Thursday, July 21, 2005

Hello, Kitty



A new business just opened up at Santa Monica and La Cienega, just around the corner from where I live in West Hollywood. It's called "Famima!!" -- with two exclamation points.

It's supposed to be an upscale convenience store. There are 11,000 of them in Japan and East Asia. This is their first one to open in America as part of their "Pan-Pacific Plan" for 20,000 stores worldwide.

The store certainly is beautiful and I like how the items are displayed. But unless they make a lot of changes, I don't think 7-11 has anything to worry about.

1) The parking is terrible. Easy parking is key in California.
2) No beer or lottery tickets. Time to learn a little about your customers.
3) They have an entire aisle dedicated to fancy stationary. Who even writes anymore?
4) I can't think of another time I walked through a convenience store and didn't see a single thing I wanted to buy. Usually it's the opposite.

It's a trippy place to visit.

Moviewise, I saw "Happy Endings" tonight -- Don Roos' new movie (his last was "The Opposite of Sex.") It's one of those movies where seemingly unrelated storylines intersect.

Great performances from a large cast including Jesse Bradford (is there a new law he has to be in everything?), Jason Ritter (John's spitting-image son), Lisa Kudrow (who proves she can act), Maggie Gyllenhaal (who proves she can sing) and Tom Arnold (who proves he's not always obnoxious -- the biggest shock of all).
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