culver city, whiskey and an odd church

Howdy! It is Sunday evening in Culver City California. The job hunt is still on but I'm feeling good about something happening soon. I get a strange feeling that I'm not the only starving artist out here looking for a job...crazy. I haven't been up to speed on these blogs so I've got some catching up to do. So...i did move to an apartment in Culver City. My roommate's American name is Mike Harrison-but I later found out that his real name is Moshe Hajimshe? Somewhere in there on that last name...anyway he is a really great guy from Israel, so I'm working on keeping things kosher in the kitchen. When I moved in he offered me a sun dried banana and a shot of champagne as a welcome! Kosher champagne is delicious! I will also be playing at the Whiskey a go go on Friday as my first gig in Los Angeles. I'm doing my best not to flip out that Jimi has played there as well as Zeppelin, the Doors and quite a number more of my hero's. So I'm sure I'll have a story or two from that night.
Last night I went to a bar-b-Q at one of my mom's sorority sister's houses in Pacific Palisades. I had to take highway one up around Santa Monica and Venice...which made it amazingly hard to concentrate on the road. The Pacific Ocean was shining like a National Guitar! Everything was great! The food, the company, the pink margaritas. I feel like I had some California parents stuffing me with good food and sending me home with leftovers. Thank you Jan and Bill if you happen to be reading this!!!!
This morning I walked down to a church I had found online that was within walking distance(about a mile or so) only to find a law office in its place...a good thing was it was next to a local park and community center so I walked around watching softballers, skateboarders, walkers and joggers through the sounds of Son House on my iPod. After walking around a bit I did find a church that started in the next 10 minutes! Great! It was...a bit odd I guess. I'm not sure if any of the other 20 to 30 people caught this but the piano player started playing “Memories” from the musical Cats to start the service...interesting. We sang a few hymns and then they then lit a candle for each of the world religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity and one for all Indigenous religions. I was a little confused at this point. We then read from scripture John 14:6 “ I am the way the truth and the life...” the pastor then went on to talk about the power of the phrase “I am” and the power of our conscience selves being one with the universe and backed up her thought process with teachings from Buddhism and meditation on ourselves. while all this is going on the windows are open and the sound of mariachi accordians can be heard in the background. She closed by having us close our eyes as she read a poem she wrote about the service. Now...I realize I'm from the Bible belt...and I don't really want to be closed minded about things out here but that seemed a bit strange and fairly contradictory to me. Why would you go to church to meditate on your own self? I kinda think we probably do enough of that throughout the week anyway. I dunno, I guess I'm just more of a Jesus kind of guy....aaaannywhoo-after that I went to an interview at a gym in Venice where the job hunting continued. As for now I'm gonna break into these leftovers, play some guitar and call it a night!