Traffic, Derby, and Medians = Big Shit Poppin'

So much cool shit going on this weekend:

Walking into Traffic, which was written by the tremendously awesome Kyle Wilson, starts this Friday and runs through October 13th. But see it sooner than later, because I hear that it's brilliant AND awesome, and you can't beat that. Go here for tickets.


Plus, L.A. Derby Dolls are up and at it again. The Sirens vs. The Fight Crew. It's on, this Saturday, August 25th. I'm going to be there for the blood and tears and short skirts, shouldn't you? Go here for tickets.




And last, but not least, Jumping the Median, a play by the ridiculously talented, Steve Connell, starring a bunch of other ridiculously talented people is going down FOR ONE WEEKEND ONLY (August 24th - August 26th), so be there, or be that person who didn't see the play that everybody's talking about. Your choice. But go here for tickets.

Don't try to get in touch with me this weekend, because as you can see, I'm going to be really busy. Like I said, BIG shit poppin'.

110% Love,
etc

Trapped in the Junction Pt. 3

And one more, even though it's Monday, and I'm obviously no longer Trapped in the Junction! ...the Junction ... the Junction....

An excerpt from my yet-to-be-written memoir play, Hell to the Naw, etc

A Rather Disturbing Conversation that I Had with
My Husband, CH on Sunday Morning

ME: Was I dreaming last night, or was there a raccoon in the kitchen.

I had fallen asleep in a haze of Sunset Junction heat and worldly beer from the bad restaurant/great bar "good." And I really wanted/needed to believe that my fuzzy memory of CH banging on a pan and repeating in good-natured singsong: "Get out of the kitchen, racoons!" was a dream -- those of you familiar with CH's extremely practical-but-nice personality will be able to imagine him saying this.

CH: No, there wasn't a raccoon...

ME: Good--

CH: There were THREE raccoons. A mother and her two baby raccoons. They got in through the cat door and were eating Gibson's cat food. It took me a while to chase them out. They'll probably try to come back, so we're going to have to start blocking the cat door at night.

ME: (going dead still) Are you serious?

CH: Yes.

More disturbing than the idea of not one but THREE dirty, evil raccoons being in my kitchen. More disturbing than their guaranteed return. More disturbing even than the fact that they DID return on Sunday night to bump their foul noses and scratch their terrible claws against the kicthen cat door like zombies in a truly bone-chilling bid to get in, was what I said next:

ME: That's deeply disturbing. I'm definitely going to have to blog about that.

Trapped in the junction! ... the junction... the junction...

Trapped in the Junction Pt. 2

So, just in case any other Boondocks and movie popcorn lovers haven't seen this ridiculously BRILLIANT trailer for the much-delayed second season of Boondocks.

Warning: N- and cuss words abound. Then again if you didn't already figure that, then you're probably not a fan...

Here you go:




Still no firm release date, but Wikipedia says October 2007, and as we all know, the facts stated on Wikipedia are almost always right.

Trapped in the Junction Pt. 1

Once again, it's Sunset Junction time, which means that CH and I are trapped in our home, lest we risk not being able to find parking spaces, since our driveway is currently being occupied by a dumpster for all the debris from our upstairs remodel. 

I'm sad that I won't be able to do my Bollywood Dance class. There's something very therapeutic about jumping up and down while shaking your shoulders and wagging your head from side to side, but I'm looking forward to the annual street fair, since alas, I've managed to break my perfect pink sunglasses and am finally in a place where I could see replacing them.

Also it gives me some free time to post a bunch of random stuff. First up movies:

"TALK TO ME" ... If you haven't seen me since I saw this movie, then you probably don't know that I've decided not be friends with anyone who hasn't seen this film within three months of it coming out on DVD. I (obviously) ADORED it, for too many reasons to properly name. So if it's playing in your city, do our friendship a boon, and go see it.

"STARDUST" ... You know warmed-over Princess Bride still tastes pretty good. Totally worth seeing.

"BOURNE ULTIMATUM" ... Okay, I know all the critics are like in love with this movie. But there's this special kind of structure called "fractal structure." Basically, it's a writing structure, in which the same thing happens over and over again, but in bigger and bigger ways. Eugene O'Neill was the king of fractal. And the third Bourne is actually a perfect example of this hard-to-execute structure. But the thing is, I hate, hate, hate fractal structure -- have never seen the point or attraction of it. Hence, I didn't like this movie.

"ROCKET SCIENCE" ... I find it much harder to write about movies I actually like. But this one about a stuttering kid who decides to join the debate team was very good. And I would recommend it, even though I was hit with several memories of my disastrous year in college mock trial, which I had managed to repress up until seeing this film.

"HAIRSPRAY" ... just as much fun as the play. Though Queen Latifah seriously underwhelmed.

"SIMPSONS MOVIE" ... F.U.N. Like a really long episode. A really long fun episode.

Okay, time to walk down to Sunset Junction. More randomness later. 

Smith is SO hot

Dudes, sorry I've been so quiet. On the 21 days of rewriting my novel and flossing tip right now. The rewrite's going well so far, but flossing every night is like seriously hard -- it's like my most undisciplined time of the day.

But I did want to post this link about Smith being named the hottest women's college in the"25 Hottest University" edition of Newsweek: http://smithcollege99.blogspot.com/2007/08/smith-ranks-hottest.html

Represent your hood, mami!

"There's no truth in roller derby!"

One of my biggest regrets of my wedding is that I wasn't able to invite more Derby Dolls. The problem is that Derby Dolls kind of come in a pack. It's kind of impossible to invite just one. And every time I tried to put one of them on the list, it was like, well then I'd also have to invite so-and-so and so-and-so. In the end, we were only able to include two. "Are you sure you used to do the derby, 'Lil Ness?" my father asked upon seeing Emma Geddon (the 6'0 blond) and Kaboom (the 5'8ish redhead) above. "Them girls look a lot bigger than you." He seemed worried for my 5'3 well-being, though it's been a year since I retired. "Dad," I answered with the swagger that only six glasses of champagne and fuzzy over-nostalgicized memory can achieve, "I was known as the little girl that could take all the big girls down." That claim is "truthiness" at best. Still, I plan to tell my grandchildren the same thing.

Learning is not easy, but it's fun. Today I wrote a synopsis, for a screenplay, and I was shocked at how much better it was than every other synopsis that I have ever written, now that I've actually studied writing synopses.

I also went to my Bollywood class, and can I tell you that I've never had so much fun burning calories. I don't really have the body for Bollywood dancing. I pull off the moves, but I'm not delicate enough to make them look graceful. Luckily, one of the many benefits of hitting 30 is that I'm now more concerned with having fun than looking good. So the class is great.

We're about to go see "TALK TO ME," which I've been wanting to see for a while now. So I'll have a review for you, along with the rest of my summer movie reviews since July 1 for you tomorrow.

Talk to you then,
etc

21 Days of Learning

To-be-weds, if you ever want to encourage many questions about when you plan to have children, all you have to do is go anywhere near a child at your wedding. Luckily my cousin Kim's fraternal 1-year-old twins, Cornell and Mariah. are so adorable that they were worth all the shouts of "You guys look like naturals" and "You should have some of your own." Being such cutie-pies, Cornell and Mariah have become accustomed to getting picked up by all manner of people. And though they were the hit of the wedding, I fear for their safety, because they don't seem to have that "crying when picked up by strangers" gene. And it'd be pretty easy to give into temptation and kidnap these two. Especially since, as you can see from this picture, Mariah is easily mesmerized by jewelery. I'm currently trying to convince my cousin Kim to move out here to L.A., b/c both Cornell and Mariah have had so many pictures taken of them, that they now instinctively go completely still and pose with adorable smiles on their faces whenever they see a camera. I'm not kidding. It's cute in practice, but creepy in theory. So I told Kim that since she's somehow trained her babies to be models at the tender age of 1, she should bring them out here, so that they can at least make a profit off of their deeply disturbing double talent -- and perhaps pay off their college bills ahead of time.

Hey guys, I'm on week 2 of a new 21 days of learning. So I've finally started hitting Yoga classes like everybody else in Los Angeles. Also, I've been scaring myself silly with books like "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" and "The Sell Your Novel ToolKit."

I know that most of good writing is rewriting, and that it's actually better to take a break from a piece before tackling the rewrite, and that my habit of writing a rough draft and then abandoning it, needs to like stop.

And I'm actually quite excited to start the upcoming 21 days of rewrite with all this new knowledge. But I am also incredibly scared that I won't be able to fix the things that are wrong with my novel, much less get it published. And my abject fear of doing this rewrite is really messing my head and actually keeping me awake at night. It feels like my writing demons are building up an impossible-to-beat army while I take this breather.

But in the end, I suppose that being dead terrified of a thing is never a reason not to do it.

In other news, I'm also taking African Dance, for the first time in 10 years. Those who heard the story I told at Spark's "Water" Storytelling Event last April, will realize the significance of that.

I'm taking the class on Wednesdays at the Heartbeat House in Silverlake. It's fun, and taught by Doris, a West Indian dancer with a ridiculously thick French accent and the even more cartoonish habit of saying, "What! Es eeeee-zeeee!" when we students mess up a complicated move on our first try. Anyway it's fun. I'm also taking a Bollywood Dance class at Heartbeat on Saturdays, which is also fun.

And if you're now all awash in curiosity from my above mention of Spark's Storytelling Event, you'll have the chance to see me perform for only the second time in almost ten years, because Spark has asked me to retell my story for a big event that they're throwing on Sept. 20 at The Santa Monica Library. More details coming at the end of August, but save the date.

Talk to you soon,
etc

Pictures and other stuff

I've never been a fan of having my picture taken, but that's kind of unavoidable at weddings -- seriously I don't know how celebrities do it all the time, because by the end of the day, Christian and I vowed never to have our picture taken again. Anyway, I got an unasked for lesson in modeling that day, because photos like the one above taught me that I should always show teeth when I smile. Otherwise, one of the happiest moments of my life could easily be mistaken for "that time I sucked a lemon." Here's my solemn promise that I will proudly show off my gap, which I actually love, in pictures from now on. Lesson so learned.



Okay, I kind of thought that my return to blogging in June wasn't all that spectacular, but I've been begged fiercely by multiple (read: 2) people over the last few weeks, so I am posting again by hugely popular demand.

First things first, a wedding blog is so daunting, so I've decided to post one wedding pic at the top of each blog with a little anecdote. And if you want to see more pics you can go to our flickr account here. Or if you want to see the professional pics, check out our wedding photographer, Jihan Abdalla's take on the event here -- the password is "ernessa"

Second things second, the honeymoon was FANTASTIC. Christian and I planned to kayak, hike, and take a helicopter ride around the island. And here's what we ended up doing: reading by the pool, hanging out in the hotel room, taking one whole 3-hour hike halfway through, then buying more books, after making a firm decision to spend the rest of our honeymoon reading more books by the pool (lava flows and mai tais very much included) and hanging out in the hotel room. So pretty much it was the best honeymoon ever.

Third things third, a few more updates. I FINALLY finished the rough draft of my novel. SO excited. Yea, 21! Now for 21 days of rewrite. Sigh.

My friend Sebrina just had a BEAUTIFUL baby girl, which she named Madison.

My friend and fellow playwright Kyle is rehearsing a play right now for UnKnown. Can't wait to see it.

And Filly Film Cult has a super-exciting event coming soon, so stay tuned for the details.

Talk to you soon,
etc

Gone Fishin' -- Back Next Week

So this is the last day of my 21, and the first day of my honeymoon. We've just finished eating at one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever stayed in, The Grand Hyatt in Kauai.

We ate for what seemed like the first time in days (I'm told the food and cake at our wedding was very good, but wouldn't really know since I barely had a chance to taste it). Then we sent in the fax number for the hotel to the car appraisal people re: my accident. 

And now we're back in the room. It's 1pm.  So now we plan to close the curtains on the below view. Throw all the unnecessary pillows (even more than pictured) off the below bed, and sleep our asses off. 

Back next week with more blogs -- including a big wedding one -- so hold tight! 

110% Love,

etc

As it Turns Out ...

Our wedding day was like an entire season of "24," but with more ups and downs, and a happier season finale. 

Full Wedding Blog Coming Soon...

Best Friday Ever

I don't have words to describe how great my bachelorette party was. All I can say is my best friend, Monique, and my sister Elizabeth are two of the best people on the face of the earth and accordingly, they threw me the best bachelorette party in the history of bachelorette parties. I had so much fun, and I felt so blessed to have friends from all parts of my life (Los Angeles, undergrad, and Grad School) to celebrate with. Plus, I now know what the inside of a Cadillac stretch limo looks like, so you know, I can like die happy.




And apparently CH had the best bachelor party ever. We got home to find him sitting with his brother-in-law and Monique's husband, Brian. They informed us that they not only had as good of a time as we did, smoking cigars and drinking amazing wine at a local fine eatery. But CH also received a handheld GPS -- of which I'm quite jealous. Then a couple of his friends gave him a frickin' I-Phone!!!! Yes, I screamed when I saw the much-hyped mystical device that I had only ever expected to see pictures of and hear about -- I was that surprised -- I mean it had only been released that morning. Brian told us that a ton of pictures were taken of other guys from the party just posing with the phone, in the way other people might pose with a celebrity.



Still, CH is drastically hungover right now, and I'm feeling great, because I pretty much danced off my massive champagne and wine consumption last night. So I guess I win. On to the Bridal Shower and Rehearsal BBQ tonight.

110% Best,
etc

Another Long Day

But three things make it worth it:

1. Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles tomorrow. This place is like manna on crack. I can't wait.

2. The fact that I wasn't hurt in the car accident. Thanks to everyone that reached out about that.

3. Me in a green seersucker dress for my bachelorette party tomorrow.

And because I hate to leave you with that much positivity. Here's an article that Ima Gitcha, another black derby chick (though I think she's still skating) posted about a year and a half ago, about Bud Dwyer, who basically committed an American version of seppaku in 1987. Random I know, but for whatever reason this story has really stayed with me for over a year and half. And not in the usual writer way. I haven't come up with any deep connections or metaphors for this one. I'm just kind of vaguely haunted by it. And I think you should be to. So read Ima's blog on Bud Dwyer here.

Okay that's all.

110% Best,
etc

To tired to really blog

1. Did a lot of last minute stuff for the wedding.

2. Got into a car accident. Not my fault, but still....

3. Made 150 fan wedding programs using spray-on adhesive glue (which I wasn't even aware existed until tonight), so now my hands look like shit and I feel like shit.

4. Going to bed now.

5. Tomorrow will be better -- it has to...

That's all,
etc

P.S. -- Acetone rocks

'Tis Official...

Today I ....

Woke up at 6:30 in the morning...

Fetched my sister from the airport...

Felt bad because she missed her connecting flight from the night before, had to spend the night in the Dallas airport, and then came into Los Angeles to find that her luggage had been lost. Great sister that she is, the only things that she had carried on was her purse and her bridesmaid dress. Yea, Liz!...

Taped my last show with Ryan until I get back from my honeymoon...

Ate one chocolate Sprinkle cupcake -- it was as yummy as hyped!

Talked with Kelly Clarkson, who's guest-hosting our show, for 15 minutes about my upcoming wedding and why it might be better to elope (I'm not kidding), I don't care if you like her music, buy her album. She's awesome people...

Bid adieu to my workmates until I get back from my honeymoon...

Went to the Beverly Center and bought my entire vacation wardrobe from H&M and XXI for about $100, because most of my old summer clothes don't fit me anymore -- damn 15 pounds, I'm starting to regret losing you...

Kept low-grade arguments going with my sister the entire day -- I'm so happy she's here!

Split a bottle of wine with CH when we got home from the Beverly Center.

Ignored my sister's request that I not talk about her in future blogs ... hi Elizabeth!

Wrote this blog, before going to sleep around 10:30....

'Tis official... I'm old and getting married in T-minus 5 days!

Woo-hoo!
etc

A week from now...

CH and I will be in Hawaii on our honeymoon. That's what I have to keep telling myself, b/c I feel like a walking robot at this point, I've been working so much to prepare for a week and a half off, that my brain is just fried, as evidenced by the fact that with an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing I cannot come up with a better adjective than the completely cliche "fried" to explain why this is not a very good blog.

Zack, thanks for tagging me. I was beginning to feel like the least popular kid on the playground -- which I actually was growing up, so there was some retro-not-so-good-feeling going on -- though some (bad people) might argue that after not blogging for six months, I did not deserve to be tagged in a timely fashion. Either way, I'm trying to come up with eight random facts that people don't know about me, which is kind of hard, since I talk way too much. But I may have a few fun tidbits tucked away. I'll try to tackle this tomorrow.

Okay, 21 satisfied -- though again, not very well.

Sorry Sorry,
etc

Powered by 100% Vegetable Oil -- Please help!

So as many of you know, CH is in the midst of trading his sporty convertible for an even more kick-ass 4-door 1982 300SD Turbo Diesel Mercedes, which he's had converted, so that it can now run on vegetable oil.

We're lucky enough to live within walking distance of the one of the few places that actually performs these conversions. I won't try to explain how they're done, b/c it's nearly impossible for me to give a mechanical explanation without using the words "thingamajig" and "magic," but if you want to find out more, you can check out their website at www.lovecraftbiofuels.com.

The coolest thing about this conversion is that his new-to-him car can now run on diesel, which is cheaper than regular gas. But it can also run on vegetable oil or waste vegetable oil (WVO) after the first 600 miles. Now being able to run on WVO is a real deal, b/c this is basically the stuff that all restaurants produce, but usually have to pay a $1 per gallon in disposal fees to get rid of. So it's a win-win sitch for both the driver and the restaurant that doesn't have to pay to dispose of their used cooking oil.

CH has almost hit the 600 mile mark, and he's getting very excited. In fact he bought the below fuel filtration thingamajig to run the WVO through before he puts it into his car.



Only problem is that since we live in Silverlake which is like the #1 home of Lovecraft converted cars, the restaurants around here are pretty much tapped.

So if you have a restaurant, catering or even taco stand connection in Los Angeles, please let me know about it. Because CH would love to help them out by taking their used non-hydragenated cooking oil off their hands. And even more importantly, it'll allow us to tool around town, feeling cool AND envrionmental, so definitely hep us to any place you might know of.

Thanks!
etc

I don't know what's more shocking...

That she can do this, or that she obviously got her hair done right before this picture was taken in anticipation of lots of people seeing her do this.

Here's the AP Caption: Jalisa 'The Eyepopper' Thompson demonstrates the skill behind her nickname as she arrives for the grand opening of the Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium Thursday, June 21, 2007 in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

More on my Appendicitis

So though, my appendicitis turned out not be appendicitis -- just constipation; apparently, CH's main boss, Jimmy Kimmel, actually did have appendicitis at the exact same time that I thought I had it. And the poor guy even had to have his appendix out as I feared (for about 6 hours) I would have to right before my wedding. You can read more about here.

Spooky. Mayhap I'm not the hypochondriac that bad people (family, non-writer friends, and CH) often accuse me of being. I might just be a vessel harbinger of things to come. Did you ever think of that naysayers?

Oh Cassandra!

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

So you know how you sometimes say, "I'll go to so-and-so movie, even though it looks bad." And then you go in with super low expectations only to be pleasantly surprised, because it's totally better than you thought it would be?

Fantastic Four is not that movie.

Turn back from this road of evil.

That's all,
etc

Having the worse day...

And I think I might have appendicitis. Am headed home to decide whether or not to go to the hospital. But wanted to get a blog in for the day. So here's my blog.

21 satisfied -- though not very well.

etc

Update: Okay, after an informal examination from CH, we determined that I did not have appendicitis, b/c it didn't hurt on my right side. Then we took an incredibly romantic trip to the Rite-Aide and pick up some Ex-Lax. Ah.. that's amore.