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. :)