Embarking

I write to you from the Admiral's Club of JFK International Airport, friends. Yes, my parents (with whom I'm flying to Paris and Rome) are flying business class (my father is rather tall and gets cramped in us regular-people coach seats) and my mother, well, my mother is short. BUT she's the wife of my father, so she gets to ride up front too. Me? Well, I'm riding coach with my fellow man. Luckily, the nice lady at the front desk of the Admiral's Club allowed me to slip into the fancy waiting lounge under the auspice of being a "very mature 12 year-old." Excellent.

So the first part of my journey (my journey to New York, that is) is over. Paris, here I come. For those of you looking to be less confused, here is my general outline for then 5 weeks (eek! It's down to 5 weeks already!).

Tonight I fly with Mom and Dad from NY to Paris after several lovely days of seeing almost all of the friends, family, loved ones, museums, artist collectives, and movies I wanted to (Fantastic Mr. Fox -- fucking incredible and hilarious and magnificent), then from Paris we rendezvous with my sister who is currently taking a semester abroad there, then the whole gaggle of Kerrigans moves south to Rome for a few days, then it's back to gay ole Pariee with Zoe, eastward to Istanbul to see my Burrito Baby, Berlin for a quick stop, Hamburg to see Philosopher Carsten, back to Paris for one last look around, New York for the holidays and finally back to Los Angeles in time to ring in the new year in the town's that's going to be my home for another year, it appears (at least that's what my lease says anyway).

I've been looking forward to this trip for so long and I can't wait to get some explorin' done! I feel so lucky to have friends all over the world, nearly every stop of the way, and have the time and the sorta finances to foot the bill. I'm getting excited about this trip in stages. First, I was terribly excited to be in New York, see my lovely ones, take in the city a bit before the holiday madness sets in, and see some friends I hadn't seen in far, far too long (finally, in person, che!). Now I'm excited about getting to Paris, getting some face-to-face (or tete-a-tete should I say) with the Little One, being in a big, beautiful, old city (Los Angeles is so NEW it boggles my mind sometimes when I come east and then keep going east and east). But yes! Life! Traveling! Adventure! New friends, old friends, family, etc. It's too bad I'm not going to a Spanish-speaking country on this trip as I could definitely stand to brush up my castellano (as los argentinos call Spanish), but alas, that will have to wait for next time.

So, here's to travel and here's to a new year. Even though it's not quite 2010 yet (what a bizarre year for it to be), this trip, I feel, is going to start me off on a clean, fresh, revitalized slate for the upcoming year. Yes, I'll be returning to the same city with the same friends and all the people I have down there who have become so important to me, but I'm going to be starting new, too, in a way. An independent woman in a sort of new job (I'll be with the same company only now I'll be working in the fashion department -- it's a long story involving me quitting my job when I thought I was moving to San Francisco and then begging on my hands and knees for my job back or A job ANY job) in a new part of town (also a sort of -- Echo Park from Silver Lake, but STILL, just go with me on this one), essentially a BRAND NEW ME. Not really, but for the sake of this post, everyone just nod your heads and smile. Even have some new projects I've been brewing up in my mind, all those things I've been wanting to do like... get serious about my writing, learn to play the piano, get involved in my community, explore, explore, explore (explore the world, explore my brain, explore my capacity for growth, explore my interests, you get it...).

So, cheers, here's to it all. Thinking about you all and know that although I'm about to go off on this trip, I miss you all terribly! Even those of you I was with only hours ago!

Ciao (as they say in Italy) /chau (as they say in Argentina) / farewell (as they say in the US of A).

Sex & Candy

It's that time of year again -- time for costumes, treat-or-treating and lots of condoned debauchery. I have such mixed feelings about Halloween -- one one hand, I've always loved getting dressed up, disguising yourself as something else for the evening, and getting to witness all the creativity of my wonderful friends (let's not forget Caitlin's giraffe costume two years ago). But on the other hand, I just can't help but be irked by the obscene amount of girls who use Halloween as an excuse to run around half-naked, exposing body parts that they wouldn't dare to on any ordinary evening. I don't think I will ever come to terms with this side of Halloween, this perverse desire for women to come up with a costume and then feel they have to sexify it -- a sexy baseball player! a sexy princess! a sexy lion!

For the second time in this brief blog post I feel again torn -- I think that women should be able to celebrate and show off their bodies, but I hate that there seems to be so much pressure to have to make yourself into SUCH a sex symbol on this day. Sure, we all want to look and feel sexy, it's nice to know that you can capture attention from the opposite gender (or the same gender, as the case may be), but at the end of the night, I just end up resenting all those girls walking around in their mile-high stilettos freezing their naked asses off. And my ESPECIALLY biggest pet peeve is women who don't have a proper costume and so turn to an ambiguous, but definitely sexy, outfit. Oh, you know, I'm wearing a wig and a mini skirt and fishnets... My costume is just sexy.

I'd love to have some thoughtful male perspective on this. I feel my guy friends know how sensitive I can be to sexy-costume disease and don't always necessarily tell me the truth about how they feel on this topic. But I'm so curious -- it's like a battle of the brain and the penis; guys obviously get turned on by sexy women, but are the women who are dressed like slutty French maids really sexy? Isn't being sexy about more than just exposing everything-but? The sexiest women, in my opinion, are those who can be fully dressed, not necessarily made-up, and still attract your attention with something other than their high level of skin exposure, whether it be with their wit, charm, or piercing gaze. Why is it that on Halloween everything just boils down to sex and skin and candy? And am I worrying about this too much? Should I just suck it up and go along with it and embrace the one opportunity I have a year to call attention to my body in a way I would ordinarily never dream of? I can't decide if the right thing is to condemn women for perpetuating this women-as-sex-objects role we still play in society or if we've actually moved past that to the point where dressing in a sexy Halloween costume is actual an act of empowerment? Feminist leaders, guide me now!

Forever Ago

Okay, so this event passed several weeks ago, but quite frankly, I'm still kind of trying to wrap my head around it and put into words the amazingness that I witnessed.

Let's start with a sketch, shall we? Bon Iver -- beautiful music makers, indie darlings, and composers of many a best of 2009 album lists -- played the Hollywood Forever Cemetery right here in my newly adopted city of Los Angeles. First of all, let me explain that the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is this enormous, beautiful cemetery in East Hollywood, and often they have events here-- there is an indoor venue that acts as a concert hall and a big open grassy space (where there are not yet bodies buried) where they project movies during the summer. So, Bon Iver plays the cemetery. But not only do they play in the big, grassy field, they play at sunrise. That's right, you heard me, sunrise. What does this mean, exactly? It means that at midnight a bevy of hipsters and sad music-listeners began trickling into the cemetery to stake out a good spot on the grass for a show that was to start about 6 hours later.

I arrived at the cemetery around 3 o'clock in the morning. The field was covered in sleeping bags and people in various stages of sleeping. It was quiet, but there was a buzzing feeling hovering over the crowd. We had all gathered here to brave the dark, cold night, and wait for the morning sun which would bring us warmth, light, and beautiful music. Up on the wall of a nearby building, an episode of Planet Earth was playing (you all know from my previous posts how I love this show), by a clever twist, the show had been stripped of its narration and replaced with ambient music, making it the perfect backdrop for wine sipping, cigarette smoking, a yummy food chowing.

Just before the sun began to rise, a Buddhist monk took the stage and announced that the audience was about to be blessed by a group of monks. They light candles and proceeded to chant to/with us for a good fifteen minutes. It was a pretty touching experience to be in this large group of people -- people who were friendly, community-minded, open folks -- and then to have these monks chanting to us. However, the chanting kind of only made people more anxious and excited for the band to come on.

And then, suddenly, there they were. Emerging from the still-darkness, Bon Iver took the stage. Getting to see this band perform live was privilege enough, all the members of this band are intensely talented musicians, I think nearly all of them picked up two or three different instruments during the course of their set, but getting to see them play while the sun slowly rose was an experience that I truly cannot describe in words. The thing about the sunrise that's so amazing is that when you're sitting out somewhere, experiencing the sun rise (not necessarily literally watching the sun rise from behind a hill, but just sitting somewhere as the world begins to get lighter) there is that special kind of soft, morning light that you get first thing in the morning. It's like the first rays of sun that rise are still sleepy and gray, groggy-headed things that haven't yet reached their fullest potential brightness. Moment by moment, the things around you become more and more visible. One minute you're sitting on a dark field with hundreds of sleeping bodies, the next you're covered in a thin, misty light. Every few minutes or so, I would turn around to take in the crowd behind me. The sun rising over this crowd was like watching a curtain being slowly raised-- every time I turned around, the audience seemed to grow.

Aside from the overall experience of witnessing this show, the other remarkable thing was how well Justin Vernon, the lead singer of the band, handled it all. When some people in the front started to get a little pushy, he just said "Hey, guys, everything cool?" and immediately the tension dissipated. He was humble and modest in the most beautiful way. Before finishing the set, he announced that although most bands often play anchors, Bon Iver would not be doing that this morning. "We're a very young band, and we are literally playing all the songs we have. I know it's totally inadequate, but I hope that you all understand, I wish we had more songs to play, but we don't." Frankly, I wouldn't have liked them to go on one minute longer than they did-- the beauty of a good show is that the band can satisfy while still leaving you wanting more. They play all the songs you wanted to hear without playing a two-hour set that leaves you tired and achey. I appreciated this about Bon Iver. I hope that as they continue to write and record music, they keep this philosophy in mind of satisfying the audience without exhausting them.

Upon leaving the cemetery at around 7:30 am, my friend and I went out for coffee and waffles at a nearby diner and then went home and slept until 3 pm. Even though this show took up my entire Saturday night and all day Sunday, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

All photos from Brooklyn Vegan.

Pre-dawn:

Post-dawn:

Old Time is a Good Time

I've been on kind of an old time kick recently, although it's not just because of Frank Fairfield, I swear. On Sunday night I dragged Sami with me to go a square dance somewhere in the heart of the warehouse district that literally took us a half hour of driving around to find! We were like "oh, hey, Skid Row, how's it going? We're looking for a square dance... Know where we could find one?"

But seriously, kids, the square dance was AMAZING. Even though I specially requested the Zodiac square dance which they did not do (this dance basically consists of you pretending to be a big fat man from Tennessee, doing the camel walk, and sashaying down an aisle of people-- thanks Farm & Wilderness summer camp for teaching me this gem!). But yeah, Sami and I danced the night away, do-sa-doing, swinging, trying to avoid running over small children scattered about the floor, etc. Afterwards, we drank a hoppy IPA (for you, CPA!), ate a brisket sandwich and otherwise gorged ourselves. I couldn't stop smiling all night, I've been dying to go to a square dance since I moved to LA, and I was finally able to. I had even considered trying to throw one for my birthday, but it just didn't work out.

I also wanted to share this old timey video with you guys. It's pretty awesome/crazy/cool/weird. Filmed sometime between 1928 and 1935 -- that's some old shit! Pretty cool, though.

Candlelight

Came across another wonderful word the other day thanks to Sasha's recommendation to sign up for Dictionary.com's word of the day list (you should do this immediately, by the way). My new favorite word is lucubration. Look at it again, I know, I know, it looks like lubrication, but I assure you that luCUBRAtion is a much more interesting word.

Lucubration \loo-kyoo-BRAY-shun; loo-kun-\, noun:

1. The act of studying by candlelight; nocturnal study; meditation.
2. That which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement

ex: One of his characters is given to lucubration. "Things die on us," he reflects as he lies in bed, "we die on each other, we die of ourselves."
-- "Books of The Times," New York Times, February 7, 1981

So romantic, isn't it? Just think back on the old days when you would actually need a work to describe the act of studying by candlelight. My, my how things change.

You're lookin' at me, you're lookin' at country

Can't get enough of Loretta Lynn these days. She's such a bad ass, singing about beating up girls trying to steal her man with nothing but smiles on her face. I love her lyrics, they're so cutting and no-nonsense, she's basically just singing "you better not mess with me" in a million different ways. And let me tell you guys, I would not like to cross Miss Loretta. I bet she can shoot a gun, birth a child with one hand and drink a whole bottle of whiskey all at the same time. Also, her hair is amazing.




With Bill Monroe playing back up guitar!

Hometown Pride

As I begin to think about moving out of LA, there are suddenly all these things I really like about it. Saturday night at the Getty Center, the Short Stop bar in Echo Park, Echo Park in general, Angeles National Park... the list goes on. One thing I especially appreciate about LA is the amount of hometown pride there is here. As an outsider, folks born and raised here can sometimes feel overwhelmingly obnoxious, but as a New Yorker, I really can't say anything. Case in point about Angelinos loving their city is this amazing photo I took of my co-worker, Mark, a 40-something year-old native son. Notice how the LA sign is made from a sexy lady's hands with long fingernails. If there was an NYC equivalent of this tattoo, I think I'd get it in a second.