winners!

Sunday was the Paley Festival's showing of the final three episodes of Pushing Daisies and I'd been looking forward to it for months. When the Big Day finally drew near, we got sad news that Adam wasn't going to make it and I nearly cried. Instead, I threw a fit and bullied and cajoled him until he agreed to fly out for the day - hooray!

So Sunday morning we met Adam and Kate outside the Arclight theater and did a happy dance and then went inside. It was a sold-out crowd and we got seats near the back of the house, which was great (there isn't a bad seat in the place). When the 'presentation' started, Bryan Fuller, Chi McBride, Barry Sonnenfeld and Ellen Greene (*squee!*) came out to thank the audience for their support and everyone was in tears. Sweet Ellen could barely talk and it was felt throughout the theater. They all then started throwing t-shirts out to the crowd and people were going NUTS. None of them made it up to our section and a lot of people were whining and moaning about it. But the show quickly started and I have to say that if you like Pushing Daisies, you will LOVE watching it with hundreds of other fans. Every moment is more intense and more touching when everyone around you is simultaneously gasping and laughing and 'awww'ing. It was incredible.

The episodes themselves were lots of fun and even though it was supposed to only be the season-ender, they were able to make it into a suitable series finale. Bryan Fuller commended the team who all called in favors to come up with extra budget and get people to work for cheap or free to get it all together (since a lot of new footage and special effects work was needed). I won't give away any spoliers, since the final 3 will be aired in May on ABC, but I can say that the final episode wrapped nicely and made me mist up a little (Kate was crying! So there!). In fact, I was quoted as saying "I am not a sentimental person. I'll punch a baby in the face and even I got chills."

Just before the last episode started, they raffled off several props from the shows and Ryan won one! He won a custom arm-sling that was worn by Olive Snook (Kristen Chenoweth) in the show, that was even autographed!

Ryan's hair and face was still asleep.

After the Festival, we went over to 8oz Burger Bar for the world's best hamburgers. Ryan and I ordered custom burgers which were TO DIE FOR. Mine had bacon and gruyere cheese (!) and garlic tomatoes (!!) and BBQ sauce and Ryan got slice of fried mozzarella and tomato sauce. Yes! You can get fried mozzarella on your burger. Heaven!!

While we were there Seth Rogen and his girlfriend sat at the table next to us, which was funny because Adam was once Seth's neck double for a photo shoot* and Adam is slightly bitter that those neck-double roles are disappearing since Seth is slimming down for his role as Green Lantern. So they walk in and Adam sighs "my neck double just walked in" and we all swivel and see that they choose the booth next to us. Que sera. So, they're sitting there enjoying their lunch and it's not 5 minutes before someone (a waiter!) stops by to geek-dump all over Seth and the guy is persistent. As if Seth is going to suddenly stand up and say "YES! You're exactly the actor I've been looking for! Let me call James Cameron and recommend you for his next blockbuster!" What are these people thinking when they do this? Then he finally leaves and a girl comes up to the table, only she pretends that she's geeking out over the girlfriend "Don't you remember me? I'm Anna's friend Lisa's friend? We met that one time at that party 5 years ago? Oh my god, how are you?" and then gives Seth the quick-brush 'oh hey, nice to meet you' AS IF. The girlfriend (apparently named Lauren) was very nice, but they were clearly pestered by this girl and the waiter and I wanted to yell RESPECT CELEBRITY PRIVACY! [quote from 30 Rock, when Jenna yells this at someone sharing the elevator after she loudly starts talking on her cell phone and he can't avoid hearing it] But I kept my opinions to myself and went back to talking about dirty words with Adam's mom. Que sera.

After we ate, we walked up Melrose to where we'd parked (our original lunch plans were for another restaurant) our cars and thankfully the sun was behind the buildings so it was only 90 degrees but not full sunlight. Yay! My sunburn from Saturday was roasting me from inside out, so I was a hot sweaty mess. Then we decided to grab a light dessert, iced tea and cookies before we all set out for home. While we were at the bakery, I had a full-scale melt down (I blame the sunburn!) and could NOT. STOP. GIGGLING. In my mind, it was hilarious, but it probably wasn't. All I know is that somewhere in the conversation there were mentions of how Kate knows several people who have been bitten by Andy Dick and then talk of celebrity slumber parties (with Andy Dick biting people) and then I just lost it. I don't know what happened. Sunburn makes you crazy! Apparently!

It was a fantastic day in so many ways. But my brain was officially a melted popsicle after cookies so Ryan and I headed home. I slept like a log (a log slathered in Solarcaine and with a fan blowing directly on her face, but a log nonetheless!). So THANK YOU to all the fantastic participants in this day, including Seth Rogen, his patient girlfriend, Adam's mom, Shawn (the new guy who laughed at my jokes!), the cops who looked the other way while I jaywalked, Andy Dick, Kathy Griffin, the weirdoes on Melrose, and the stuffy folks at Munky King.

*Adam produced the photo shoot seen in this video and there are pics of Seth and Elizabeth dressed as puritans being hung as witches (1:30) and Adam was strung up in the noose in Seth's costume, to serve as the neck double. So when he was done shooting he had rope burns on his neck AND he fell off the ladder and banged up his leg pretty good.

best week ever

Another crazy weekend has come and gone, chock full of good and great and wonderful things and people. And once again, I am going to do the cop-out and post a weekend recap.

Friday

Ryan's band, The Taint, played at the Unknown Theater with special guest Kevin Stewart which was really fun. The Unknown Theater is a black box theater in LA that runs shows until about 10pm and then hosts bands. The show that was playing ran a bit late, which worked out and allowed all of the party peoples to catch up before we all went inside. Inside, it was a working theater with the stage still set up for the show -- so everyone performed inside a bedroom set, complete with bed and tables. It was pretty funny.

I took pictures with my new camera to test it out a bit more, which all turned out pretty great. It was also a first time using it for video, which turned out better than I'd hoped. If you want to catch up on the latest videos, check out my YouTube channel.







After the show, we went over to the French Quarter for middle of the night breakfast and waited (and waited and waited) for Adam. We gorged on pancakes and French onion soup and salads and grilled cheese sandwiches and fries and everything in between. GOOD TIMES! We finally headed home when the restaurant closed around us at 4am. I was super tired and swore that I was going immediately to sleep... only I ended up reading for a while and getting sucked into my book. Darn you Vicki Pettersson!! When the sun came up, I turned out the light and went to sleep.

Saturday

Slept 'til noon which isn't as impressive as it sounds. Ryan and I got up to meet Miss Bliss in Pasadena at Zephyr Café to work on our Top Secret Writing Project. The place is full of cool vibes, it's a 1908 Craftsman style house that has been converted into a relaxed hang-out space and we took up residence on the patio for a few hours and got some serious work done. It was awesome. Our project is going to melt your face off. For reals.

After that, Ryan and I headed home, swearing that we were going directly to bed (at 8:30pm) because we were both so exhausted. Of course, as soon as you say it, you jinx yourself. I ended up half-asleep on the couch, but unwilling to budge watching FOUR HOURS of a Heavy Metal documentary on MTV2. I now know more about heavy metal music than I ever wanted to and have a big ol' crush on Judas Priest. Did you know that Judas Priest invented the "heavy metal look"? It was kind of by accident… the singer needed a new look and took cues from his fetish for leather, which has now become the standard for all "tough" and metal guys. HILARIOUS. So note to all you bikers in your leather and chains: Gay bondage. HA HA HA HA

So at 1am, the series ended and I scooted off to bed… to read more (Vickkkkkki!!!) before I was too tired to do anything else and I fell asleep.

Sunday

Kevin was filling in with a band called Exotiki at the Redwood Bar in LA, for a "Sunday Brunch" and so we drove back up to LA for the show. If you're ever in the LA area, I highly recommend checking out the Redwood. It's close to the MOCA and all the cool sights in Downtown and well worth popping your head in. The entire bar is long and narrow and decorated like a pirate ship. The details are phenomenal. Everything from the doors to the galley to the cannon, it was all super awesome. Again, testing the video in super low light and really close to the speakers, it all came out pretty decent!



Toward the end of the set, Ryan and I had to jet because I promised my sister that I'd come to her pumpkin carving party. I made it there just in time and we had fun carving and scraping and scraping and scraping (jack-o-lanterns are a lot of work!). I started carving before I had a true idea of what I was going to do (typical) so I rushed and it didn't turn out quite right. Oh well, it was still a lot of fun. I need to post those pictures still.

After we were done, I had to drag my tired corpse home and got in bed early. With another Vicki Pettersson book, of course. It's like crack, people.

Country Fair

If you've ever heard of the small canyon where my family lives, it's because it catches on fire every year and last year's fire grew into an enormous beast that ate a good chunk of southern California. Otherwise, if you live more than 7 miles away, you most likely don't know the place exists. It's a rural spot on the edge of the forest that began as a silver mining town and is a haven admist the city life found everywhere else in Orange County for those people who don't take kindly to "city life." Which is to say, there are a bunch of bikers and weirdoes and the occassional city slicker who "wants to get away from it all." I have a whole bucket full of opinions on the place, but my family claims to love it there, and so they are involved with the community there and my mom in particular likes to do the social gathering stuff like the annual Country Fair.

So. We again got a booth at the Fair and set out our crafty wares. It was fun and pretty profitable (although, any craft seller will tell you that Fairs are dangerous because you spend 50% of your profits on roasted corn and bake sale brownies). I had a fan, which was super cool. I made some finger puppets and some needle felted animals and this little guy (who later told me he's 4 and a half) had all kinds of suggestions for what I should make next and how I should give them to him for free, since he thought of it. He was so cute and cracked me up with all his encouragement. I made a special SpongeBob finger puppet for him, at his request, and he kept leaning on my arm and cooing "you're REALLY good at this. You're doing a super good job." and when I said Thank You, he instructed me "No, you should say Super Thank You." So funny, this guy. He even let it slide when I made SpongeBob's pants blue instead of brown. "You know what? That's ok. I like blue. It's my favorite color even! So I'll just tell people that I asked you for blue pants."

The newspaper assigned a new beat reporter and the guy was a little overenthusisatic about his job. He was having such a sporting time gawking at the hillbillies and eating fried Oreos and he kept pestering me for a picture for his article. I paused for one second and he sprung into action.



So here's me, with all my chins, wearing an itsy-bitsy cowboy hat. I pray that it didn't make the print edition. (There are 185 pictures posted for the online version. Read here.)

The number one draw for kids to our booth was this little cardboard house that I used to display the needle felted animals.



I needed some way to set them out and Ryan found this box in the garage and turned it inside out and it formed itself into a 2 story house. I laid down some felt carpet and viola! Every kid in the place stopped by once, or twice, or thrice, to look at it. I had more inquiries about the house than the inhabitants and everyone wanted to know how much it cost. My mom was infatuated with my little Fan and kept egging me to give it to him. Which I wouldn't have minded giving it away for free (it says PETMEDS inside, for criminy's sake!) except it was slapped together haphazardly and was actually kind of delicate. The little toothpick window frames were just set in there (no glue or tape) and the roof had two simple pieces of masking tape holding it on. I was mostly worried that some poor kiddie would be majorly disappointed. Lay hands on the cardboard house of his/her dreams and then it would crumble. Or, worse, stab somebody with errant toothpicks.

On Sunday, I left the fair just before closing because I was bushed and my stepdad had already shown up to start help disassembling (I wasn't needed anymore) and my mom held on to the house "in case someone wants to buy something at the last minute" which I assume is code for "in case your fan comes by again, I can give it to him." I just hope it held up so that SpongeBob had someplace to live until he can get back to his underwater pineapple fortress.

what works

People (supportive, loving people, mind you) keep asking me how Weight Watchers is going. And it's going okay. I'm still struggling with eating enough, as counterintuitive as it sounds. Last week I noticed part of what is 'working' is that I am actually feeling hungry more often, rather than eating a light breakfast and feeling fine for 12 hours. So my challenge now is to keep lots of snackable items at hand, so that I can hear the rumbly in my tumbly and grab a fistful of popcorn or crackers or grapes or whatever, so that my metabolism keeps going.

The funniest thing/hardest thing is that even though I splurged all weekend (it's my birthday week, so I get some grace), and I STILL didn't get to my 'reserve' points. I went to Disneyland twice and had crack pasta, a meatball sandwich, ice cream, and soda [not all at once] and only came in at 2 points over my daily allotment. On Saturday night, we took some friends to see R.R.R.E.D. and went out to Lala's for dinner and gorged ourselves silly and I had extra bread, cheese, chimmichurri up the wazoo, and candy at the show and came in 9 points over my daily limit. WHAT?! And because I 'under-ate' on days before, I never even got close to my 35 reserve points. Ridiculous!

I have also been pretty surprised at the points on fast food items, especially in comparison to restaurant prepared foods. Like last week, Ryan and I went to lunch at Mimi's Café and I was considering a Turkey Ciabatta sandwich. I figured turkey is healthy, right? But somehow the sandwich is 32 points, which made me laugh so hard I cried (which, I think burns calories... hmmm....). On the other hand, a taco from Taco Bell (standard, crispy shell taco) is 3 points. So, um, I can eat 10 tacos or a turkey sandwich? Wuh? And because 2 tacos are all I need, I can have a 6 point lunch that is way tastier (to me) than a frozen Weight Watchers entrée.

So I'm still working on it. Or, it's working on me, I guess. I keep looking at those Laptop Lunches/Bento Box photo pools on Flickr and it's making me want to join in. Maybe that's the shove that I need to finally start making my own lunches (gasp!) and putting some thought into what goes into my belly. So if anyone wants to sell me a $75 plastic lunch system box, now is the time!!

Also this weekend, we managed to squeeze in 3 movies:

1. Super High Me - entertaining, not great
2. Sky High - not a stoner movie, like it sounds, and actually very funny and cute
3. Interview With The Vampire - total disappointment. Great subject matter, but completely cheesy. Tom Cruise doing the vampire bite? OMG, it looks like a characture.

in memorium

Well, we didn't BBQ on Memorial Day but don't blame us! Or our lack of a BBQ! Point your finger at the sky and curse this g.d. weather that can't make up it's damn mind already. Thursday it was sunny, then suddenly rainy and then Friday copied that. Saturday was sunny but cold somehow, Sunday was gorgeous. Monday was overcast and chilly and then sunny in quick spurts. I blame the sky. As always. Dang you sky for costing us a cookout!

But who cares? You all ate an extra ear of corn for me, right? And anyway, I overindulged on a sloppy joe at Bird's because... well, because I could. And it was deeee-lishus!

Saturday, we went with friends to see Ironman (that's pass #2 for me) because they hadn't seen it. It was pretty good the second time through also. Just so you know. Although don't skimp on the sour watermelons. I cannot stress this enough. Having an empty candy bag half-way through is a bum chicken if I ever saw one!

On Sunday, I went and got my hair whacked off and Ryan had band practice and then we jetted up to LA to see a show at UCB. Zach and Mimi had seen this show before and insisted that we not miss it. And who am I to argue? Sunday night's show was the Full House "reunion" show and it was hilarious. It was a reunion of the behind-the-scenes crew and cast members of Full House. There was a writer's assistant, a set guy, the composer, Tanny Danner (on whom the show was based) and the stunt coordinator. We watched a highlight reel, which included one of the "very special episodes" where we learned that teasing hurts and it's no fun to be teased. We knew this because Stephanie made fun of a kid from school by calling him "duckface" and it really hurt his feelings bad. After we all nodded and felt that we had learned our lesson, Duckface himself came out on stage! The actor who played Duckface (Whit Hertford) joined the panelists and then we all together watched the Episode Where The Family Goes to a Beach Boys Concert, which is quite possibly the worst episode in the history of television. And shizz man, those Beach Boys cannot act! Their lines were "Hi, we're the Beach Boys" and I didn't buy it. Anyway, we heard about how portions of this episode were filmed on a flatbed truck going 85mph and some scenes were entirely underwater (stunts aplenty!). We also heard right from Tanny Danner how the concept of the show evolved -- from his real life of letting 3 buddies move in with him to cover bad gambling debts to the house full of children and brothers-in-law that we'd come to watch on TV for 8 seasons. Whit Hertford mentioned that he's available to play Danny DaVito's lesbian sister, if anyone is looking to cast it. The composer introduced us to some of his failed jingles (all beginning with "what ever happened to ______? Milkman, the paperboy, evening TV?"). It was fantastic. As always, a boatload of pictures can be found on Flickr [in a separate UCB set].

After THAT we went over to Susina's and had a bounty of cookies (I ain't lyin! Photographic proof is here!), which by "bounty" I mean "bellyache". We scored the last few Cherry Bombs (yay!) and now I am craving them all over again... sigh... ALSO: it was Towel Day (you didn't forget until midnight like us, did you?) and so we wore our towels and watched Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now the debate is who do I love more? Mos Def? Zooey Deschanel? Martin Freeman? Marvin?

On Monday, we slept in, went out to breakfast (where every single part of our order was wrong, just a comedy of errors), and then I was going to head off for Disneyland but lovely Miss Kate had some important stuff come up so we skipped out on that and just hung out. Bought some comics, watched some movies, read some books, played some Puzzle Bobble. Y'know, all the stuff that everyone else was doing, sans the BBQ and hot dogs and swim trunks.

I know what you did last weekend

On Friday, I got one of the best compliments of my life. It came courtesy of Adam, who we met for dinner between shows (approx. 40 minutes). He said "You guys really know the value of a minute. You sure know how to pack a night." I'd never thought of it that way exactly, but yeah, we do. Rock on for us (me).

I started off Friday with a crushing headache that eventually forced me to leave work early to seek the quiet, dark solitude of my bedroom. A handful of migraine-kicking medicine and a short nap fixed nearly everything and so I was in a great mood to check out some LA comedy that night. We started the night at Susinas for cookies (the best one, we found out is called "Mont Blanc") and then over to the 9pm show of Ten Little Indiansgenous Peoples of America, starring Daniel Billet (also in Scandal! at 11pm) who is fantastic and a nice guy to boot, and the show was great. Imagine an improv soap opera version of Clue with 10 actors on stage at once. It was incredibly impressive.

After the show, we delivered Kate to her pre-show prep (for Scandal!) and we rushed over to Lala's to meet Adam for a quick dinner full of CILANTRO (sorry, my friend, it IS cilantro) and cheese and a wee bit of steak thrown in for good measure and then high-tailed it back to Acme for the 11pm show.

I left my camera at home which is unfortunate for all kinds of reasons, including that there is no existing video of Kate involved in a cat fight (CAT FIGHT!). The show was awesome, as always, and afterward we hung out at the adjacent restaurant/bar to rub elbows with the cast, show off my felted doll (unintentional, I promise. I only meant to show Kate, but it ended up passed 'round the table), and hear all about T's new job [on a tee vee program that we all like]. We discussed the Superest, toilet paper loyalty, and also Adam's tale of being locked out of the house (the way he tells it is fantastic and I don't want to ruin it, but it involved heavy breathing, monster sounds, and his roommate fainting from fright). A very "us" kind of night. I hope everyone had as much fun as we did.

Saturday night, we went back "up north" to Santa Monica to see Kate's Hair of the Mangy Dog sketch show with all new material (!) at the Westside Eclectic. It's a great little space with no air conditioning, so beware. HoTMD was awesome, even though they were roasted like chickens afterward. I DO have pictures (and video) from the show that I need to post tonight. And even though we were a stone's throw from the ocean, it wasn't much cooler outside, so Kate, Ryan, and I retreated to a toy store to browse around (and lavish in the free air conditioning) before retiring for burgers, flat Coke, and toy-playing. We considered dropping in on Adam in the middle of the night and trying to scare him a bit (he deserved it after torturing his roomie) but decided that it was probably in everyone's best interest (especially Kate) to let Kate get home and get some rest before her big day on Sunday [lady is booked every day of the week, BTW]. We forget that not everyone is as nocturnal as us and that normal people like to go to bed at night and then wake up in the morning. Which isn't at all our usual schedule of sleep from 5-11am, meaning that we're just hitting our stride at 2am. But we tore ourselves away, drove home and then re-watched this week's 30 Rock again because, seriously, it's the best show on television.

We also had to take a moment to lament the empty seat left by Miss Bliss who is super awesome and dedicating all of her free time to a side project of immense proportions, wherein she is the ultimate talent in staging and lighting and awesomeness. While we applaud her efforts and skill, we also miss her dearly and look forward to the show ending so that we can get some face time with her again soon. It's been like THREE WEEKS since we've seen each other which is 42 months in dog years. Too long.