Day Twenty-Four: Hollywood And Monopoly Prison Hell

7/9/15, 9:37 PM PDT

We actually didn't return to San Diego yesterday. We stayed in LA with Sam's family, since Justin, Sam's brother, wanted to explore Hollywood, which was a once in a blue moon occurrence. So today, we hit up Hollywood!

We saw a neat little sculpture on the way there.

I looked it up, it's called "Progress" by Earl Krantz.

Our first stop was a particular star on the walk of fame, because Justin really really REALLY loves him:

Helyn and Jasmine are just sitting there because Sam's mom told them to.

Then we went to the Chinese Theater, where I've actually never been before. And even though it's not genuinely Chinese, it is still very very pretty.

I don't understand why The Mandarin was so mad...

Because this place is really pretty.

The big highlight of this place was the concrete slabs with celebrity hand/footprints on it. Most of them more or less were the same, but I noticed that a lot of them were talking about some guy named "Sid."

Poor guy. All he wanted was to be a science kid.

There were a few cool ones too, like Matt Damon and his tiny feet, and Vince Vaughn and his MASSIVE feet, but for the most part they were largely the same thing. A bunch of handprints and a bunch of footprints. Except for Marilyn Monroe, who had like... two dots instead of footprints because of her high heels.

For you dedicated readers, if you remember the creepy costumed people I saw walking around New York, asking for tips when I went last year, I have an update. They moved to Los Angeles. And they've increased in number.

Bee-do, bee-do, bee-do...

We also hopped on a train, where they had a... interesting picture on display.

This is what the nightmares of a Republican look like.

So where did we go on this train?

Nowhere cool, that's for sure.

We actually just went around CityWalk since Universal Studios was EXPENSIIIIIVE. Take a look at some of the stuff we found!

"I hate these things so much. They're like little
rats, they're everywhere." -Christina

Sam's cousin, John, had a close encounter with Jaws.

Either that or last night's longaniza finally snaked its way
out of John's large intestine.

And we found THESE THINGS.

OH MY GOD.

REAL LIFE SIMPSON'S DONUTS. We were worried that it was made out of plastic and not really edible, but after we figured out that the words "freshly baked daily" on the box weren't just there for decorative purposes, we were ALLLLLL over these guys.

Yeah, there was a chocolate one too. We also bought it.

I can understand why Homer Simpson loves these donuts so much, they are delicious. And no, to all you naysayers, it is definitely not just a bigger version of any old pink frosted sprinkled donut you could buy at any old donut shop. This one's different. It's made by Lard Lad. And because it's made by Lard Lad, it's made with fresh dough, hand-picked sprinkles, and expertly-crafted pink frosting of the highest caliber. Lard Lad imports sugar from the deepest, most untouched regions of the Amazon Rainforest and carries them by hand, one jar at a time down a 45-mile jungle trek to a processing plant in Brazil, where ten Swiss chocolatiers delicately fold the sugar over a hundred times to achieve the perfect, and I mean perfect glaze.

And that process is repeated for each donut.

We also found some cute socks. Take a look!

I didn't know Sam was embroidered onto a sock!

The rare and elusive Stacosaurus.

I wish my name was Godofredo.

They also had those license plate things they sell in every state, but they had two very important missing names.

It was destiny, Kayla. Meanwhile, Angela and
Christina were full.

Oh and we found Sam's birthing bus again!

And no, the bus name isn't referring to the woman in the left.

Afterwards, we went back to Sam's family's house and played a nice, wholesome game of Monopoly.

Just kidding. It was the most cutthroat Monopoly battle ever. We played this variation called "Monopoly Empire."

More like "Product Placement: Board Game Edition."

The goal was to either make everyone else bankrupt, or own enough properties to stack their tower to the top. We had a few house rules added, but it's basically Speed Monopoly.

And stuff got INTENSE. I think it was pretty tepid until I was four spaces away from winning. I had an Empire card that basically let me steal any player's topmost property (the one they most recently bought), so I decided to use it to steal Kate's four-space occupying Samsung property. I would have won, but she blocked it with her Empire card and everyone started SCREAMING at that point. The room got a hundred times hotter, everyone was sweating, Sam's cousin's forehead vein was coming out, it was HYPE.

When one of the players started to look like this, you know it was an
intense game.

Sam, because of unlucky dice rolls, went to jail at least 20 times. At one point, her cousin, Jasmine, got a Get Out of Jail Free card, which she wanted to donate to Sam to spare her more time in the stony lonesome. And you know what she said?

"No. I don't need your charity."

The next turn, she immediately did more prison time.

Her luck was so bad that at one point, she landed one square next to the "Go To Jail" tile. Since there were two dice, it's impossible to roll a 1 and go to jail again, right?

Well, for Monopoly Empires, they have a special die where instead of a "one" face (as in, the face of the die that you can roll a "one" on), they had a "swap" face. If you rolled both dice and rolled the "swap" face, you could either swap your topmost property with another player's topmost property OR move the number of spaces the other die got.

Samantha rolled a "one" and a "swap." She had the most valuable property in the game, so swapping was out of the question. So she went to jail.

A one-in-36 chance dice roll. And she got it. And she went to prison.

I never let that go when we ate dinner later that night. And I'm never gonna let her hear the end of that.

RFotD: Typing blog entries with one hand SUCKS.