Happy Halloween!!!

The Post Travel Post

The trip is over. I am once again back in LA. I actually got back Tuesday night and have been fighting jetlag and exhaustion ever since. I don't think I've fallen asleep this early this consistently since I was 8. I'm hoping I can make it a bit later tonight though, as there is pumpkin carving and other exciting pre-Halloween fun to be had.

I have so many things I want to say about this trip, it was incredibly amazingly amazing, but you're going to have to wait just a little longer for all of that. Don't worry, it will happen. Possibly later this weekend.

In the meantime, get out and enjoy Halloween! I love this holiday. I failed in getting together an original costume but luckily a wonderful friend has lent me one of hers. So I will be a "Sexy Baseball Player" and yeah... Hey, don't judge! It's actually the first time I've ever done one of those "Sexy" Halloween costumes. I guess it had to happen eventually? At least I won't look out of place watching the Phillies kick butt tomorrow night!

Yeah, I went there.

Anyway, Happy Halloween kids! Enjoy! Eat candy! Don't get caught egging your neighbor's car! Actually, don't egg your neighbor's car. That's gross.

Travel Post

A quick update from Brooklyn. And my iPod. It's been a good weekend here in NYC. Tomorrow it's off to Israel first thing in the AM.

Don't expect too many updates while I'm out there. Or any. But I promise pictures when I get back!

For now I'm going to continue sitting on the couch and watching TV with an old friend. I may have just been crying from the end of Marly and Me...

See you guys in two weeks!

Stuck In A Tree

You may remember that a while back I began taking requests for whatever. Really, whatever. I was bored and asked my Facebook friends for ideas of what to do. From time to time I've posted the results on this blog (all that bad art? you bet!) but I haven't actually had access to a scanner for the last few weeks. Until I discovered the one in our office yesterday. Yes! The bad art is back!

This particular request came from a fabulous former co-worker while we were all out at the Reno Farewell Party. I was telling the story of how in my senior year of college I got myself stuck in a tree. The next day she put in the request for a visual representation. Who am I to say no to that?

Without further ado, I here now present to you... me. In a tree.

  

 

 

... THE END.

Girl Talk Thursday - Roommate Love

This week's Girl Talk Thursday topic is about roommates.

Roommates. I’ve sure had a lot of them. College, after college, now, I even had a roommate on an indie film I worked on once. We were shooting in Ft. Myers, FL and while I lived close-ish it was definitely too far for a daily commute. So the producer put most of the crew up in what used to be an assisted living facility. My roommate was the make-up artist and she was a really sweet girl with a boyfriend who built us awesome curtains out of a furni pad. The place was also haunted…

Miraculously I’m still on speaking terms with most of the people I’ve lived with and the rest it’s more of a lost touch kind of thing rather than a “She (or in one case He) was awful” kind of thing. I have good stories from a lot of the cohabitations but no real horror stories. Honestly, my roommates may have more horror stories about me than I have about them (just ask J about the now infamous Jameson night back in April. Or even better, DON’T).

Actually speaking of roommates, K and I have just passed our 2-year anniversary in Bonaparte House. We moved in October ’07. This just occurred to me. Right now. As I typed the above paragraph. Wow.

My Bonaparte Set on Flickr.

I love my house and my two roommates. Sure, we’ve had our spats, if you can even call them that. Occasionally something will be said about the dirty dishes, that sort of thing. For the most part though we all get along. We hangout, we have beer & pizza nights, we IM during the day when we’re all at work. There will be long email chains making elaborate plans for weekend activities. So what if there’s a honeycomb still stuck in our wall? Living at Bonaparte is great.

What are some of my favorite memories?

Since I don’t remember half of it, I can’t really qualify our first Halloween party as memorable per se. It was pretty epic though. A great crowd, good costumes, tasty snacks (spicy popcorn!), and a bit of scandal. Epic I tell you. Epic.

My 25th birthday was also pretty epic. K and I devouring a smorgasbord of bad for you food including I don’t even remember what. There was mac and cheese? That sort of thing. And a bottle of vodka… Then J joined us for bar adventures and general goofiness.

Speaking of birthdays, K’s surprise party this year was pretty great too.

Then there was the painting of the living room of which I was only marginally a part. I spent most of that day fighting with my old Ikea bed, trying to disassemble the damn thing. I helped paint one wall though!

Pretty much any day that’s involved a bike ride to the beach or visit to the farmer’s market has been awesome.

Or how about the night J came home late with her friend C and they decided I needed to join them for an impromptu dance party in the living room? I remember I was in bed, mostly asleep, when I became aware of whispering in the hall outside of my bedroom. Next thing I know the door is busting open and two drunk people are jumping on my bed. C picked me up, literally picked me up, spun me around, and announced that the dance party was on. What do you in the face of the craziness? Grab a beer and join it of course! I remember being spun around to the music of Justice a lot that night. It was great.

Sometimes the house feels small (it is a little), sometimes the landlord drives us nuts (leaking shower anyone?), and sometimes we all just need our alone time. Overall though, we’re three kinda nutty girls who get along and over the last two years have become close friends. I love my Bonaparte Bitches. I can’t imagine two ladies I’d enjoy living with more.

West Hollywood Book Fair... and Cookies?

The Ginger Cookie madness is never ending. Mostly because I will not let it end. Delicious, delicious madness.

I was meeting a friend for dinner at Real Food Daily Sunday after the book fair and as I was a little early, I decided to grab a beer at the counter while I waited for him. On display they have a variety of tasty looking baked things under protective, pretty glass covers. What happened to be right in front of me? Giant Ginger Cookies. It was fate. Or destiny. Or some such thing. It was also an incredibly tasty way to finish a very satisfying dinner.

At least this time I included a picture.

Book Fair was great! I knew there was a reason I linked to it ten billion times. I forgot about the triathlon or whatever it was going on Sunday morning which unfortunately meant I was stuck trying to make my way up from the westside in the most oblique manner ever. But after two hours of back tracking and driving in circles and getting vaguely lost (why have I been getting lost so much lately? Thomas Guide, where did I put you???) I finally arrived to find free parking and the Border Grill truck. And my roommate who was very confused as to how she managed to beat me there.

We wandered around, caught a few panels, got things signed, I bought more books as I figured I would. We took a break at one point to grab some water from the grocery across the street. That ended in an almost awkward disaster as I saw a former co-worker I had no desire to ever make casual chat with again. Luckily I was able to escape before being noticed.

Panels! I didn't make it to all of the ones I wanted to check out (like the one about Zombie stuff with Amber Benson) but I really enjoyed the few I saw.

Bryan Lee O'Malley and Joshua Dysart talk Scott Pilgrim

Josh Dysart (Unknown Soldier) had a great panel chatting with Bryan Lee O'Malley about Scott Pilgrim and the process of adapting that comic into a film. I'm such a nerd for things like this. I love hearing about the different experiences people have from various angles of getting into Hollywood. It's always a challenge regardless of whether your experience is good or bad. I also found interesting how the movie and comic evolved sort of together and yet end up in different directions. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all compares.

Josh also did a a great job as a fan and fellow comic person leading the discussion. It was fun to watch them both talk.

Gerry Conway, Asterios Kokkinos, John Rogers, Laura Valdivia, Kevin Seccia

The Comics on Comics panel was hilarious. Good points were also addressed and the super enthusiastic kid in the audience made for some additional entertainment. He was really into his Venom.

D.J. Kirkbride, Darren Clavadetscher, Ed Laroche, Kiyoshi Nakazawa, Joe Matt

(Jordan Crane eventually showed up too!)

The last panel I caught was the Indie Creators panel. I think it was actually one of the more interesting panels I've seen. The guys up there had quite diverging opinions on various comic type things, from the practical side of marketing to the more esoteric question of "what is the perfect comic?" They got feisty!

And if you've been following my comments section, you'll be happy to know that I did manage to say "hi" to D.J. Kirkbride after the panel. I also bought Jordan Crane's comic which I'm very excited to read. I would have grabbed more (including Popgun which is just a bit out of my financial grasp at the moment, sorry D.J.!) but I'm still broke. Oh the glamorous life of the freelance filmmaker...

I really did enjoy the book fair and I can't recommend attending next year's enough. My afternoon focused pretty heavily on the comics but that's by no means all that's there. They had a variety of panels on all sorts of genres, poetry, theater, etc. I talked to various booth people about indie publishing, writing classes at UCLA, some cool sounding theater stuff, more comics, books, and lots of writing.

There are also a number of things going on for kids and families. Kids should be encouraged to read and love books! This is a great thing! I would totally bring kids if I had any! Maybe next year I can borrow few. Parents won't mind if I just pull a few off the street, right? I'll return them after the book fair...

What I did manage to buy:
Uptight #3 by Jordan Crane
Unknown Soldier by Joshua Dysart
Death's Daughter by Amber Benson
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

Completely unrelated, I've been listening to a lot of Neko Case, Regina Spektor, and David Byrne lately. In case you were wondering. I don't know, it seemed pertinent that I share this information with you... um... yes...

Go read stuff!

Thinking Things Through

There are always lots of things to think about. My mind has been mostly full of one of them for the last few weeks.

In just over a week I'll embarking on one of the biggest trips of my life. No exaggeration! I'm leaving L.A. for two and half weeks and what's more, I'm leaving the COUNTRY for 10 days. This is huge guys. I'm 26-years-old and I've never left the country. Maybe it's my socio-economic place in this world, but from where I'm coming from this is not really normal. Almost everyone I know has at least been to Mexico or maybe Canada. I never have. Up until two days ago I didn't even have a passport.

Needless to say, I'm very excited. Excited and nervous as heck. Mostly emphasis on the excited though. My plan for the weekend involves lots of last minute shopping and packing. I don't need to get much but there are few items that need to be purchased. I've already picked up my shoes.

I'm also not planning on bringing my computer with me so this means that as of a week from Saturday I will be offline. No blogging, no Facebook, no Twitter once I leave the states... no more online timesuck. I will have my ipod with me so I could potentially be updating from there when wireless makes itself available. But that's about it.

I have to admit that I'm almost as excited about the prospect of disconnecting as I am about the trip itself. I love the internet and what it does for me but sometimes... I just need a break. This sure is going to be a big one.

In the meantime, there are still other things to occupy my brainspace with.

Roman Polanksi. Okay, not going to say much more about this but I think I can better articulate my thoughts on it all after reading more and talking to folks and thinking about it. Here's what I think. Looking at the crime - reprehensible. There's no excusing it, plain and simple. Looking at the reactions to the story - ridiculous. On the one hand, we have people yelling for his head. People who up until a week ago couldn't have cared less. 33 years and you get offended now? Come on. On the other hand, this petition to free him? No matter what else, he's still guilty. Whatever other absurdity is going on, how can you justify signing a petition to release someone guilty of the crime? And Woody Allen signing in support? Seriously? I feel like I'm watching a satire, not real life. It's all absurd.

And I'm done. That's all I'm going to say about it. I didn't much care about what Polanski was doing last week beyond a passing interest in what his newest film might be and I think it's probably best to stick to that. There's all ready enough hypocrisy to go around.

More fun things!

For the Vegans: Came across this site thanks to @ecovegangirl. Curious if your beer/wine/liquor is vegan friendly? Check out Barnivore! Happy to see that some of my favorites like Stone and Abita are on the list.

Also on the vegan front is Vegan Oktoberfest  at Verdugo Bar on Sunday. I probably won't make it since I'll be at the book fair all day but it looks tasty!

And how many times can I link to the book fair? Really?

Rashomon is playing at the Nuart! I have so much going on and I've seen this movie not just a few times but still. A nice new 35mm print? Tempting...

Thom Yorke is doing a surprise show tonight but good luck getting tickets to that! And if you did get tickets, don't tell me. I don't want to know. You jerks.

Adam P. Knave has an interview up about Stays Crunchy in Milk. It's good! Go read it! And then read his book that my favorite grammarmonkey edited.

That's all I got at the moment. This work thing is actually requiring me to work. So back to that!