Sundance Film Festival: Downtown and Dirty Shorts

I'm very excited about our upcoming event - Sundance Film Festival Presents: Downtown and Dirty Shorts. It's a screening of short films from filmmakers including James Franco (with Michael Shannon), Jody Hill (Observe & Report), David Gordon Green, Todd Rohal, etc. It's a screening, then a party on the roof of the theater. Great films, a great space and the price is right (free!). We wanted to reach out to our LA audiences, and have a little fun before Festival season really hits. Come!

Sundance Film Festival Presents: Downtown and Dirty Shorts
Friday, August 21st
Downtown Independent
251 S. Main Street
8PM - Screenings
10 PM - After party (on the rooftop!)
Midnight - After, after party (at 5 Star next door)

Crawfish & Cinespia

It is definitely summertime. Cullen threw a crawfish boil in his new house in Echo Park, which is beautiful. He flew in tons of crawfish from Louisiana and boiled them with corn, onions, artichokes and potatoes. It was amazing. I couldn’t stop eating the crawfish even after my lips started burning from all the Cajun seasoning…it was that good. I didn’t grow up eating crawfish - in my neck of the woods, we called them crawdads, and we would catch them in the creek for fun. Late May also marked the beginning of my absolute favorite summer activity - Cinespia (movies in Hollywood Forever Cemetery). The first film was Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke, which I’d never seen. The place was packed, and I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time at the cemetery this summer.:) BSE.

Beginning of BSE

My friend Whitney started using the phrase BSE "Best Summer Ever" a few months ago. One thing that's great about LA is that it's basically summer all year round. So, our BSE started mid-March. BSE started with us (Jennifer, Siobhan, Hollie and me) making it to the bowling finals (see above). It was a great season and we met a bunch of cool people. Unfortunately, our team name was "Don't Look at Our Mole While We Bowl" which Siobhan submitted as a joke. Obviously, no one knew what this meant, and our team name was mis-entered into the system as "Don't Look at My Moke", which even less people understood. This confusion may have worked in our favor, distracting the other teams and helping the Mokes land in the finals. While ultimately we choked under the pressure and lost to Cobra Kai in the first round, we were the only all-girl team to make it to the finals. Go Team Moke!

Green Thumbs

So, I have managed to keep my aloe vera and Christmas catcus plants alive, but they aren't exactly flourishing. The aloe vera plant on the bottom is Jessica's...because I am the meanest sister-in-law in the world! (hahaahahah -evil laughter). I'd love to figure out how to make my plants happy - maybe repotting them? Or separating them into two plants? Also, I've been dying for a salad garden, or even just tomatoes. I used to love grandma and grandpa's garden with all of the watermelons. Sigh. Is it fair to want to go off and do whatever crazy things you want, but for NOTHING at home to change at all? For it to always stay the exact same? Thank g-d my parents haven't turned my childhood bedroom into a homegym or something. And happy birthday this month to four of my dearest friends - Annie, Tate, Sherisse and Laura. Much love...I miss you...

More Easter Weekend

Baby gorilla!
Smiling hippo

Flamingos

World-famous panda

We went to the San Diego Zoo on Saturday. The best was the baby gorilla - so cute - and the pandas. There's big line that wraps around so everyone can see the panda eating bamboo. Apparently, there's a baby panda that likes to eat watermelon, but I didn't see it. We also saw people waiting in a huge line to feed giraffes, koala bears sleeping in trees and an elephent that held a stick in its trunk, so that it could scratch its legs. The San Diego Zoo is much better than Springfield's Exotic Animal Paradise, which mainly has llamas. It's also better than the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, but only slightly. And that's mainly b/c of the gorillas and pandas. The Lincoln Park Zoo is great b/c it's free; the San Diego Zoo is pretty expensive. Pandas are not cheap.

After the zoo, we met Jessica Heinz and Cedar out for Mexican food and then went to a dive bar with a REALLY LOUND band. We played beer pong and some guy offered me a one-day marriage certificate. I did not accept it.

Easter Sunday

Spent Easter Sunday in San Diego. We went hiking and Jessica made lamb, asparagus, scalloped potatoes. We drank mimosas and I made a fruit (peach, blackberry, blueberry) cobbler and Jess made homemade vanilla ice cream. Yum! I think my first attempt at a cobbler turned out pretty well. We also watched Clue and part of the U.S. Open. I like to think if you're going to skip church on Easter, Jesus would still approve of hiking with your family in Southern California. The coastline and the mountains are beautiful and it makes me more thankful than most sermans ever have in my lifetime.

Eco-Fashion in Venice

We went to the Loomstate for Target launch party in Venice on Tuesday night (look at this funny picture of Siobhan in the background.). I bought the little plaid dress above. For some reason, it doesn't look as cute in this photo as it looks in person. Also that model must be a giant b/c the dress hits me right about the knee. (Note: there were a lot of models at the party, so Siobhan and I both felt like midgets). The line is eco-friendly - all organic cotton, so it's really soft and has a California-casual vibe. Fun event - lots of cool peeps there...the ground was all pebbles, so everyone was sliding around a bit.

BHH

Went to an event at the Beverly Hills Hotel last night...it's so pink and lovely. And we saw Carrot Top in the lobby. He has huge biceps and his hair is even bigger and more red than you would think. Then, we went to bowling. I bowled a 106 the first game and a 66 the second. Good and NOT good. I lost my jojo - I hope our team doesn't drop from second place!

Hotel California

The higlight of my weekend was going to a bbq in Venice with JD. His friend helped produce a documentary - http://playingforchange.com - about a bunch of street musicians from around the world playing the same song to promote world peace. A group of them were in town b/c they are promoting the project in a few cities (Austin, LA, San Fran, Seattle, NYC). So, we were in this great backyard with those white twinkly lights that I love and a giant lemon tree, a firepit, and 3 adorable dogs running around. There was an old man from New Orleans "grandpa" who played the harmonica, a couple of guys from Argentina who played bongos and guitar, a girl from Israel who sang, a guy from Congo and a guy from Jamaica who could sing and play guitar. They just jammed around the firepit and it was amazing. A couple of rounds of Hotel California were my favorite just becase it seemed very sweet and obvious in the best way. Also - they had catered in from Baby Blues, which has pickled okra (my absolute favorite) and that great cornbread with the visible yellow kernels.

Also, I chipped a tooth today biting down on my fork at lunch (ouch!). It didn't look bad, but I went into my dentist - Dr. Romano in Brentwood - to file it down so it wouldn't drive me crazy. AND they didn't charge me anything b/c I was so "entertaining." Isn't that great? I think it was a compliment since I mainly talk to them about my crazy dating life. Hey - one man's trash, right?

Also, I have worn my black Uggs probably 4 out of the last 7 days. I have a serious problem. I love them.

Foie Gras Wars

Monday night, went to a reading of Mark Caro's new book The Foie Gras Wars. Mark is primarily an entertainment reporter for the Chicago Tribune and I met him at Sundance in 2005. He wrote a book about when Chicago banned foie gras and is currently on his promotional book tour. He did a reading at Book Soup in West Hollywood so I went to go support it. It's really funny and has a lot of politics and history (but told in a fun way since his background is entertainment and pop culture reporting). I didn't buy it since it cost $25 dollars, but I promise I will buy it when it comes out in paperback!

A Side of Fava Beans

Had a great weekend. Friday night I stayed at Angie and Matt's - she made the best sweet potato fries, and Matt grilled shrimp. Had a couple of drinks at Bird's. Sort of a disaster because a 26-year-0ld musician kept hitting on me. I told him it was one or the other - either he had to be at least 30 or not be a musician. Seriously. Then his friend told me that it was good I "took his ego down a notch." NOT what I was trying to do. I was trying to be honest. Oops. Saturday, Ang and I went to Jeffrey's workshop. It was great. www.jeffreytambor.net. Very inspirational and funny. Saturday night, we went to Nathan's dinner party. It was great. I made stuffed mushrooms and Sherisse's fig spread and parmesan crackers. Nathan made roast lamb and these great potatoes and french beans. His house is straight out of the Secret Garden. It's up in the Hollywood Hills with a pool that looks like a lagoon. It was really fun. It was Siohban, a screenwriter (Nathan), production company exec, a director, an actor, a model, and a publicist (me!). Felt a little cliche, but I loved it. Then, we went to a club in Hollywood and got to drink free champagne all night, which is just about my favorite thing ever. Siobhan and I stayed at Nathan's and we lounged around most of the next day and helped clean up.

3 Month Update

Oh, goodness. So it's been a while. I suppose we've all been busy. What have I been up to the past 90 days? I guess I will take the liberty of just diving right in:

- Going to San Diego for Christmas. Cold! Saw Marley and Me

- Getting to spend some time with my parents in LA. Took them to Chateau Marmont! And the Warner Brothers Studio tour - very cool. You see the set of Friends, ER, Gilmore Girls

- New Year's Eve with Tatiana and Christine - the BEST girl rolemodels. The theme of the night was basically just to be happy and awesome. Christine made amazing Mexican food and we stayed at her house for 3 days straight - drinking mimosas, eating mole and chorizo, and watching Sundance movies

- Getting my heart broken:(

- Sundance 2009!

- Sundance is really hard to encapsulate into a paragraph or a sentence or a blog. For me, it will always be the lightbulb that went off that I could actually do what I really wanted to do for a living.

- Sundance highlights this year: GREAT films, meeting Steven Soderbergh and seeing a sneak peek of his new movie The Girlfriend Experience, making lots of new friends and seeing a lot of cool people, taking Nathan to the red carpet of his screenplay Moon starring Sam Rockwell (pic of Siohban and Nathan above).

- Lots of hanging out in the Tatiana-Landon-Amy triangle

- Doing massive amounts of yoga

- Volunteering at the Spirit Awards and crashing the afterparty; drank massive bottles of champagne all night

- Auditioning for a reality dating show - I'm still in the running, I think

- Starting working on a freelance project for the amazing Jeffrey Tambor. He's very cool.

- Laura came to visit and we did everything fun that I wanted to do - Josh&Josh Show, Korean BBQ, hiking, brunch at Cora's, shopping on Montana, screening of Phoebe in Wonderland. She was a good sport. (pic above of me and Eric from Laura's weekend. For some reason, did NOT get any good pics of me AND Laura. It was either/or.)

- Went to Seattle for my birthday. Got to see some old friends and hang with Amanda and Sherisse. It was wonderful. Amanda should be a motivational speaker - she's sooo supportive.

- Seeing some great Sundance movies come out - Sunshine Cleaning, Sin Nombre, Adventureland

- Oh - also - I joined Twitter. :)