California 2010: Images To Whet Your Appetite

LOS ANGELES—Once I return to East Brunswick, N.J., I'll try to put out a few posts summing up my experience of Los Angeles this week—because there is much to say about this city, for well and ill.

For now, though...a few images from the trip so far to whet your appetite:

Along Hollywood Boulevard

Humphrey Bogart's very personal tribute to Sid Grauman, he of Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Even the big outdoor mall along Hollywood Boulevard exudes cinematic extravagance, here in a tribute to D.W. Griffith's 1916 epic Intolerance

One of the stops on the Starline celebrity-homes tour: the house in which Michael Jackson died

The Beverly Hills of my movie-inspired dreams

In which I contemplate George Clooney's wax likeness at Madame Tussauds

 As in much of Hollywood, a clash between old and new

 The Getty Center, wonderful from its eye-opening exhibits to its intoxicating modern architecture

I both toured through Universal Studios and indulged in my long-dormant kiddie side via its rides (none of which I had been on before)

One particularly explosive moment on Universal Studios' studio tour

In awe of the view of Los Angeles

Runyon Canyon