I love honey mustard. Any restaurant that's a diner that doesn't have it makes me suspicious.

We were so disappointed because there is so much potential in this type of social restaurant but it didn't deliver. Would we go again? Yes only because we have one more 2-for-1 coupon to use. After that we'll never go there again. We'll try something else off the menu, but I bet it's gonna be crappy! At least Dave and Busters and Gameworks has food comparable to Fridays. Denny's could beat uWink easy in a competition. EASY!


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Luis and I had seen a trailer for this movie when we went to see Boystown at the Laemmle 5 during TLA's mini gay-film festival. It looked very interesting and we are both Chad Allen fans! When I got the newsletter from the Laemmle that the premiere was Friday in LA, I knew we had to go! The main actors were going to be there after the show for a Q&A.

After work I went home to drop Lola off, I changed and I headed for the theater. Luis was going to meet me there later since he got off work later than I did. Since I Had a little bit of time I decided to purchase the Premiere Card at the Laemmle. It's kinda expensive at $100.00 but there are a lot of discounts and perks. Every week they have a 2-1 member movie and you get discounts all the time on movies! It's great! So I bought our two tickets with the Premiere Card.

When I was waiting for the movie to start, and for Luis to get there, I saw Judith Light coming up the escalator. It struck me how skinny and pale she is! It was so cool to see her! I had grown up watching Who's the boss and here she was! I never saw Chad Allen come up but I did see Robert Gant come up.

The movie was great! It was really nice to see such a well written piece. The movie dealt with an Ex-Gay ministry headed up by Judith Light's character. Chad Allen's character, through a series of events, ends up in the Christian ex-gay ministry, and eventually falls in love with another man in the group. The movie is great because every character was so well written. Every person who comes to the ministry has a different reason to be cured from their "gayness". The most surprising part was how well written Judith Light's character was. You usually want to hate her character as the evil oppressor, but towards the end of the movie you sympathize with why she's doing it. You can see that she means well, even though she is way, way, way misguided. You should definitely check it out!

The Q&A afterwards was great. The Producer, Director, Judith Light, Chad Allen, and Robert Gant all came up to talk. Judith Light and Chad Allen were very articulate. Robert Grant seemed very shy! It was a great fun night. We saw a whole bunch of gay celebs that night: T.R. Knight and Reichen Lehmkuhl. After the movie we were both starving since we didn't have dinner so we ended the night in one of my favorite restaurants: Koo Koo Roo!


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I recently joined the Landmark Theaters Film Club. You sign up with your email and they send you special invites to see a free movie that is about to be released. I have never been to the Landmark Theater and it was a great experience. The free movie was Towelhead. It was so nice to finally see this movie! I had been invited once to the OutFest Wednesdays screening of this movie and I missed it! I was then invited through my other free movie email list and I missed that one too! Third time is the charm I guess!

The theater was really impressive. First of all it was connected to the Westside Pavilion Mall which is nice! And here is the kicker, there is free parking! WHAT!? In LA that's a gem. The concessions were amazing. They had all kinds of gourmet treats but my favorite things were that they had pizza from Pizza Rustica, which I've enjoyed ever since my SoBe days, and they had yogurt from Yogurberry. It was just like PinkBerry but at the theater! And Pinkberry is like crack to me and most Angelinos!

The movie itself was very interesting. I thought it was a light comedy based around racism but it was a much darker movie. The movie moved at a slow pace and dealt with some very heavy topics like pedophilia. The music in the movie was amazing. Especially during the tense parts of the movie. The acting was amazing, and I definitely recommend this movie as a rental. The lead actress in the movie Summer Bishil was phenomenal. The supporting cast was great but she really pulled it off. I'm definitely compelled to read the book now that I saw the movie.

After the movie we walked across the street, because again parking was free, and ate at a little panini place that did shakes and gelato. My sandwich was very good, I had a turkey panini Greek style, but it took forever for the girl to press my sandwich. Luis had a peanut butter shake there and at Coldstone's, and then we finished off the night with my favorite: Coffee Bean.


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