Trouble! And that starts with T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Burbank!

No pictures today. Except this one:

Oscar and Arlo watching Pee Wee's Big Adventure, mostly filmed on the Warner Lot.

We woke up at the crack of dawn. Chicago dawn, that is. We persuaded the kids to lie down until 5am local time. I grabbed The Goose and Arlo and went down to pillage the breakfast buffet. Real milk for our brewed-in-room coffee, muffins, bagels, yogurt, fresh fruit (IGNORED!) and wee containers of cream cheese that my little guys ate with a spoon instead of spreading in on a poor excuse for a bagel.

The hotel has a lovely little outdoor heated pool. But it's not so lovely at 7am when it's 55 degrees and overcast and your children are ready to play Marco Polo and Who Am I Going To Throw the Ball To, It Won't Be You, Or You, I Think I'll Just Keep the Ball Because It's Fun to Torment My Siblings.

I LOVE that game.

We scooted on inside (OH BEJUS IT WAS COLD) and gave everybody a bath and hairwash. I'd love to tell you that this was a light-hearted fun activity. I jumped in the shower to the screeching of my clean-scrubbed kiddos. We got everybody dressed and headed off to the Lot.

Now, Evan won't really be working on the lot. Currently, he will be moving (last day n NY: 7/1, first day in LA: 7/5) into a building right on the edge of the Lot. The first floor is where the tourists clamber into carts to be driven around the lot. We met Evan's HR person, Dee, at the entrance and we all immediately fell in love with her. Dee is blond, bubbly, smarky, and smart. She led us on a tour of the lot (note to self: bring a stroller next time!).

Many years ago I was sent to Universal Studios after San Diego Comic Con to ferret out material for a card set. My contact very kindly gave me a tour of the lot in the ubiquious golf cart (I was wearing sunglasses, and was young and skinny, quite a few tour groups took pictures of me!)It was a weird feeling because the general public paid cash money to be on an enclosed, extended golf cart and be driven around.

I had the same feeling today traipsing through the lot with the kids, seeing cart after cart pass us by and take pictures of us, in the hope that one of us were famous. Dee took us first into the Jungle Set, which is an overgrown section draped with plenty of imported Spanish Moss. We creeped down a path to discover Merlott's, from True Blood, and plenty of techies getting it ready for the next season. Keep in mind that this overgrown, sultry, lush NOLA set was less than 20 feet from a Burbank parking lot.

We pressed on to the pet shop where Pee Wee saved the snakes, the theater that the barker ping-ponged his ball in front of in the House of Wax, and a subway entrance that looked familiar to the kids until they got to the bottom of the steps and realized there was nothing there.

We hit the WB museum where I got within two inches of the ballgown Bette Davis wore in Now, Voyager, the piano Sam played in Casablanca (not to mentions Elsa and Rick's costumes) plus the top that Leo spun in Inception to make sure he wasn't in his wife's dream.

We went upstairs to the Harry Potter floor. We saw Harry's nook under the stairs, plenty of costumes, models for monsters, and gorgeously made costumes. The suits that the Weasly twins wore during the opening of their store brought me to tears. The Sorting Hat put me into Slytherin. I can't say that I'm all that surprised. Oscar was sorted into Hufflepuff, which I agree with completely.

We went to the Commissary, and got fantastic amounts of food for very little money, all the while being surrounded by friendly Union sorts that loved seeing the kids on the lot. We walked past the sound stage that houses Chuck (a show we've never gotten around to watching) and the amazing sweet tech guys waved us in. We walked into a huge sound stage that looked exactly like our neighborhood Best Buy. Dee, Evan, various tech guys and I explained to Oscar and Arlo (Lucy couldn't care less) about how this was a set, and look at all those guys in the rafters working on the lights.

And the stars aligned, and Oscar figured it out. TV shows and movies are made by grunty guys and ladies just like your mom and dad.

Dee took us to the prop department, and I laid my hand down on an sideboard from the Malese Falcoln, and the angels sang.

We detoured to Evan's office and chatted with a few beloved employees. Plus a few new employees who thought our kids were cute.

HAH! Suckers.

The rest of the day, I'll write tomorrow. Why don;t you mouth off in the comments?