Dodger Game

Last week, my office took a work field trip to see a Dodger game! I’ve never seen a baseball game before, so this was a brand new experience for me. We had pretty decent seats that were in the shade, thankfully, since it was pretty warm out in the sun!

We had a ton of great food to eat, include the world famous Dodger Dogs! The Dodgers unfortunately lost the game, but everyone had a great time hanging out outside of the office on a workday!

Scent Bar

Last week, my boss wanted to have an event for some clients at a perfume mixing place. I had searched high and low for a place that could do any kind of perfume thing - mixing or matching or whatever. Finally, I found this awesome place by the Beverly Center called Scent Bar. They have every kind of popular and obscure perfume you could imagine, and the people who work there are ridiculously knowledgeable about every single perfume. It reminded me of going wine tasting, where the sommelier can pontificate about every single wine you taste.

Prior to the event, everyone filled out a questionnaire about likes and dislikes, and general personality stuff. The staff at Scent Bar then matched 3 perfumes for each person. During the event, they then spoke at length about each perfume that was chosen for each person. Then we each chose a perfume to purchase; some bought a perfume that had been recommended for them; but not all. I myself chose a perfume by Juliette Has A Gun, named Not A Perfume.

Garage Sales

The City of West Hollywood hosted a garage sale this weekend. Or, really, a bunch of people throughout the area all put on garage sales on the same day. I have fond memories of hitting up garage sales on the weekends with my parents growing up, and even having a few of our own. This totally makes me an expert on the subject, and as such, I have some suggestions for the people who, rather ineptly, tried to sell their stuff.

First of all, no one wants junk. Seriously. Don’t try to sell stuff that really should be put in the trash. One person’s trash is everyone’s trash. Seriously. Second, price everything!! Don’t make your customers have to ask what the price is on everything they are interested in. If there’s no price, I am far less inclined to want to buy something than if it had a price tag already on it. Next, have things in some sort of order. Books with books, clothes with clothes, toys with toys. Don’t just have everything in boxes for your customers to sort through. Have them laid out neatly where they are visible. Also, price things reasonably. People who come to garage sales are not prepared to lay down big money, and definitely don’t want to pay near full price for things that are clearly used.

I had thought these things would be fairly self-evident but clearly not. I didn’t even find one single thing worthy of purchase (though my boyfriend did find several books to buy). Most of my enjoyment lay in walking around parts of the neighborhood I had never been to before.

Smodcast

On Saturday, I went to a live taping of Kevin Smith’s podcast, Smodcast, at the Jon Lovtiz Comedy Club at Universal Citywalk. He’s only done a few tapings of the show live; most are done with his partner, Scott Mosier, at his home.

The show was entertaining, though I thought it wasn’t as funny as some other episodes are. The venue was pretty nice too, small enough that every seat was pretty close to the stage. They do a couple of the other shows in the Smodcast Podcast network here, and I’m looking forward to seeing them there sometime.

My Drunk Kitchen

I love this web series!! If I cooked, this is probably something like it would go.

Madame Toussaud’s

On Saturday, I went to Madame Toussaud’s, the place with all the celebrity wax figures.. Wax figures are creepy. They just are. They look like real people (some more than others), but you can stand closer to them than societal norms usually allow and stare. The best thing about that place probably is taking pictures with them.
There were singers, like Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. Actors like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Will Smith, Johnny Depp. Classic actors like Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, And of course, Ryan Seacrest. That guy’s everywhere.

My favorites where Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh, wearing the green curtain dress from Gone with the Wind, Sarah Michelle Gellar in a classic Buffy pose (chick is SKINNY), and Jack Nicholson, looking just like he used to at the Oscars. He was even in a row of seats and everything! I sat next to him for a picture and it looked almost real.

Most of them looked pretty good, if a little unnaturally shiny. A couple looked pretty bad, either just a bad job from the start, or poor aging - like Nicole Kidman and Tom Hanks.

The coupon I used included a wax hand dip, which meant I could get a wax mold of my own hand. It was kind of cool - you made whatever shape you want with your hand (I chose to make the longhorn symbol, because why not), then dip it into hot wax. Then dip it in cold water, then dip it in dye, then let it set. They stretched it a bit so you can get your hand out, and then it’s done!

It’s one of those places that you probably really only need to do once, but you should definitely go that one time, because... why not?

Whale Watching

Groupon gives you a good reason to go on adventures for less than retail. One such adventure I decided I needed to experience is whale watching. Last Saturday morning, my boyfriend and I went to the beach at Malibu and embarked on a somewhat rickety boat. We headed out into the beautiful blue ocean, eyes wide open to catch any sight of a whale breaching the surface.

An hour later, my eyes were dry from being so peeled. No whales in sight. At all. For the whole two and a half hours. We did see some sea lions frolicking, though, and that was pretty cute.

I think the whole experience could have been improved if they added some new elements to the boat ride, rather than just sitting in relative silence, staring out at the ocean. A tour guide to impart some knowledge of the ocean in general, and the Pacific Coast in particular, would have been nice. Some more information about the homes we passed on the beach would have been cool, too. The tour we had was still pretty cool, and a new adventure to add to my list of experiences.

Sweet Valley Confidential

The much awaited follow-up to the hit (I think?) series of books that dominated my childhood has finally hit stores! Sweet Valley [fill in the blank with the numerous nouns that entitled the variety of different series] took up many of my shelves as a youth, from Sweet Valley Kids all the way up to Sweet Valley University. This new book offered a chance to see what happened to them as adults, at my age, after having followed them throughout their lives!

Sure, maybe it’s a little cheesy or campy, but it was still pretty awesome. Now if they would just do one of these books for the Baby Sitters Club series, my life would be complete.

Kill Bill

This weekend I went to a screening of Kill Bill at the New Beverly, a movie theater that Quentin Tarantino himself owns. The print was the same one they showed at Cannes in 2004; to differentiate it from the theatrical run that split it into Volumes 1 and 2, it's called Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. This run is the first time that it has been shown in the United States. Some of the differences between it and the theatrical run version were the fight scene with the Crazy 88s was in full color rather than in black and white, the scene at the beginning of Volume 2 where the Bride addresses the audience is gone, as well as a few other different angles, lines, etc.

New Desk

For years I’ve been using a table as my desk. Which is to say, I’ve been using that table to store my printer on top of. The table is kind of weird because it’s the kind where it has wings on the sides that can be propped up to make the table bigger. So I pretty much couldn’t actually sit at the desk and do... desk-y things, whatever they may be. I took a look at the Ikea website and found a desk that was really super cute. And thus, I decided to buy a new desk.

Now, I’ve been stuff from Ikea before, so I know what kind of putting-together skills it entails. Skills I just happen to have! This desk was actually challenging to assemble, by myself at least. It required a certain amount of coordination to both hold things in place, fighting gravity, while also hammering or drilling. The hardest part was probably moving the desk into place. I built it in the middle of my living room; to move it over to the part of my living room/office was a feat. I couldn’t just push it; due to the way it was set up, it probably would have ripped off one of the legs. My ingenious solution was to actually lay down underneath it and lift it with my legs!

Phhft, those directions said a partner was required to build; what do they know!!