Santa Monica, CA

Sorry to have been MIA the past couple of days.  The Grim Cheaper surprised me on Sunday morning with a two-night trip to Big Bear to play in the snow.  We had an absolute blast scurrying around in the frost and even managed to get some stalking in!  I will be blogging about those locations […]

In the early years of our relationship the Grim Cheaper lived in Santa Monica, just a few blocks from a local staple named Callahan’s Diner.  Even though I knew the eatery was a filming location and supposedly served up some fabulous grub, for whatever reason we never ventured in for a meal.  I am kicking […]

The April issue of Los Angeles magazine (for which I wrote my very first print article ever – you can read it here) featured a Time Frame image of one of Santa Monica’s most historic restaurants, Chez Jay, reminding me that while I had stalked the watering hole ages ago, I had yet to blog […]

As I mentioned in last Tuesday’s post, thanks to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, I am fairly certain that I have managed to find the bar that was used as the interior of O’Hara’s Pub in the 2003 comedy Bad Santa.  When Owen heard about my quest to track down […]

A couple of months ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, called to let me know that he had just discovered that the iconic scene from Get Shorty in which loan-shark-turned-movie-producer Chili Palmer (John Travolta) threw a henchman named Bear (James Gandolfini) down a flight of stairs had been lensed at a restaurant named Abiquiu (now Wokcano) in […]

While I was initially on the fence as to my feelings regarding BH90210, I have to say the meta-revival has really grown on me.  Though I did not particularly love the pilot, by episode 4, I was absolutely enthralled and am so saddened that Season 1 will be coming to a close this week.  And […]

I hope all of my fellow stalkers had a fun and safe Halloween.  For this year’s festivities, the Grim Cheaper and I headed over to our neighbor’s house for an amazing party (the decorations were like nothing I have ever seen!) and had an absolute blast.  Our 2018 costumes were, per usual, celebrity-inspired.  Unusual is […]

Some movie scenes just seem to stay with you, seared into your memory for years, despite the fact that you can remember little else about the storyline.  That’s how it was for me and Mr. Mom.  I had not seen the comedy since 1983 when it first premiered in theatres and recalled few details from […]

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow stalker named Gina reminded me of a Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead location that I had yet to blog about – Opera on Ocean, the Santa Monica restaurant where slime-ball Gus (John Getz) took Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate) for a lunch date in the 1991 flick.  […]

Last month, while spending the weekend in Santa Monica, the Grim Cheaper and I randomly grabbed dinner at Finn McCool’s Irish Pub on Main Street.  Immediately upon sitting down, I asked the bartender if anything had ever been lensed on the premises – as I am apt to do whenever I find myself dining somewhere […]

Last week, the Grim Cheaper emailed me a fabulous Vanity Fair article about the genesis of the most iconic night in Hollywood – the Academy Awards. According to the blurb, in January 1927, legendary producer Louis B. Mayer was enjoying some idle conversation with friends Conrad Nagel and Fred Niblo at his beachfront home when […]

You can watch the Just Go With It trailer, in which Casa del Mar is featured, by clicking above. The hotel also popped up in the Season 2 episode of The Mentalist titled “18-5-4” as the supposed San Francisco-area Tidewater Resort where Oliver Simon McDaniel (aka Evan Peters) hid out. For whatever reason, producers had […]

One location that I have wanted to stalk for what seems like years now is the church where Annie Banks married Bryan MacKenzie in my all time favorite wedding movie, the 1991 classic Father of the Bride.  But, according to IMDB, two different locations actually stood in for Annie’s wedding church in the film – one for […]

A few weeks ago, fellow stalker Owen asked for my help in locating Danny DeVito‘s Mediteranean style home from the 1988 comedy Twins.  Owen had already done quite a bit of stalking legwork on this one and had managed to contact one of the movie’s crew members who told him that the house was located on a numbered street near Montana […]

Thanks to fellow stalker Chas, way back in the beginning of July, I was able to stalk the main house used in the 2000 award winning movie Almost Famous.   Somehow, though, in all this time, I’ve yet to blog about it.  What can I say – so many places to stalk, so little time to write about […]

Last weekend, while lounging by the pool in Palm Springs, I happened to open up People Magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful  issue and almost fell right off my lawn chair when I saw a pic of my girl Chelsea Handler posing at fave restaurant Rae’s in Santa Monica.  🙂  Chelsea was featured as one of the magazine’s “Pretty Funny” […]

This past weekend, I finally had the pleasure of meeting Mike from MovieShotsLA in person! Mike and I decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, by getting some stalking in during our meeting. 🙂 So we met up on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to grab some coffee and […]

This weekend I dragged my boyfriend to stalk the mansion that Eddie Murphy and his new cop buddies storm at the end of the movie Beverly Hills Cop. The house is not actually located in Beverly Hills, but a good 20 minutes in Santa Monica. The home is absolutely ginormous – I mean the guard […]

Being that I am completely obsessed with Josh Duhamel, one of my favorite movies of all time is (don’t laugh!) Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! In all honesty, the only thing I don’t like about Win A Date is the ending – Kate Bosworth so should have chosen Josh over Topher! 🙂 Otherwise it […]

As I have said countless times before on this blog, there’s pretty much nothing I love more than a filming location that serves coffee.  So I thought stalking the 18th Street Coffee House in Santa Monica, which was featured in the Season 6 episode of Modern Family titled “Rash Decisions,” would be a pleasant experience.  […]

During my recent viewing of A to Z’s digital preview (which you can watch here – I’ve now seen it twice!), I recognized a location featured in it – The Water Garden in Santa Monica.  The Grim Cheaper used to live close to the office complex and I had driven by it countless times over […]

Finding today’s location had me feeling like a complete moron.  Though my obsession with Revenge has waned in recent months (I have only watched three episodes from the current season), I remained hell-bent on tracking down the Colonial-style structure used in establishing shots of the South Fork Inn on the series.  I figured the location […]

Because our flight home from Switzerland landed smack dab in the middle of rush hour on a Friday evening, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to book a hotel and spend the night near the airport rather than make what probably would have been a four-plus hour drive to Palm Springs. It turned out to […]

This past Sunday morning (which was particularly cloudy, as you can see above), the Grim Cheaper and I headed out to Santa Monica to run a couple of errands and while there we happened to walk by the Hotel Shangri-La – a historic Art Deco masterpiece that I have wanted to stalk ever since early […]

This past Tuesday afternoon, while I was in the hospital awaiting my dad’s surgery, I received an email from fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, and I just about jumped out of my chair with excitement. The opening sentences of his email stated, “I’m actually trembling a bit as I type […]

Last Monday afternoon, I found myself having to kill a few hours of time while my car was being repaired at a mechanic’s shop on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, so I headed across the street to grab a latte and some lunch at a restaurant named Aroma Bakery & Café.  I had never before dined […]

Got a challenge a few months back from a man named Glenn who wanted me to locate the house used as the Camden residence on the Aaron Spelling television series 7th Heaven.   Unfortunately, though, this challenge proved to be rather difficult as there are quite a few conflicting rumors about the home’s location floating around online.  The general consensus on most of the […]

I don’t know about you all, but for the past few Sunday nights I have been absolutely glued to my television set watching Season 2 of the Ryan Seacrest produced Denise Richards: It’s Complicated.   And while I admit that the girl is an absolute train wreck and that her laugh is like fingernails on a chalkboard, for […]

Last week, on April Fools’ Day, CBS aired a television special entitled I Get That A Lot in which celebrities posed as normal, everyday people working in normal, everyday jobs.   Hidden cameras captured customers’ reactions as stars like Jessica Simpson, Ice-T, LeAnn Rimes, and Jeff Probst waited on them and told them that they were not, in fact, famous, but […]

Another day, another pawn shop to write about. 🙂 Ironically, just around the corner from the now defunct Beverly Hills, 90210 pawn shop that I blogged about yesterday, is yet another local pawn shop that also has a filming history. Who knew that pawn shops were such popular filming locations?? 🙂 Angelo’s Jewelry and Loan […]

The other night while watching some old episodes of 90210, I was super excited to recognize a location from the Season 3 episode entitled “Midlife . . . Now What?” In the episode Brenda, Kelly, and their moms, along with Donna and Andrea, try to spend a relaxing weekend at a health spa, but, as […]

Last night my boyfriend gave me an article entitled “The Speidi Chronicles” that he had saved for me from Sunday’s LA Times and it was all about Spencer and Heidi. I swear I really need to marry this guy! 🙂 Anyway, Spencer and Heidi sat down at Don Antonio’s for the interview and over some […]

This weekend I stalked the house used as Darrin and Samantha’s home on the 1964 TV series . Interestingly enough, the house, located in Santa Monica, California, was only the inspiration for the home seen on the series, but was never actually used for filming. An exact replica of the Santa Monica house was built […]

On The Hills, Audrina Patridge, Lauren’s roommate, works at Epic Records, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Being that I am completely obsessed with The Hills (when is the second part of the third season going to air already????) I just had to stalk the office building where Audrina works. This location was a […]

The Grim Cheaper is a celebrity magnet.  Literally everywhere he goes, he runs into someone famous.  It’s maddening because 90% of these encounters occur when I am not with him.  Like the time he stopped by a Starbucks while on his way to a business meeting and saw Keanu Reeves sitting outside.  Or the night […]

It is finally that time of year again – October 1st, the start of my Haunted Hollywood postings.  And I could not be more excited, so let’s get to it!  The October 2013 issue of Los Angeles magazine featured an absolutely enthralling article about the arrest of the infamous Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.  I […]

Another Scream 3 filming location that I had long wanted to stalk was Runyon Ranch – the large hilltop home where actress Jennifer Jolie (Parker Posey) lived in the 2000 thriller. I first found out about the locale from fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, but I […]

Once I discovered that Loretta Young’s Palm Springs house (which I blogged about on Tuesday) was not, in fact, the place where Judy Lewis (the legendary actress’ secret love child with Clark Gable) learned the truth about her birth, I set out to track down the location where the encounter actually did take place.  And […]

One location that I stalked quite a while back, but have yet to blog about is the residence belonging to legendary 81-year old Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, a man who is perhaps best known for his contemporary designs of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, […]

While doing some cyberstalking on fave website Virtual Globetrotting a few weeks back, I came across this post listing the address of a Santa Monica home which formerly belonged to cutie Mentalist star – and my latest celebrity crush – Simon Baker and I just about keeled over from excitement.  So, when my dad asked […]

The death of William Desmond Taylor remains one of Hollywood’s most notorious unsolved mysteries, over 90 years after its occurrence.  On the evening of February 1st, 1922, the 50-year-old director was shot and killed in his Westlake apartment complex.  Though there were suspects aplenty, no one was ever indicted in the murder and the case […]

I originally had more than twenty places featured on this list, but, to make it easier on myself, I decided to break up my Things To Do category into “Play” and “See.”  Today, I’ll be covering Play, aka Los Angeles activities and attractions that I recommend.  Enjoy! 1. Disneyland (1313 Disneyland Drive, Anaheim) – OK, […]

Today marks the end of my Guide to L.A. posts.  I hope you had as much fun reading the series as I did putting it together.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s article, to make things easier on myself I broke up my Things to Do recommendations into two categories, “Play” and “See,” though some of […]

When I lived in L.A., one of my favorite things to do was grab a drink with the Grim Cheaper at a different bar every Saturday night.  I loved discovering, cocktail in hand, the myriad of fabulous lounges the city has to offer, many of them historic.  That being said, I am in no way […]

I love coffee pretty much more than life itself, but very rarely do I visit independent coffee houses.  I am all about my Starbucks.  I know, I know, true java aficionados are probably shaking their heads right now.  But I like consistency – I like knowing that I can go into any Starbucks in any […]

I am constantly told that I would make a great concierge for the city of Los Angeles.  I have explored L.A. so much over the years that I know it like the back of my hand and have accumulated a large inventory of favorite places.  I recently decided to corral that inventory into a guide […]

I need to preface this post by stating that I am not in any way, shape or form a foodie.  I enjoy good, fresh fare, but my meal preferences consist mainly of old fashioned comfort foods (you’ll notice many mentions of different fried chicken entrées in the list below).  If a restaurant has bone marrow […]

If there is one thing I love almost as much as stalking, it’s shopping – and shopping in Los Angeles is in a class all its own.  When I first moved to SoCal in 2000, I found myself in retail heaven.  The city boasts a myriad of cute shopping districts, fabulous marketplaces, and one-of-a-kind stores.  […]

Last Friday night while watching my new favorite show Talk Soup (why on earth I was not a regular watcher before is beyond me!!!!), a news flash splashed across my screen announcing that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had wed supermodel girlfriend Gisele Bundchen the previous evening.  According to reports the hush-hush ceremony took place on […]

My father is currently in the hospital (again) as he just had some minor surgery – and no, it was not caused by me dragging him to filming locations! 🙂 As they say, though, every cloud has a silver lining! Not only has his hospital been used as a filming location, but there is a […]

No, the above title does not refer to the 1997 JLo/Ice Cube action flick (a movie I have never seen), but a episode of the same name. The other day while I was hanging out on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Mike (from ) called me and asked if I wouldn’t mind stalking […]

If you lived out your high school years sometime during the nineties, I am sure you were as obsessed with as I was. Big houses, fancy cars, expensive clothes, Luke Perry – what was not to love about the teen soap opera? The Walsh Family’s Spanish Style Beverly Hills home was the very first filming […]

Those who have seen Heidi‘s new music video “Higher” will totally understand when I say it’s a good thing Spencer comes from money as I really don’t see a bright future for him in the music video industry. For those of you who have yet to see Heidi’s video, you really must do so now, […]

In honor of the recent sale of Courteney Cox‘s John Lautner designed Malibu home, I thought I’d do a little stalking of a house she lived in way back in the day. During the first two seasons of , Courteney Cox lived in a charming little house in Santa Monica, located just a few blocks […]

In honor of Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson‘s rekindled romance (pictures of the two frolicking in Miami surfaced on the pages of US Magazine this week), I decided to stalk Owen’s Santa Monica abode. Several months back, I had read an on TMZ which chronicled Owen’s suicide attempt and listed his home’s general location as […]

Got a from Kayli today, who challenged me to find Britney Spears‘ house. Since Britney’s current home is located far from public view in a gated community, I thought I’d instead blog about a past residence of Ms. Spears. While Brit did not call this condo home during any of her recent mental breakdowns, it […]

This weekend, thanks to a few tips from my new stalking buddy Andrew (who posted a comment on my first ), I set out to do some more stalking. The first location I stalked was the Burlington Arcade, a covered shopping colonnade located just off Lake Avenue in Pasadena. I knew from IMDB that had […]