Hollywood Squares

As recounted in a hilarious L.A. Times piece, two South Dakota women "won" a weekend in Hollywood with a fourth-rate actor. The Hollywood fun that was supposed to be the prize -- perhaps a visit to a movie set, or dinner at a star-studded restaurant? -- amounted to crashing in the apartment of the actor, who made himself scarce:

Kilpatrick bluntly insisted he had more than fulfilled his obligation to them by cleaning his apartment, stocking the refrigerator and leaving the keys with the doorman. Kilpatrick said he had to pick up one of his two sons in Santa Barbara, and he likes to spend enough time there to "relate" to the boys' school. He also had scheduled a two-hour "purification" session, or he might have had more time to give his scheduled visitors a better "expression."

Maybe so. But no one can deny they got a real Hollywood experience:

A man stood on a corner, spewing racial slurs, and when the out-of-towners had to use a restroom, they went into a McDonald's. "A woman was in the stall, leaning against a toilet paper dispenser, shooting up," Shirley says. Her brother was locked out of another stall until a man staggered out, rolling down his sleeve. On the way back to the car, they had to duck for cover when some scaffolding collapsed. And when they reached their street, the car was gone.

They did make it back to South Dakota in one piece, but vowed never to return unless they got to meet, say, Tom Cruise.