Friday 11.20.09 CONTINUED ….

After the cooking class Chris and I went to my new place and I unpacked a few more boxes while we waited for Mr. and Mrs. Late to Everything. Joe and Vanessa picked us up and brought us to the Comedy Store in La Jolla to see Tommy 5tone’s friend Justin Martindale along with some others. (There really isn’t any info on Justin online since he has literally been at this for about 2 months! You will, however, find an interview about him on page 30 of Frontiers magazine, found in the Los Angeles area.) The first comic was named Jerome Cleary and since we walked in during the middle of his set, I can’t really speak about his level of funniness. He was definitely gay and definitely making gay friendly jokes. The second comic was a woman named Jodi Miller who was probably the funniest goddamn woman I have seen or heard in a long time. It’s not very often that female comedians are hilariously hilarious during their entire set, but this woman had us all in stitches the entire time. It might have been because #1) she and I are the same person or #2) she was making fun of women like me the whole time. Either way, this woman (not sure if she was a lesbian or just a fag hag or just plain funny) had some great one liners that I began tweeting. Here is one gem: “Hey you can rape me, but if it sucks, I am going to press charges.” That, my friends, is funny shit. Justin was great, I cannot remember for the life of me one funny thing he said, but on a scale of 1 – 10,  I would give him an 8.

The headliner was a woman named Shawn Pelofsky who was really not nearly as funny as Jodi Miller. I hate to say it, but every single person in our party felt the same way. Keep an eye out for Jodi Miller.

After we got out of La Jolla as fast as humanly possible we decided to trek downtown to the Chee-Chee… this was to be the maiden voyage into the scariest, nastiest dive bar in all of San Diego… just a mere block from my new place. (Insert eerie music here) Every day I drive by this place and see the vagabonds, transients, homeless and downright crazies chilling at the bus stop outside the front door. Every day I think that someday I will get the courage to enter. I have daydreams about walking in during lunch with my sexy secretary clothes on and watching the regulars lift one eyebrow as I demand a Budweiser in a bottle.

Let me tell you how disappointing it was to see a bunch of hipster kids with tattoos on their necks sitting around shooting the shit with their hipster girlfriends. After 2 drinks we went to the loft and had another bottle of cheap wine and called it a night. I have a looong day of drinking and eating ahead of me tomorrow

11.20.09
It is my favorite time of year! Noooooo, not Thanksgiving sillyheads! It’s the annual San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival. This is by far my favorite holiday. All week long there are events throughout San Diego including wine tastings, classes taught by celebrity chefs, auctions and of course the main event which is on Saturday at the Embarcadero. On Friday Chris, Andreas (boss man) and I went to a cooking class taught by Paul Bartolotta of Bartolotta’s at the Wynn in Las Vegas at the Macy’s School of Cooking. Andreas took Lauren and I to eat at Bartolotta’s about 2 years ago and we ate the most amazing fish on their tasting menu. He is a very picky eater and chooses to only eat at places with the finest ingredients and with the best food. His theory is that if he is going so spend money and ingest things, they better be the finest that they can be. You will never catch him eating fast food, or anything out of a box or a can for that matter. He lives by the rule of only shopping around the perimeter of a grocery store. Or Whole Foods lol.

There was a 5 page print out on the table of all the things we were about to try and they immediately brought us a glass of wine. Chris accused me of inviting Andreas only because that was the only way I would get out of work early on a Friday in order to drink wine in the middle of the afternoon. Ha! Funny, but so not true. Sometimes Andreas and I have martinis during lunch, so there! (sticks tongue out) The course was designed to teach us about seafood, vegetables and olive oil and as I skimmed over the menu Paul (I am on a first name basis here simply because it is easier than typing Bartolotta each time) was explaining to us that he struggled (as I can imagine most chefs doing) with writing down a recipe on paper. I would assume that any decent chef would prepare his dishes from memory, experience and common sense. He started his class by explaining the three things that make a dish: time, temperature and a balance of ingredients. Makes sense, right? (just wait til I actually start cooking later on this year in my new place and I blow the kitchen up) His success is based on the fact that good ingredients make good food. He began to teach us that “unfussy is the new cool.”

Bartolotta has worked in 15 restaurants all over Italy (most were along the coast) and then worked in many restaurants in France. He learned his technique in France and learned all about the delicious rustic ingredients while in Italy. He suggests low energy cooking, less violent, and you will keep the food tasting more to it’s natural taste. At Bartolotta’s you will be served fish flown in from the Mediterranean each and every day. Paul spends his mornings texting, skyping and tracking his fish every 20 minutes to see exactly where they are. He says that if his fish arrives “looking not so sexy” he will have known that they took a jaunt to London by accident. All of his fish are line caught because if you catch them by trawling them they will drown and become waterlogged. Makes sense. His fisherman will literally email him photos from the Adriatic Sea and and ask “Do you want this fish?” Paul responds with “How much?” and the fisherman responds with “If you have to ask you cannot afford it.” And so the journey begins.

Our first taste was “Isalata di Piovra”: Octopus with fingerling potatoes in olive oil. First off, Andreas and I were convinced (and still are) that there is no place in San Diego that sells whole octopus. I hope someone proves me wrong and makes this for me one night at Top Chef: Loft Edition because even though I don’t even like octopus, I would have eaten 87 pounds of this dish. It was fucking incredible.

The second course was “Brodetto di Vongole e Porri”: Tiny Clams in a White Wine Broth with Leeks. This was also delicious and I found myself wanting to chuck the clam shells over my shoulder to get to the ones on the bottom faster.

Third course was “Trigilia All Ponentina” (I might be making the “a” a capital when it is not necessary): Red mullet with capers, ligurian taggiasche olives, tomato and roasted bell peppers. Red mullet is a fish that I have never tasted and it was a little fishy but still good. Would I order it again? Probably not.

Course 4 was “Ricciola con Radicchio e Salsa D’Acciughe”: grilled amberjack with wilted radicchio and anchovy sauce. Again, this is a fish that I have never tasted….. I think we have had it in sushi form, but the name escapes me now. Anyone? Beuller? Here the anchovy sauce can be made with a food processor but is traditionally made with a mortar and pestle.

At this point I would like to introduce the LTP Award. The “Lick-the-Plate” award of the afternoon. Holy shit the anchovy sauce was out of this world.

Course 5 was “Mazzancolle e Cannellini”: flavorless tiny prawn with undercooked beans. Ok, ok , that is not what the dish was called, but that is what it tasted like. I think the idea was right, but perhaps he wasn’t prepared and didn’t do what he was supposed to do with the beans. After all, this was an hour and a half class and beans take forever.

The Greek man sitting next to me (Andreas) asked Paul what his opinion was on Greek olive oil versus Italian olive oil. Paul chortled, the crowd went wild. It spawned a conversation about where the olives come from, what color they are and how very different they are. It’s an age old debate about the difference and which is better. The bottom line is they do taste different and until you know what the hell you are doing, choose the most expensive one. The more expensive it is, the less you have to use and the more flavor it will have. It is oil, after all, and the less you use, the better off your thighs will be. It reminded me of the time I was in Greece, drunk in a bar with locals and asked them if it was true if the Greeks like anal sex. The local replied “Anal? Oh that’s the Turks!”

It was a wonderful experience and it made me want to hop on a flight to Vegas to go eat at his restaurant the next day. I highly recommend it to anyone… did I learn something? Of course I did! Will I retain any of this by the time I get off my fat ass and start cooking for myself? Doubtful.

In closing, I want to share the one question that thankfully was uttered out of Andreas’s mouth ONLY for me to hear:
“Hey Paul, who would win in a fight… you or Mario Battali?”

If you are really interested in the recipes email me and I will get them to you. howilearnedtolive@gmail.com

also check out Slow Food

Saturday 11.14.09

I got up at the crack of dawn to start dragging shit out onto the driveway before the yard sale vultures arrived. It literally looked like Kim and Laura’s Used Furniture Shop in front of my house. My friends starting showing up as early as 7:45 am and we busted out the mimosas pretty quickly. The very first actual “customer” wanted to know what I wanted for the 3 computer monitors and since I didn’t even know if they worked, I told him he could just have them. HAHAHAHAHA! Kim freaked out and told me to shut the fuck up and that I wasn’t allowed to speak to any more customers for the rest of the day! Seriously I just wanted this shit out of my life.  All in all we only made $200 bucks and that is before you count what we spent on champagne and Bronx Pizza. By noon I wanted to price everything at a dollar, but Kim and Vanessa were being dumb.  They were acting like this stuff was actually worth something and started the day pricing everything too high. Ladies, this is a freaking yard sale, not a consignment shop.

Lauren and James brought their English Bulldog over and Vanessa brought her little dog, too. It got a little hectic when shoppers had their dogs…. but it was fun… I really miss Sierra. Gnarly was the recipient of Sierra’s pink studded collar. haha you look like a girl dog now!

We started to get a little crazy in the heat with the alcohol taking effect and busted out the super high speed water balloon launcher. I was the target at the end of the street. Then Lauren joined me and I have to tell you, when something is flying at you, you just naturally duck and get out of it’s way! So we turned our backs and stuck our big fat asses out and held onto each others hands with a death grip waiting to get nailed. Emma, the most athletic girl that I know was bound and determined to hit one of us, and Lauren was that unlucky soul. Her legs might still in fact have welts on them.

When they ran out of water balloons they switched to hurling stuffed animal monkeys onto the neighbor’s roofs. The 95 year old deaf lady across the street currently has a Curious George doll face down on her roof. I stopped the monkey business and then they chose hot dogs as their weapon of choice. I quickly decided to give up my spot down the street as the target and they just started lobbing them at the port-o-let.

Some other fun pics from the day:

And here are some images from Tommy’s fashion show!

After Kim and I almost beat each other up arguing about what to send with the Father Joe’s Village truck vs. what to sell on Craig’s List I kicked everyone out and had an amazing 3 hour nap. I seriously do not spend enough time napping. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures that I don’t make enough time for. I gotta work on that.  I got up, filled the car and headed to my new place downtown and had my very first (and most certainly not last) experience with parking and loading shit into my 2nd floor unit on a busy crowded Saturday night with no parking anywhere near my front door. Ugh. I asked for this.

I got ready in my new place and went with Chris to Las Hadas for Joe’s surprise 35th birthday. He didn’t seemed very surprised and thankfully I can say that I did not ruin the surprise. I cannot be trusted with this kind of stuff, so phew.

It was a fun night! I slept in on Sunday and took a nap and unpacked a ton of stuff. I am happy to officially to be living downtown. Now let’s see how long it takes for me to become utterly annoyed by the homeless population down here. As long as they don’t set up tents in front of my building I think I will be ok.

Friday 11.13.09

Kim has started unpacking my stuff at the new loft and I am so thankful that she is able to help me. I am drowning at work as it is and I swear I would lose my mind if I had to deal with this move. She is having fun and is being hilarious when I try to tell her I don’t like something somewhere. I am like, “Kim, this is not your house. I am putting the end table here, not there.”

Today we shot a piece on Eddie Sanchez the MMA fighter, more on that later… It will be something similar to this video created by us for Joe Duarte. Phil, Jay and I went down to the gym where they train and got some interview footage of him and some of his workout routine. It was harder than I thought taking stills of him… I was unprepared without the right attachment for the flash so I was winging it a little with no flash. And by God, he moves pretty fucking fast!

I went home and started prepping things for the yard sale. Kim’s boyfriend Norm brought us dinner from Sushi Deli (love their online menu lol) and after we packed some stuff up and I started to settle in, I uninvited the people over that I had invited to use the hottub.  We were going to have one last hoo-rah but I came to my senses in the nick of time. I could tell already it was not going to be a simple “let’s use the hottub” and it had the potential to turn into an all nighter being that I have to be up at 5 am for this neighborhood yard sale. Oh boy, I hope the committee flyered and took out the ads that they were supposed to.

I had the movers go to the Naughty America storage unit which has been housing all kinds of furniture and whatnot for the last several months. We aren’t doing anything with it and most of it is pretty beat up at this point and has been fucked on multiple times by multiple people. I tried on a lovely wedding dress and pranked some people on Twitter

Then I did some work at a classroom desk in my living room on my laptop in front of about 8,000 glossy 8×10s of porn stars.

As Norm was walking out the door he stopped and asked why there was a hazardous waste container with a bunch of used hypodermic needles in it.  I could have had some fun, but I told the truth ….that they were from when my beloved pooch was alive I had been giving her shots of all the things in the canyon that she was allergic to. Allergens, right?

Never a dull moment at my house.

Thursday 11.12.09

I took the train back to the office and got as much work done as I could before Chris and Rich picked me up for dinner. My nephew Danny’s old friend from college back in Maine invited me to his beer tasting at Roseville in Pt. Loma. Jeff has worked for Shipyard Brewing company forever, and being that he lived with me for a few months a year or so ago, I grew accustomed to the taste of this fine brew!

Reception: Shipyard Allagash White. osyters on the half shell, beer battered haddock, humbolt fog mac-n-cheese, chestnut stuffed chicken roulade.

First Course: Shipyard XXXX IPA, steamed venus clams with Spanish chorizo, melted leek, oven-roasted roma tomato and basil pistou.

Second Course: Grammy Dibiase’s “Door Knobs”, Duck confit, celery root puree, maitake mushroom, medjool date, and sage brown butter froth.

Third Course: Shipyard Imperial Porter, Meyer Ranch top sirloin roast, glazed winter vegetables, smoked parsnip puree with a red pearl onion porter reduction.

Last Course: Shipyard Barley Wine Style Ale, Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake, Barley Wine ice cream, beer soaked cherries, candied lemon and sea salt caramel.

The food was fantastic and the beer was great, as always.

The really interesting part of this evening is the 2 degrees of separation that was going on from the minute we walked into the door.
I ran into an old friend named Sara who works at Arterra in Del Mar.

Her sister Jessica and I went to elementary school/Jr HS/HS and are still in touch (poorly, I might add, but we are both guilty of being “too busy”… I know, it’s lame) Anyways, I lived with Jessica, Sara and their mom as a boarder in their house after my first semester of college. Long story: I moved to SD but moved home after 6 months and didn’t want to live with my evil stepmonster so I moved into a their house down the street. Jessica now lives in San Diego and Sara moved here a few years ago, too. One of Sara’s employees is from Maine and is good friends with Jeff, the Shipyard rep (try to follow) so that is why they are at the dinner in the first place. Oh, and Sara knows my nephew from CT when he was like 2 years old. OK, great. So then Chris runs into a client of his that he is supposed to close a deal with the very next day (hosting, co-location, ISP etc…) who happens to be in the adult entertainment business! (can’t really say names). Then we are sitting at our table of 15 and we start chatting up the other folks, and we discover that we are sitting with our best friend Sigrid’s boss! Who happens to be her neighbor and who is chatting up another guy at the table who lives around the corner from them as well. Who happens to know Sara from being a restaurant fly around San Diego and met her at her old place, The Pearl.

So ironic…  San Diego is a small village in a small world.

Wednesday 11.11.09

Today was moving day so I promptly vacated my house and stayed far away from it letting Kim deal with the whole damn thing. I stopped by my house to see if there was anything else needing to go and threw some stuff in a bag and caught a cab to the train station. I went to LA to attend a fundraiser event for our industry …but let’s talk about the hotel, and most importantly dinner. I stayed at the Westin Bonaventure… what a cool looking hotel. When you walk inside, it looks pretty much like a mall. The elevator was one that shoots outside the building and goes super fast (wow I sound like I don’t get out very much) and the workout center was the strangest thing… there were Star Wars like pods with weight machines on them for everyone walking around the hotel on other floors can see you working out. No thank you. There was a regular gym… so I went there and pretended to get in a good workout while answering 15 text messages.

Ok now onto the food portion of the night and my boner.

Lisa Ann met me and my friend Adam for dinner before the event. We were all very fashionably 15 Los Angeles minutes late. My friend Eric Greenspan owns The Foundry on Melrose… a high end (but not pretentious) place which serves really delicious food. I was introduced to him by my ex bf a few years ago and have kept in touch. The last two times I had plans to go in to see “Greeny” I flaked out because I was too drunk at Fiesta’s happy hour down the street in WeHo and then I was just downright sick. The time I was sick was tragic because he was hosting a James Beard Foundation dinner and I was very bummed out that I missed it.

Anyways, I was ready to pig out.

We started with his signature grilled cheese sandwiches.

The waiter tried to get us to order the potato soup and then save a part of the grilled cheese to dip into the soup but Greeny yelled at him and told him that this was not the way this was going to go down. I am actually curious to see what it tasted like but hell if I am going to disobey the chef. Then we have a raw scallop with an egg on top and a little crunchy thingy which tasted like it might have had some truffle oil on it. (Again, I am not a food critic by trade, I am just telling you what I ate.) The scallop simply melted in my mouth. The next course was the most delicious ahi tuna I have had in a very long time.

We then moved onto shrimp with what looks like a ball of hair that came out of the vacuum.

Not sure what that was. The worst part about eating off of a chef’s tasting menu is that the food comes so quickly and you are so busy shoveling it in that oftentimes I forget the details of exactly what was in it. For the main course they were going for a Thanksgiving type thing with squab (for those of you that aren’t in the know.. it’s pigeon), green beans, a pile of something else and a very delicious and very sweet potato with a huge dollop of marshmallow. I don’t even really like marshmallows but this was like crack… it was almost too sweet to be on the plate but I couldn’t stop eating it, especially with whatever brown glaze was drizzled all over it.

Unreal. Then we had some yummy pork belly

And for dessert we had peanut butter and jelly donuts with a small vanilla milkshake shot. The donuts I have had here before but I didn’t remember the warm peanut butter that oozes out of them when you cut into it. Holy crap I wanted to keep eating them but I was so full.

I only had one cocktail at dinner! Aren’t you proud of me!? I really wanted to keep my composure at the party and it’s never a good idea to start pounding drinks or wine at 7pm if you are going to a business function. (No this is not Laura’s well behaved twin, I was just trying to do the right thing) Lisa had to leave early since she was working the event and had to deal with the red carpet bullshit. Adam and I stayed and chatted with Greeny for a few minutes and I promised him I would send some porn to the restaurant for his staff.

We drove over to Les Deux and went straight to the bar since it was utterly packed. It was so crowded that I got comfortable in my spot by the bar and waited for all the people I needed to see to walk by me. What is the point of venturing out into the mass of people to keep missing each other. I figured if I stayed still at some point everyone would have to walk past me to use the restroom. My theory worked. While waiting I had a fun time making fun of some of the girl’s bad hair extensions and terrible outfits.

Puma Swede and Nikki Benz were on their best behavior in that they didn’t try to rip my clothes off. Usually when they get together it’s a fight to keep their hands off of me. They do it simply to freak me out and it works. I have learned to wear pants around them otherwise I would have my skirt yanked up around my head or some shit. Sometimes they chase me into the bathroom and stick the camera over the door and take pictures of me while I am trying to pee. Real mature ladies. Puma was subdued and left early with her boyfriend and Nikki was off running around on stage being a camera whore for TMZ. I never saw Lisa Ann again… but I did run into Nina Hartley and her husband and War Machine the MMA fighter who is doing porn now. Once I checked off the people on my list to say hi to, it was time to get the hell out of there. But not before running into Justice Young, who kissed on my neck enough to make the hairs stand on end. **sigh** He’s dreamy LOL

Puma and I love to take pics of our “fish faces” and since she is Swedish, it’s Swedish Fish!

The highlight of the night had to have been when the DJ played “I’m On a Boat” by the Lonely Island. You don’t really hear too many DJ’s playing this song in public… You really don’t hear it unless you live in my neighborhood and it’s at 2 am. I got excited and started jumping around a bit. If you don’t know that I am obsessed with SNL and this song, then you need to go back and read again. Adam thought I was off my rocker. I was like, “Ya know? The same guys who did ‘Dick in a Box’ and ‘Jizz in my Pants’?” and he was like “Oh yeah I know” but I am pretty sure he was lying and has no idea what I am talking about.

Monday 11.09.09 – Tuesday 11.10.09

It’s amazing what you find when you start digging through a 1700 square foot house. Kim and I did a miraculous job of speed packing in less than 15 hours. The movers are coming tomorrow to take the furniture and all of the stuff that I was able to get in boxes to the new loft to make sure it all fits. If it doesn’t fit then said movers will be bringing the shit back to my house for the yard sale this weekend. Oh well, that’s why I am paying them! Kim was probably the worst person for the job of helping me because she spent half the time trying to talk me into keeping crap that I do not need. I do not need 23 stuffed monkeys. The best thing she talked me into keeping was the ping-pong table. Yes, the new place is large enough to house a ping-pong table in the middle of it. It might get on my nerves after a month or two… but it sure will make for a fun housewarming.

I ended up finding 17 half empty packs of gum, more than 10 ping-pong balls, roller skates (in my size!), 8 bathing suits, Shrinky Dinks, Sea Monkeys, 6 decks of cards, a bag of pills which went in the trash, a tattered Magnum PI beach towel, gay porn and about $32.50 in loose change.

Tomorrow will be an interesting exercise for me… movers will be at my house without me there supervising them. A very difficult day for a control freak. Kim is my life saver during this move… I would not be able to pull this off without her. MUAH!

Totally unrelated… a very cute raccoon just came up to my doorstep and peered in. It reminds me of my Dad many years ago feeding fresh warm brownies to a family of raccoons until my stepmonster caught him and made him stop.

Thursday 11.05.06 – Sunday 11.08.09

I started loft hunting online and went to look at 3 places on Thursday afternoon. There is one company in town that manages a lot of the properties I was interested in so it makes things easy when you are coordinating viewings. I am going to just skip the boring shit and tell you that I got a place 3 blocks from my office that I have been thinking about for 12 years. It is the strangest thing…. I was visiting someone in this particular unit forever ago and have seriously thought about it at least once a year since that day. I drive by the building every day and always think to myself “If I ever have the chance to live in a loft dowtown I would want that unit in that building.” And as luck has it, that was one of the units that recently opened up. It’s fate. Really. The layout is very unique and it has a bunch of weird nooks and levels. I am in love with this place! And the best part is that I will be able to take most of my furniture with me… Kim is helping me coordinate this entire move otherwise I would have a nervous breakdown. lol

I spent the weekend going through the crap in my closets, garage, etc… I am like the people on the show Hoarders. Ok, not really that bad, but I do have an unnecessary amount of stuff. Do I really need to bring that rusty Hardy Boys lunch box? Prolly not. (without the thermos, it isn’t worth anything anyways) The other ironic thing about this sudden move is that my neighborhood has coordinated a block yard sale next weekend. Timing is everything! I am looking forward to living downtown for the first time ever. I have always had a house with a dog and this is going to be a very new experience for me.

Everything happens for a reason. If someone tells you otherwise, kick them in the shins.

Monday 11.02.09 – Wednesday 11.04.09

I was doing really well with my diet all winter and spring last year, but pretty much gave up when I had a hernia operation in June. My birthday weekend was no help (bacon wrapped everything: another day when I have nothing to talk about it I will tell you about “Top Chef: Laura’s Last Supper Edition”) and then summer just turned into a bunch of traveling, eating and no gym time. Anyways, today I pulled up a skirt over my fat ass that hasn’t fit in weeks. As it turns out, if you drink for 3 days and don’t eat, you lose weight! I looked very professional for debate day and headed to the office to watch 5 hopeful candidates battle it out for the honor of being elected The President of Naughty America. The debate went well, they all handled themselves professionally and answered the unexpected and oftentimes awkward questions. We went to Bareback Grill for lunch and I ordered the delicious Meso Tasty chicken sandwich and of course the crack-like french fries that they cook with a sweet sugary finish. I worked til almost 10:30 pm and went home and attempted to sleep. The last time I looked at the clock it was 1:30 am

On Tuesday my realtor called and told me that the bank approved my short sale on my home and that I had to be out by the end of the month. I have no place to move to and I have not started packing. This is where I start beating myself up for accomplishing absolutely nothing all weekend. Are you kidding me??? I am scheduled to go home for my reunion on the 24th, so this means I have to be out by the 23rd! BWAHAHAHAHA! This is unreal! I have a 1700 square foot house FULL of crap. I have made this decision to simplify my life knowing that I will be selling and/or donating most of what I own, however, I am 10000% unprepared to have this happen in the next 27 days. Holy shit. Ladies and gentlemen, this was not the plan. I worked late and then went home and popped an ambien. I got them a long time ago from a friend who works nights and I thought I would try one to help with my insomnia. Bad idea.

On Wednesday I woke up looped as all hell. Thats the last time I try that crap! I felt hungover until about noon… it was awful. At least if I feel like that in the morning, I better have had some fun the night before. I tried not to panic all day about my house and the mess I have to deal with. I made it to the gym tonight for the first time in weeks, and it felt great. I also went to a meeting of people in the adult business that gets together every Wednesday… I am in search of a co-host for our morning show and wanted to get the word out to anyone who might be interested. I managed to talk a girl out of a career in porn…. she said she wanted to disguise herself if she did it. A wig, some makeup and maybe have the camera not near her face. Umm, girlie, you might want to just consider escorting.

Here’s a funny story about a good friend of my bosses: I have a huge crush on him and we have flirted a lot in the past but the reality is we will never seal the deal. Not only does he like emaciated supermodel skinny Latina heroin addict looking girls, he is the best bud of my boss. If we ever got together it would be beyond awkward and I know they would sit around and talk about it like teenage school girls. So the friend needs a date to an event coming up and boss sent him the NOH8 photo of me saying “Hey, you should take this chick to your dance, she’s a friend of Dallas’s and I heard she’s great in bed!” Friend is like “Fuck yeah! Is she local!?” haha! Seriously… this has been going on in an email for days now… I can’t wait to hear the outcome of their dinner date tomorrow night. He is going to let it go as long as he can and then “read him the riot act” about how shallow he is. Funny stuff.

In other news, I splurged and bought myself an electric toothbrush. It’s awesome, you should get one!

Friday 10.30.09- Sunday 11.01.09 (sorry I have been slacking!)

Typically, Halloween is a really big deal for me and if I can’t come up with something super duper awesome or funny, I just skip it. In the last 8 months I have hosted two very successful costume parties. 2/07/09 was the SNL Party and 9/06/09 was the 80’s Movie Character Party. One day when I have nothing to talk about I will blog in detail about my maniacal attention to detail when hosting costume parties….

Soooo……this Halloween crept up and I wanted to be The REAL Balloon Boy with a bunch of inside-out helium balloons or an insulation blanket attached to my head and have a string and a small doll dangling off my contraption, but I simply didn’t have the energy or time to put it together. Sue me. I had every intention of putting it together in the beginning of the week, but as Thursday rolled into Friday, I adopted the “Halloween is for Rookies” attitude. I had plans to stay home most of the weekend anyways and start going through the crap in my house so I can prepare for my move in January. I am selling my house and downsizing for several reasons. I am never home, my dog died, and the douchebag behind me decided to build Trump Towers West in my backyard. On Friday night I stayed late at work and went over to The Local for “one drink”. They were in the midst of a white trash party

(I had one of those years ago, too… we were grilling grilled cheese sandwiches lol) and somehow (on my empty stomach) I got so drunk in 3 hours that my wonderful friends had to help me find a cab so I could make it home safely. Scary that I don’t really remember half the night. I do recall these photos:

Carlos from The Hangover (a very popular costume this year was Allan and Carlos… the best one I saw was my friend Jeff in NJ who had a real baby for his Carlos!) (I saw this movie 3 times in the theater!)

Critical Mass: those annoying bikers that take over the streets of downtown San Diego one Friday a month. I asked Tommy 5tone what the deal was and he said, “Oh they just do it for fun.” I started taking a bunch of photos and video because I was going to blog and talk a bunch of shit about how stupid they are and I hope they get hit by a car and blah blah. But then I asked a woman standing on the sidewalk cheering them on what this was for and she said it was a statement against auto pollution. So I searched deep into my shallow little soul and realized that a Prius-driving-garbage-picking-recycling-crazy-person like myself shouldn’t be mad at them, I should embrace their cause and be proud of them! I considered join ing them one Friday a month, except that I don’t really know how to ride a bike. In traffic. I mean I know how to ride a bike, it’s just that I learned how to ride a bike on a ½ mile long driveway with no traffic. The last time I was on a bike in public was in 1993 with Stephanie and Chantelle in Mission Beach and I ended up crashing over the sea wall. So, critical massers: Have at it! I will no longer hiss at you on Friday nights when I am stuck in a taxi trying to get downtown.

Saturday night turned into a naked hottub party (Obviously there are no photos from that, duh, I don’t have a waterproof camera) which turned into 3am playing the “I’m On a Boat” video 17 times on my big-screen. We did manage to have a brief and simple Top Chefesque competition where Michelle and Michelle battled it out in a watermelon carving contest.

Needless to say when I called everyone to brunch on Sunday I was a total hurting trainwreck. I lasted 5 minutes at Universal and walked home deserting Tommy and Jen. I promptly turned my phone and brain off and fell asleep for the next 3 hours. When I woke up I had to rally and get my ass in gear to meet up with the Naughty President candidates who had flown into town. We met up at the Se Hotel and had a couple of foo-foo drinks and then Lauren, Dallas and I took them to dinner at Yard House. I had the bacon, chicken, truffle mac-n-cheese, which pulled me out of my 5pm hangover quite nicely, along with a bottle of Cakebread chardonnay.Don’t worry, I shared the wine. After dinner we walked around the corner and were denied entrance at the Star Bar because I still don’t have a fucking drivers license after letting it expire on my birthday in June. The Star Bar, which is arguably the nastiest dive bar in all of the Gaslamp, doesn’t accept passports. That’s right, they do not accept an international identification. So we went to Gaslamp Tavern where it was too loud and then decided to go back to the Se for a nightcap. I was falling asleep while dodging questions about the upcoming debate tomorrow and I finally had to call it a night. I took a cab home to discover that all of the exits near my house were blocked off and a mere $34 dollars later I was home. I should mention that I dozed off in the cab when we finally did get near my house and was a little embarrassed to tell the cabbie that he had to turn around because we had gone too far due to my narcolepsy. Long weekend folks.