Glamor Shots From My LA Vacation

Things to Do in Pasadena:
Go to Huntington Hospital, which despite the do-gooder vibe of its website is, in fact, some kind of Hospital-to-the-Stars. It's got a pink marble fountain in the entry hall; it's got pink marble everywhere it possibly can. The gift shop (featuring pink marble checkout desk) must be the only hospital gift shop in America with no cheesy stuffed animals or nauseating Precious Moments figurines; instead it sells Japanese objets d'art too expensive to have price tags on them, fine jewelry, and kitchenware from ultra-kooky Paris boutique Pylones. (Nothing says "get well soon" quite like an anthropomorphic cheese grater.) These glamor shots were one of my forms of self-entertainment while waiting in the examination room.

Most surprising of all: I showed up in the ER and spent barely half an hour in its sunlit waiting room. This inconceivably short delay includes the time spent being taken from the life-threatening trauma ER to the garden-variety complaints ER (yes, they have two ER's, each separately staffed). Everyone I encountered-- doctors, nurses, et al--listened, took their time so things got done right, and in all other ways behaved like human beings genuinely interested in my well-being! What magic is this? How does Huntington do it? More to the point, why doesn't anyone else do it?