Love in the 21st Century

Having lived in Southern California for upwards of three years, I’ve had some experiences with earthquakes, and after a spate of them last spring, I got a little jumpy.  Every time the children upstairs would run around (which was quite often), I’d think it was maybe an earthquake.

The funny thing about real earthquakes, though, is that you always think it’s just the kids upstairs running around.  Yesterday I stepped out of my bedroom to talk to my roommate and her friend, who’d just gotten home, at pretty much exactly the moment the quake hit, and I didn’t feel it so much as see it: the bookshelf (a cheap shelving unit from Ikea) was swaying.  Nothing on it was moving–and it holds a lot of knickknacks and vases–but the entire thing was swaying.  And I couldn’t figure it out.  Seriously, the first words out of my mouth were, “Wait, why is the bookcase moving?”

It was my roommate’s friend who said, “This is an earthquake.”   Right.

Sign of the times: my first reaction, once the ground stops rolling, is always to go on Facebook or Twitter to verify that other people felt it too, and that it was, indeed, an earthquake.  It’s up there a few minutes before it hits the U.S. Geological Survey website.

I’m spending a lot of time on the internet lately, as my job doing “research” translates into me looking things up online, and last week’s big project was finding new music.  I found myself on the CW’s music page, discovering a bunch of bands I’d never heard of, and downloading untold amounts of songs, all of them, in their own ways, my new favorites.

Topping the list: a song about–what else?  Robots in love.

The song is by Beautiful Small Machines, who were featured in an episode of “90210″, which is one of the few CW shows I don’t actually watch, but apparently the music is fantastic.

The song, set to a synthy electronic beat, is about love 21st-century style, where we’re all so commitment-phobic that when it comes to dating, we don’t want to get our emotions entangled in something that has the potential to leave us hurt.  Self defenses taken to the extreme.  I had one friend who liked to describe her “cold unfeeling robot heart”.  And now it’s been immortalized in song.

I think it’s my new anthem.  One of them, at least.

Passover Eats and Easter Sweets

Happy Easter, everyone!

Otherwise known as the sixth day of Passover.  Like any good Jew, I have given up carbs for the week, though my “Atkins diet” joke now seems horribly outdated.  But I can understand how people lost weight on Atkins: you can’t eat anything.  All the easy foods have carbs.  Pizza, pasta, sandwiches.  My Passover staple is tuna fish on matzah, but I have to be careful about the mercury, so lunch is usually salad.  And then for dinner I have to do this thing called “cooking”.

Luckily over the years I’ve learned how to do a couple things with chicken.  First up: chicken with apples and brie, something I came up with myself, the adventurous chef that I am.   It’s pretty simple.  Cook some chicken (in a pan with some butter: quick and easy).  Slice apples.  Put them on top of the chicken, top with cheese.  Bake in the oven for 5-10 minutes, long enough for the cheese to melt.

Yesterday was stir fry.  Again, easy peasy, except for the part where I dumped half a jar of sesame seeds into the pan.  Whoops.

And tonight, honey mustard chicken, the recipe for which I got from the label of the mayonnaise jar.  Half a cup of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of mustard, one tablespoon of honey, a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar if you have it (mine expired), some salt and pepper and scallions, if you’re feeling sassy.  Coat the chicken in the sauce and cook it.  Add more sauce as you go, some extra as you serve it.  It was actually quite tasty.

The best part, though, is dessert:

Oh yes.  For a nice Jewish girl, I have quite the addiction to Easter candy.  Anything chocolate, really, but that’s pretty much all Easter candy is.  If I celebrated, I’m sure Easter would have been my favorite holiday as a kid, but then, as I’ve said, my mother never denied me the chocolate.  Still, it was quite the revelation when I realized I could buy Easter candy for myself.  That’s really when my addiction began in earnest.  My freshman year of college, my dorm was across the CVS and I would go to the store every other day to buy chocolate bunnies.

These guys are my favorites.  The hollow Palmer bunnies with the sugar candy accents.  It’s so wrong and yet I can’t stop myself.  At Ralph’s on Easter, when people are snatching up last-minute gifts for their kids, I’m buying up all the bunnies I can find.  And don’t get me started on Cadbury Eggs.  As soon as they hit the shelves in… what is it these days?  February?  January?  Either way, I am all over them, and stay all over them until they disappear, their sweet creamy filling not to be savored again until next year.

In the meantime,  I have some more adult treats to enjoy.

Strawberries were 88 cents a pound at Ralph’s, pineapples 49 cents a pound, which to me meant that it was time for another vodka infusion.   A summery one.  (My wintery apples and cinnamon concoction had been marinating in there for way too long.)

The infusion jar is one of the best things I’ve ever purchased, $35 online (though I got the 200 oz. one, which is probably twice as big as I needed), and I’m always infusing something.  It’s easier than any of my chicken recipes.  Instructions go something like: Cut up fruit.  Put in jar.  Pour in vodka.  Let sit.

I add sugar to sweeten it up, and within a couple days it’s ready.  You can drink it straight and it tastes like candy.  Dangerous, but so good.  Maybe not Kosher for Passover, but Passover is almost over.

Under Pressure

I am a child of the eighties, but my mother wasn’t exactly hip to the trends of the day, so I missed out on a lot of the pop culture of the day.  Which was probably good from a fashion perspective, but it also means that my early influences were more John Denver than Jon Bon Jovi, more Little Mermaid than Lost Boys (though The Little Mermaid is still one of my favorite movies of all time).

This trend spilled over into my early adolescence–I still have vivid memories of the day, in the middle school library, one of my classmates taught me how to tight-roll my jeans.  And when it came to music, well, I’d heard of Vanilla Ice.  I knew “Ice Ice Baby”.  But I didn’t know all the words.  And until recently, I didn’t know that the song sampled heavily from “Under Pressure”, the 1981 hit by Queen and David Bowie (okay, confession: I didn’t know until I just looked it up on Wikipedia, that the song was a collaboration between Queen and David Bowie).

But whatever Eminem’s predecessor did to that song is nothing compared to what these guys did to both songs:

They are Jedward, a pair of 18-year-old identical twins from Ireland named John and Edward, who first gained fame on Simon Cowell’s “The X Factor” in Great Britain.  And their first single is a mash-up called “Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)”.  With a cameo by none other than Vanilla Ice.

I can’t take full credit for this discovery.  I read about it in Entertainment Weekly, my source for all pop culture’s Musts: Must Read, Must Listen, Must Watch.

Must share with all your friends.  The only sad thing is that is only available for download in the UK.

Tox and Detox

I believe in networking, in theory.  I definitely believe that it’s who you know, rather than what.  That’s how I’ve gotten most of my jobs.  But as far as special networking events, where you go and schmooze perfect strangers who you have some marginal connection to hoping that you might impress one of them enough into hiring you or hooking you up, well, I’m not so sure that really works.  (But then, I’m the only person I know who’s ever gotten a job off the UTA JobsList.)  And still I feel like I should go to these events, because you never know where that big break is going to come from.

Here in LA there’s a group that takes networking to the next level, bringing together young, upwardly mobile and ambitious twentysomethings, looking for their next job, or maybe just their next lay.  This is The Ivy Plus Society (TIPS for short), also operating in DC, New York and San Fran.  TIPS started as a young alumni group for Ivy League grads (“plus” people from other elite schools like Stanford and Duke)  and has since expanded to pretty much anyone who is on their email list and willing to pay for their events.

And there is one every month, at one of the city’s hottest clubs.  The first one I went to was at Social on Sunset a few years back; I was going to go to the latest one, at Haute on Robertson (across from the Abbey), had paid and everything, but ended up sick.  But TIPS doesn’t just do bar nights.  I went once to a pool party at the Standard in West Hollywood, and last spring they had a special makeover day at Fred Segal in Santa Monica.  I brought my roommate.

This event was free, and in addition to mini-makeovers, they were giving out goodie bags (with makeup samples) and passing out the bubbly, courtesy of Barefoot.  But my favorite part was the mini-facials.  Particularly, this:

Malin & Goetz‘s Detox Face Mask was Allure Magazine’s Editor’s Choice for Best Deep Cleaning Mask back in 2008, and with good reason.  This is the most fun I’ve ever had washing my face.  The gel comes out of the bottle all rich and creamy, but the second you smooth it on your skin, it does the most extraordinary thing: it starts bubbling.  Foaming.  Digging all the gross stuff out of your skin, and deep-cleaning your pores.  According to the website:

Innovative, oxygenating cleansing agents replace harsh detergents and drying clays to deep-pore-cleanse, lifting dirt, oil and make-up away from the skin without irritation, while creating a physical barrier to seal hydration.

The bubbles build up in places where your pores are clogged, and wick away when they’ve done the work.  After five minutes (or for me, whenever the mask stops bubbling), you wash it off, and the product leaves a soft layer on your skin as a moisturizer.

Leaving you nice and refreshed and ready for another round of networking.

Still Loving Ghosts

I’ve said it before and I will probably say it many, many more times, but I am a shameless fan of reality television.  And one of my many vices, the show behind the pseudo-celebrity disaster known as Speidi, is MTV’s “The Hills”.

Long before Spencer Pratt became my favorite TV villain, “The Hills” was a sweet little show about a couple of young girls trying to make it in LA (which more often than not ended with them getting into fights in the parking lot outside Les Deux), and watching the show from my couch in my lonely apartment in Providence, I decided I wanted to move to Los Angeles and be them.  Well, a smarter version of them.

Okay, really, I’d been thinking about making the move before Lauren Conrad and friends moved into what was soon to be my ‘hood, but definitely the show helped crystallize that decision for me.  Their cameras have a way of making this city look stunning.  And it is, even if the glam life isn’t all that glam on the inside.  But that is neither here nor there.

I stopped watching “The Hills” for a while there, when the initial novelty of Spencer’s evil ways wore off, but I came back for Season 5, when Kristin Cavallari replaced her old “Laguna Beach” nemesis and Spencer and I finally found something we agreed on: he should not be allowed to reproduce.  Witness this exchange between Spencer and his friend Douchebag Charlie:

Spencer: “I’m gonna have the kind of kid that’s gonna grow and just try to kill me.  I can just feel that, you know?”

Douchebag Charlie: “A little Oedipus complex?  A lot of kids do that.”

How can you not love this show?

But the other thing I appreciate about “The Hills” is the use of the show as a promotional venue.  Yeah, maybe Heidi never really worked for SBE, but seeing her work their parties on TV surely drove tons of people to their clubs.  And Audrina’s “job” at some record company or other led to the showcasing of some fresh talent.  Or at least one band that caught my attention when they were featured on “The Hills”.

The band is Vedera and its music, with singer Kristen May’s strong and plaintive vocals, strikes a chord somehow both poignant and inspiring.  In a world where most female artists are producing cheesy pop, this is a sweet treat of substantial songwriting.

And it might have been the best thing to come out of “The Hills” all season.

Closet Inspirations

I had this grand idea yesterday of kicking off Fashion Fridays on the blog, and then I got distracted.  I blame the sore arms (and bruised knee) from pole dancing, and the enticement of seeing Ian Somerhalder shirtless on “Vampire Diaries”.   So this is the entry I meant to write yesterday.  Fashion Fridays will begin in earnest next week.

So, as you may have figured out, I like shiny sparkly pretty things, and clothing is definitely high up on the list.  I have a horrible dress addiction that is apparently shared by the city of Los Angeles, which has its own torrid love affair with the dress, in all its various shapes and styles.  After three years of wearing dresses almost exclusively, I finally started moving into more structured clothing options back in the fall.  And then it was 80 degrees a couple weeks ago and I remembered why I only wear dresses.  They are the perfect summer outfit and in LA it is pretty much summer all the time.

Still, I like mixing it up.  (Fashion-wise, not weather-wise.  For all of you who think you would miss seasons, take it from a native New Englander: all those times I’ve stepped outside in January when it was 80 degrees and sunny, I never once thought, “Man, I wish it were snowing right now”.  I take my ski trips to Colorado every winter, spend a few days in the snow, then come home to sunny California.)

Lately I’ve been drawing inspiration from my friend Jenny.

Jenny has started this new project, Closet365, where she is challenging herself to wear a different outfit everyday for a full year.  She’s got a leg up on some of us in that she works in a retail store, so she can keep adding to her repertoire, but she’s also at the front line of most of the trends, and the project is forcing her to get creative and find new ways to pair pieces.  Which I find endlessly fascinating.  So I’m trying to take a page from her book and take some interesting chances in my own outfits.

Right now, I’m digging skinny jeans, floaty tops, high heels, and big accessories (but not so big that they overwhelm my tiny frame).  Plus, I have a fabulous new yellow hobo from Target that is big enough to fit my computer (the ubersleek MacBook Air).

And as it’s Saturday and beautiful out, I think I’m going to throw on a dress and walk down to Melrose hoping for some inspiration.  The challenge is always to leave those stores without buying anything.  Wish me luck!

Adventures in Pole Dancing

Confession: I have a horrible addiction to reality TV.  All of it, from the high-brow (like seven-time Emmy-winner “The Amazing Race”) to the lowest of the low.  Like “Jersey Shore”.  Or “Rock of Love Bus”.  It was on this VH1 gem that Taya, the one who was supposed to be a Penthouse Pet and not a stripper, showed us that she really knew how to work a pole.

And watching her turn her tricks, I had two thoughts, neither of which was to be horrified or offended.  The first thought was, Man, she must have thighs of steel.  Followed rather quickly by, That looks like fun!  I want to learn!

So a few months ago when I saw a Groupon offering four pole dancing and sexy cardio classes for $35 at Evolve Dance Studio, I couldn’t resist, though it took until today for me to work up the courage find the time to actually go.

Now, I’m on the small side, with a wiry, athletic build.  I took gymnastics and dance classes as a kid, and swam in high school.  I have a decent amount of control over my body.  I’m pretty good when it comes to those Pilates-type moves that require balance and coordination.  I have strong abs and arms–at least, enough to support my body weight (which is next to nothing).  So I thought I would do okay in my first attempts at swinging around a stripper pole.

I was wrong.  Taya might make it look easy, but it is not.  It is motherfriggin’ hard.

For one, I had a pair of these things strapped to my feet:

At 5’2″, I wear a lot of heels.  Very few of them are six-inch platform stilettos.  These puppies are hard to balance on just standing, much less slinking sexily around a pole.  And most of my movements, well, I don’t exactly exude sex appeal.  Especially when trying to move my body in ways it is not used to moving, pulling muscles I didn’t even realize I had, while banging loose limbs against the pole.  Plus, watching someone do it, you forget that you get dizzy, from all that spinning.  It was hot in the room.  I was wearing more clothes than most of the other girls (leggings and a tank top, as opposed to underwear).  I had to keep taking breaks, sitting down and drinking water.

But I think I learned a thing or two, might have even gotten in a couple decent swings.  I’m going to try again next week (it helps that I’ve already paid for the class).  Maybe practice walking around in those shoes, since I own them now.  And I’m a quick study, so with any luck, I will be rocking the pole within no time.

But man, I am going to be hurting tomorrow.

S’more

It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve started appreciating breakfast foods.  Pancakes.  Omelets.  Bagels and cream cheese.  (Not bacon though; I have always been a fan of bacon.)  I never really ate any of that stuff growing up.  My mother always fed me chocolate for breakfast.

Anything and everything.  Cake.  Brownies.  I have been known to pour some Nestle’s chocolate bits into a paper cup and essentially inhale them.

And then there are Mallomars.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Mallomars are cookies topped with marshmallows and dipped in chocolate.  Basically, a s’more in cookie form.  Or as I like to think of it, heaven, in cookie form.

Unfortunately, Mallomars are only available in the winter months, and they are not available at all in Los Angeles.  So my mother has taken it upon herself to send them to me, boxes and boxes of them, so at last count I had six boxes in my fridge, and another six in my freezer.  Since I haven’t really gone grocery shopping in a couple months, they are pretty much the only thing in my refrigerator.  But I work long hours and go out to eat a lot and somehow I keep forgetting I have Mallomars, even though my mother keeps reminding me that they are about to go out of season and offering to send me more.

So, at her urging, I brought a few boxes into the office.  There are eight of us.  We polished off a box in a day.  For CaLisa, born and raised in LA, it was her first Mallomar experience, and Michael made her toast–clinking cookies–before she took her first bite.  She described it as “life-changing.”  Her Facebook status now reads: “Oh, sweet Mallomar, where have you been all my life…”

A revelation.  In cookie form.

I Am Me.

When I turned 30 a few months back, I opted to spend the big day on top of a mountain in Telluride, Colorado.  I figured that way, I wouldn’t be thinking about the things I didn’t have at 30 (a house, a husband, kids, a steady income, health benefits), and would be focused on what I did have: soft snow, steep slopes, and stunning views of mountains that speak to my soul.  The only thing I was worrying about that morning was deciding whether to ski a couple more runs in Revelation Bowl, or head over to Chair 9 and take the Plunge.

I chose the Plunge.

After a few more runs, I headed into the Mountain Village and met up with my friend for massages at the Spa at the Capella, emerging hours later relaxed and rejuvenated, thinking maybe 30 looked good on me, and it definitely felt good on me.

Back out at the reception desk, I started sampling these perfume rollers that were set out on the counter: the I am collection from Danica.  Each little bottle had a different color and a different name, each representing different parts of you: I am passion, I am rich, I am naked, I am good.

I sniffed all of them, some of them two or three times, before settling on a fruity floral that seemed to reflect the very essence of who I am: Me. A light pretty scent with notes of green apple, orange blossom and vetivert.

I am a true masterpiece.

Authentic, inspiring, a genuine one-of-a-kind original.

Bold and indelible is my signature.

I am me.

A fitting choice to mark this big milestone in my life.

A New Obsession

I recently hit a major milestone in my life: the big 3-0, the moment when you cross that threshold from “finding yourself” into something resembling actual adulthood, where the excuse “I was too young to know any better” doesn’t hold water anymore.  Theoretically.  I still believe that the secret no one ever tells you is that no matter how old you get, you’ll still always feel like you’re 16.  But I can admit that in my old age, I’ve learned a thing or two about who I am and what I like.  I can look around at my life and my world and see a definite perspective, one that is uniquely mine.

I am an artist and writer by nature, a TV producer by trade, and I get paid to surf the internet and find fun and interesting things that can be turned into memorable television moments.  I know when I’ve stumbled onto something great when I feel that rush of adrenaline, that sense of excitement swelling up in my chest.  In my mind, my latest discovery–whatever it might be–becomes the most awesome thing ever!

I get a little obsessed.

And I want to share my obsessions with everyone.

It extends beyond work.  TV shows.  Clothes.  Art.  Jewelry.  YouTube Videos.  Food.  If I like something, I don’t just like it.  I gush about it.  And what better place to gush than on a blog, where my obsessions can become someone else’s inspirations?

And hopefully this blog will become your newest obsession.  Welcome!