Randy's and The Apple Pan

Well, Dave and I have arrived safely in the City of Angels, and we are now in our hotel room where the clock absurdly says it's 12:45 a.m., even though my body knows perfectly well it's almost 9 a.m. I hope I can get back to sleep but I'm doubtful!

Our flight went pretty smoothly. We saw some poor man melt down in the security line at Heathrow because he'd lost something -- I think his laptop. He was blubbering like a baby and I felt so bad for him. I hate that sinking panic that comes when you first realize something important is missing. I was hoping we'd see him in the terminal later just to know whether he ever found the computer, but we didn't.

In case you're curious, this is the route our Virgin Atlantic/Delta flight took:

From there, it was south over Saskatchewan and Montana, Utah and Nevada. All told, about ten hours. I read two New Yorkers back to back (including an article about the problem of feral cats in L.A.) and then the entire 1963 novel "The Graduate," which was the basis, of course, for one of my favorite movies of all time.

I have a lot of thoughts about this book but I won't bore you with them if you're not really into "The Graduate." I'll put them in an optional coda at the end of this post which you can read if you choose.

Once on the ground in sunny California -- and it is sunny here, thank goodness -- we somehow found the shuttle bus to the Budget car rental lot, and picked up our vehicle. I'd reserved a Toyota Corolla but we got something called a Nissan Rogue, which is basically an SUV, albeit a smallish one. I am behind the wheel and so far my driving skills have kicked in pretty reliably. No one's even honked at me, though of course they could be cursing under their breath.

We drove in a sort of deliberately roundabout way to our hotel in Westwood. Our room doesn't have much of a view, but from the other side of the building we get a good look at the nearby Mormon temple on Santa Monica Boulevard while we're waiting for the elevator. I think those are the hills near Culver City in the background.

By this time, we were hungry -- even though we'd had a meal, two snacks, a popsicle and numerous nibblies on the plane. The thing about planes is, you may be eating frequently, but you're not eating much. The portion sizes are tiny.

So we hopped back in the car and drove a short distance south to...

...The Apple Pan, a very old-fashioned lunch counter on Pico Boulevard that my co-worker Staci (who grew up in L.A.) told me about. We both had root beer and burgers and finished them off with a slice of The Apple Pan's famous banana cream pie. It was fabulous. I thought about buying a t-shirt but they were almost $50, which seemed insane, so I'll just have to plug them on the blog and leave it at that. Well worth it for the atmosphere alone -- it was like stepping back into 1948.

And with that I'm going back to bed.

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Here's what I thought about Charles Webb's novel "The Graduate."

I’d always heard the book is lesser than the movie — and that’s definitely true. But the plot and dialogue are much more similar than I expected. Whole lines and exchanges are lifted from the page and used verbatim in the film. (Perhaps the biggest exception is the famous bit about “plastics,” which does not appear in the book.) I’d always heard that Webb’s graduate was meant to be a WASPy type, and that casting Dustin Hoffman in the film was a huge departure from that original character — but actually the book doesn’t describe Benjamin Braddock at all, in any physical or cultural sense. The only character who routinely gets a physical description is Mrs. Robinson, and even then it's only her clothing -- for example, she is said to be wearing a low-cut green dress with a large gold pin when she invades Benjamin’s bedroom during that suffocating graduation party in the opening scenes.

I’d also heard that the ending of the book was different from the film, but it’s pretty much identical, if barely more ambiguous. Benjamin and Elaine, having fled the church and her wedding to Carl Smith, are last seen sitting in the back of the bus, and Elaine takes Benjamin’s hand as their fellow passengers stare.

There are a few minor differences. The movie’s famously awkward scenes at the Hotel Taft, when Benjamin blunders into the Singleman party and develops paranoia about the hotel desk clerk, aren’t nearly as funny in the book. Benjamin briefly leaves home and winds up a volunteer firefighter in northern California, a sojourn that is cut from the movie entirely. He also sells his car when he first moves to Berkeley and afterwards flies back and forth from L.A., rather than driving — I assume the filmmakers chose to keep the car to show off the California scenery that gives the movie such a sense of place. The book has no scene at Carl’s fraternity house. But Benjamin does take Elaine to a strip joint on their first date, and even the stripper and her famous “maneuvers” are the same.

The biggest difference, I’d say, is one of tone. Webb’s writing style is very flat. Some people say deadpan, but to me it’s utterly colorless. The bulk of the book is dialogue. It’s almost like reading a draft version of the screenplay. Webb famously sold the rights for a flat $20,000 and no royalties, and the movie made many times that at the box office on its way to becoming a cinema classic. But it took the talents of Mike Nichols, Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and many others to bring color and life to what otherwise seems a rather gray tale.

(Top photo: Randy's Donuts in Inglewood, photographed on our drive from the airport.)