The Pageant of the Masters and other fun events in Laguna Beach

This past weekend Mary, Marla, Craig and I attended the Pageant of the Masters at Laguna Beach. What is this event? First, check here: http://www.foapom.com/ Then read Marla's description of the event and the weekend at her most excellent blog: http://3dogdays.blogspot.com/2009/08/laguna-beach.html
I can't add much to what she wrote. According to Mary this was our 6th time at PoM but the first time we spent the weekend there. The previous 5 times was as guests of Allison Transmisisons (a little corporate graft and corruption?). The very nice guy who organized the event each year for his best customers passed away and although Allison did one more event after his passing I have the feeling that the annual boondoggle fell victim to corporate cost cutting. Mary asked for tickets to PoM for her birthday which I was very happy to oblige.

Laguna Beach is an interesting place, very artsy and very expensive. How expensive you ask? So much that there are no fast food outlets in town. The most reasonable place we could locate to eat was a pizza parlor which wasn't bad at all. Laguna Beach is so ritzy that we stopped counting Ferraris when we reached 5; it just wasn't worth the effort. We also saw 4 Lamborghinis, 2 Aston Martins, a Morgan plus 2, and and several other exotic cars. Walking from our hotel to the downtown area we came across a small art gallery that had both Asian artifacts and Andy Warhol posters - I didn't see the connection but who am I to judge this? We went in and saw Ming vases and Japanese horse statues that sold for $300,000 each!! It made me ill just to be in the room with them. The stuff was just sitting on pedestals begging to be knocked off and broken. The owner hustled into the gallery to check us out; I can only guess we set off some sort of rube alarm when we came in. I had to wait outside until everyone emerged with nothing broken.

The show was great, the art was fantastic and Craig almost talked me into spending close to a grand for two aircraft paintings. You may note that I said almost. Mary and I would like to go back again and spend two nights in town this time. I would even like to go to the beach at Laguna Beach!