Let's give them something to blog about

Harumph. Finally was bored enough yesterday to read my old blog posts and realize

1. its been awhile since i last posted

and

2. i actually enjoy reading what i write

while the second thought may seem egotistical, being able to write well is a skill not everyone can grasp.(after rereading the below post i realize it is a tad disjointed, deal with it) a friend of mine is quite good at it, and should make it his full time job, but until then he has this little jewel for all of us.

Somehow I've become the unofficial expert on fun. Let me explain. All of my girlfriends or as I like to say, gal pals, from college are married or engaged. For the most part this equals nights spent in with their dudes watching movies, walking dogs, cleaning the house. Ok, maybe not cleaning the house, but you get the idea. As I tend to go out to bars occassionally/fairly often and they don't, whenever anyone visits me, they want to "go Hollywood" so to speak. True, compared to them I am the out on the town girl. I didn't used to be that way in Phoenix, but its something about this environment and this city, so its pretty normal for me now. However, when something becomes normal it loses a bit of its excitement. For example, the entertainment culture of the city. Sure, its cool to see things being filmed and possibly running into a celebrity as I park my car or go to the grocery store, but I no longer scan crowds obsessively for that elusive star wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses.

Last week I was in Austin, Texas. yeehaw. Although I had never been to Austin (ok, thats a lie, i was there once almost 10 years ago to visit relatives, but as I only went to their house and was there just a few hours I'm not counting it) somehow it fell into my lap to urge my old college friend out into the bar scene. She ended up having fun and I felt pretty good that even though I had never been there, I still could take someone out on the town.

Does that mean I've become so LA? I'm not sure. I don't think I was overaccessorized in my outfit like the students I see in the morning walking to FIDM (its the fashion school downtown) and I wasn't throwing money around and acting bitchy. All the drinks were free because they were special events related to South By Southwest (which is the reason I was in town) and as for the bitchy part, no comment Adam.

A city of transients

Nowhere have I seen more people who are just passing through. Los Angeles is a city of transients....the homeless, actors, the wide eyed looking for big city thrills. Most people I meet are from somewhere else and again most have only lived here for a short amount of time. Perhaps though I am making an unfair assumption. I live near West Hollywood and when I hit the town tend to go to places nearby. Areas such as Hollywood and Sunset are famous and thus tend to attract those who either want to flaunt it or who are passing through. Normal people can't afford to spend $20 to valet park their cars every Friday and Saturday night or pay $7 for a beer. Sure this is a fun part of the city to live in...now. But, I have to think, how long will I be able to keep up with the pretenses of Hollywood glitz and glam?

This being said I celebrated my birthday at the Saddle Ranch on Sunset Blvd. I had enough respect for myself not to jump on a mechanical bull in front of a room filled with sleezy guys dressed in their best gear from Hollister. I also had enough taste to realize that the only choice when faced with a huge piece of chocolate cake was to shove most of it in my mouth and enjoy. Take that LA girls on diets! So much for losing weight by moving to the city of self induced starvation.

One note: Some of you may have seen the classic film "Big Business" starring Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler as twins switched at birth. One pair grows up rich in NYC while the other grows up in a poor farm town. There is one scene at the end of the movie in which a wealthy businessman finds himself staring at a bum who is basically his twin. When I walk into work I pass this one homeless man always standing in the same place. No sign, no comments, just standing and staring. The biggest thing was that one day he had his hair pulled back. Shocker. Anyway the point is he resembles the bum from that movie. I'll bet some of you may have thought I was going to say he looked like Geoff as I did in a previous post, but no. This guy resembled someone slightly more famous. You'll see on the movie link above he is credited solely as Bum.

What up y'all its my birthday

The only time I ever care to look at my horoscope is on my birthday and as this is a big one, yep the big 25, now I'm in my mid-20s, its time to pay super close attention.

According to the LA Times, let's see what kind of a person I really am and what I'll be doing in the coming year.....

Today's birthday (June 6). Your hunger for information and experiences gives this year an exhilarating start. I should hope I like information and experiences, isn't that what living is all about? Being kind to the horoscopologist though, I do tend to ask a lot of questions and like doing new things. New passions throw open doors in all areas of your life. Hmm, new passions? What do I like doing that is new? Being obsessed with Facebook? I would say that is more boredom than passion though. You're negotiating a partnership all summer. This one sounds like I'm a lawyer. Well at some point I may move into a new apartment with a friend. Is that my partnership? Going in on a timeshare with someone? Pfft, that would just be silly. The strides you've made in your career deliver financial rewards in July. Well, I'm guessing I'll be getting my annual raise then. You make for a fun, romantic getaway in September. Boo, I don't want to wait until September. Of course who is this person I should be romantic with. Maybe my July financial rewards will bring on my new passions which in turn will be this person. Pisces and Taurus people are lifelong friends. Nice, all my other friends you suck I guess.Lucky numbers are: 15, 7, 34, 25 and 4. Who's ready to play the lotto?

How fitting

It's been about a year since I've lasted posted on this blog. Much has happened. Little did I realize last May when I was in Los Angeles for vacation that I would soon be living there/here. So that's me, I moved to the city about 6 months ago with a job totally unrelated to the lifeblood of the city, the entertainment industry. I'm young, in a city full of frivolity and excess, what shall I do? :)

Answer: time for blog to restart

What you're in store for: Random views on this crazy new life from someone who is apparently so not LA. Yup, I've been told I'm not LA. So, for all you who are scared of the unknown, and LA is filled with the unknown, put on those reading glasses and enjoy the blog.

American English

Recently I came across a quiz online about finding out the type of American dialect you have. Since I'm insistent that I don't have a Southern accent, I decided to take this highly scientific short quiz to discover just how General American my accent was......Verdict: I have a little bit of Dixie in me.

I sent this quiz to a random sampling of friends and included a couple of wild cards in there too. Wild cards being Jen from Australia and Andrew from Canada.

Here are the results:

Me:

65% General American English
15% Dixie (I lived in the South for most of my life)
10% Yankee (my mom grew up in NY before moving to CA)
5% Upper Midwestern (apt as my father is from Michigan)
0% Midwestern (thank goodness y'all)


Australia:

apparently I speak general american english!Although I'd like to say that I call a shopping cart a 'trolley' and an easy class is a 'mickey mouse class'

Sara: I'm so Minnesotan!

65% General American English
20% Upper Midwestern
10% Yankee
0% Dixie
0% Midwestern

Tim: Let the record show, I only say 'cruller' because of Wayne's World.But apparently my speech patterns are nearly identical to Alana's,despite the fact that she's from Dixie and I'm from the lower Midwest.Give me time, though, I'll pick up some more upper Midewstern, don't ya know.

65% General American English
15% Yankee
0% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Kelly: (lived in South Carolina her whole life0
Only twice the Dixie you got, which isn't bad for being a no-way-to-deny-it Southerner.

55% General American English
30% Dixie
10% Yankee
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern

Canadian:

55% General American English
20% Yankee
10% Upper Midwestern
5% Dixie
5% Midwestern


If you want to do the quiz:
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?http://www.blogthings.com/whatkindofamericanenglishdoyouspeakquiz/

Also it turns out American English is the name of an American Beatles Tribute Band.

Celeb experience

Last Friday I attended the Phoenix Film Festival with some of my friends. Tim and Adam were volunteering there, as they had for the past few years. You can tell they are now upper level volunteers as they were able to give us free passes along with having headsets and walkie talkies. Those are definitely things that tell the common attendee, "hey this guy is in charge" and for Adam he was certainly taking his position to heart.

Adam and Tim sat in and watched the movie "Nice Guys" starring Jason Mewes (Jay of Jay and Silent Bob) and Jason Marsden (of Step by Step and Eerie, Indiana fame...he now does cartoon voices). As you can tell by the above mentioned celebs, they pulled out the big guns for this movie, which didn't really impress Tim. I watched Lucky Number Slevin whiched starred Lucy Liu, Bruce Willis, and Josh Hartnett. On a side note, Josh Hartnett mostly recently appeared on a Continental flight in which a friend of mine was a flight attendant. As she excitedly told me who was on her flight I tried to feign happiness, however some stars just don't catch on with me....As Geoff says I told him upon hearing about the flight Hartnett...he is not a has been, he is a never was. Ouch, am I mean or what?

Anyway, Lucky Number Slevin was flashily filmed but lacked, hmm, how do you say....being a good movie. The independent movie I saw last night "Self Medicated" was much better. Plus it was set in Las Vegas, and as I'm going there next week I was pleased to get a pre-tour of the city.

So on Friday night after seeing Slevin, we traipsed into the Party tent which consisted of a small VIP area, a silent auction, and a couple of bars set up selling drinks such as Bud to E power which is basically a beer energy drink. As I wandered around I saw my first celeb. One of my childhood faves...Melissa Joan Hart. I always expected big things from her after such a great run on Clarissa Explains it all. While Sabrina the Teenage Witch was no blockbuster it did go on for a good many years and was again a staple of my young teenage years. Heck, I even saw the show when I was in Paris. Guess the French love sitcoms about witches. I'll bet that new Bewitched movie was a big hit there....poor Frenchies. Anyway, I was a tad nervous to go up to her, but Tim helped push me along....he was my partner in crime at confronting the D list celebs for photos and a quick chat. So glad he had his camera. Thanks to Tim I got my photo and my meeting with James van Der Beek came full circle. For a full story on this experience see Tim's Heart to Hart blog post. Needless to say, she was very nice and proves that not all celebrities are terrible people like Jason Schwartzman....who as I hear, still lives in a tent in Elijah Wood's garage. Here is a photo a couple years old right before the Schwartzman "incident". I am posing with the lead singer of Phantom Planet. You can see a grumpy Schwartzman in the background.



My celeb photo caused a near....rather total freak out experience as I didn't expect him to be at the Film Fest. Granted, he is rather low on the D list, but as a teen girl he proved to be a cute little crush on the TGIF lineup. Will Friedle, the older brother from Boy Meets World, or the star of the tv movie, My Date with the President's Daughter. Now, he voices a character on the Disney cartoon Kim Possible. While that is crappy, at least its something. So as I excited twittered about and my friends gazed horrifically at Alana in freak out mode, Tim snapped a pic of me with a bona fide TGIF star.



Pretty proud of ourselves, we strutted back to our friends who had recently been confronted by Friendly Girl. Apparently Geoff in his filmmaker pass had been mistaken for a film editor, a fact he didn't deny....and a girl was trying to woo him with her eagerness to be a star. And no, I am not Friendly Girl. Earlier, she had come up to Tim and Adam and I and said that she was new in the area and came to the festival to meet new people. Upon hearing we were not filmmakers she scurried off, leaving us bewildered and a tad creeped out. Possibly she was just being a friendly girl....however she was mostly just weird.

After my star photo shoots, it was my turn to play photog to Tim and Jason Mewes. Jason Mewes was almost unrecognized as he had cut off his early 90s long blond hair in favor of dyed short black hair. Tim and I chatted with him for a bit asking about his plans for the weekend in the Valley. Poker, Casinos, and strip clubs were his ideas. When strip clubs came up Tim beckoned over to Adam and remarked that "This guy knows all about strip clubs." Which is true, but needless to say Jason did not ask Adam for any tips.

The last photo of the night was Tim posing with a tiny Jason Marsden. In the photo Jason was standing on a curb and yet still Tim towered over the 5'3 Marsden. Another shorty at the film fest, in addition to myself was David Faustino(Bud Bundy of Married with Children), alas although he was walking around like a P-I-M-P, neither Tim nor myself were interested in a photo. For more photos including tiny Marsden........

Canadian Bacon

Last month I was in Canada, learning about Canadian life by living it

Walk up to Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Look, a Beaver Tail, what wonder of wonders!


Here's a few insights to the Canadian culture:

• Newspapers heavily focus on the U.S and their relations with us.
• At the Museum of Civilization many exhibits say" hey so the U.S did this, but there was an important Canadian involved somehow."
• You get American tv shows, so I was still able to watch the Today show in the morning and get my weather done in Fahrenheit as opposed to Celsius.
• Poutines are french fries covered in gravy and mozzarella cheese bits. Sounds gross, but tastes good.
• Contrary to what people may lead you to believe, prices for many things are not cheaper in Canada. Yes, the U.S. dollar is stronger, but higher overall prices in Canada usually make up for any difference. Case in point, a bottle of soda from a machine cost Canadian $2. What a rip off!
• People are very friendly in Canada, which can be a bit to get used to, but pleasing once you do.
• In Montreal, you are greeted "Bonjour, hello" So however you reply that is the language you are spoken to in. I was very impressed with their ability to speak so effortlessly in French or English.
• Tim Horton's is a fast food place that serves burgers with a side of not fries, but donuts. I was grossed out, but when I bit into that donut, immediately wanted another. Wonder if they're drugged?
• Beaver Tails, are pastries with toppings such as maple syrup and sugar or nutella. Tastes very similar to Indian Fry Bread, in other words, yumtastic.
• Coffee Crisps are chocolate covered wafer bars, the best kind of candy bar in my opinion...need Coffee Crisps in U.S. stat!
• Finally, you really can buy maple syrup everywhere and Canadians are damn proud of it!