January 26, 2012
Everything looks better in Spanish doesn’t it? And what that means is “The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels”, and one week ago I was getting ready to perform my first show there. How time flies. It’s all gone by so quickly – the stress that no one would come to the show, that I would forget my lines and embarrass myself, that if anyone came and if I managed not to forget then they would hate the show anyway. And then before you know it – it’s over and I am back home.
I know most of my New York friends have nothing nice to say about LA but I came back with a love hangover. I have had a crush on LA for years. Being a huge fan of Hollywood and movies like ‘LA Confidential’, and ‘Chinatown’, as well as of shows like “Six Feet Under’ and ‘Entourage’ I just love the way the city looks.
We stayed in the Melrose district where the Spanish-Colonial (thanks Diggi!) style of architecture dominates. Each house is unique in terms of both design and color – and while the cars parked outside are clearly of this century I look at it and imagine that things haven’t changed that much since those homes were first built. And because i feel like the history of LA (as I know it, in my limited capacity) is not that far behind it’s easy to slip in to one’s version of the past.
Before I got there I thought that I would appreciate the weather, and possibly the beach. Turns out it’s neither. What I love about LA is what it stands for – the movies. OK, calm down – of course there is much more. A cute Mexican came to my show – he works with kids, disabled ones. I know. But to me those four days were all my imagination, fueled by the movies and TV shows I had seen all my life. There is this sexy Hollywood haze that hangs heavy over the city, giving me the feeling that at any moment I could run in to someone famous, some people call this smog, screw them.
LA is a huge, multi-cultural, warm city. It’s the kind of city that puts you in the mood for romance – my specific image involved a younger Jack Nicholson (in any film), or Russell Crowe (not from ‘The Insider’). But the best part of the city – like any fabulous city anywhere – are it’s people. They are all uniformly attractive – some may have taken a step too far but so what? You dye your roots don’t you?
Anyway – the point is GO TO LA! And while you are there definitely:
- Stay: do yourselves a fave and live like a local, possibly with a local www.airbnb.com
- Eat: at Pampas Grill in the Farmers Market on Fairfax, and fish and pork tacos anywhere.
- Drive: through Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive. The Hollywood Hills are beautiful, take a moment at the vista points (I sound like my mother) – you can view the valley on one side and downtown LA on the other. Carry a barf bag if you tend to get carsick – the roads are windey as fucking hell. Take a picture of the Hollywood sign. I did not and am annoyed. Also drive through Beverly Hills and Bel Air and glare disdainfully at other tourists doing the same shameful thing, in the same shameful mustang convertible (the most hideous, basic version that only a Belarussian and North Indian would select). Admire the Beverly Hills Hotel.
And here are some pictures from the trip.
My entourage. How fucking depressing are these two?
Our back yard.
Our Ride. Just kidding - this was parked across the street from us.
After the first show. With Ms. Jolly. Fellow actor and short-haired fellow.
After second night. With Rockstar Matty P and Katherine.
Last night! Sexy Lady Audience Members.
And some Unladies.
It's over bitch - no need to be nice any more!
Morning after. At Farmers Market with Chriselle Almieda, fellow actor and NY transplant.
Boys from LA, Girls from NY.
Santa Monica. It's like a suburb. But with sexy people.
And as the sun sets on my trip to LA...
...I go 'Hollywood' and learn that I look like an ass with my sunglasses on indoors.
November 30, 2011
Thanksgiving is the most American of American holidays. It is a 4-day long weekend that skillfully combines food, football and family, and ever since my first year in America, as a Teacher’s assistant in Syracuse, NY it has been a dream of mine to be invited to a Thanksgiving weekend in the home of an American family, preferably one with a fireplace to sit by and enjoy hot cocoa (even though I am lactose intolerant and would probably fart the family in to oblivion).
But after moving to New York 10 years ago I gave up on my dream. Why? Because my New York friends, American or not, are, without exception, New York Orphans (henceforth to be referred to as NYOs). NYOs are people who have no family in the tri-state area that they can spend four whole days with, let alone bring their Indian friend and her husband to. Some of them zip home on Thursday morning via the Metro North, eat with their family, and then zip back the same evening or the next day. The rest don’t even have that option, America is a big country and families live too far away.
So instead I would celebrate Thanksgiving with other NYOs. The Sethis, The Bilbys, The Kojics/Poliacks, The Talwalkars, The List Is A Long One. These gatherings are usually a pretty casual affair, and to prove it here is a sample of an invitation I got from friend and fellow NYO Keith Nealon, I have not edited it, this is exactly what I got in my email:
“Hey…thanksgiving?…put you down for drink n anal?”
And so it went. Until this year when the director of my show Brock Savage asked me and my husband to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family in Standish, Maine! His sister (Tammy) and brother-in-law (Shaun) have a vacation home on a lake, and every year the family gets together to spend the weekend there. I could not say no to that so I said yes please!
Because I haven’t the talent to be pithy, and because my allotted time for writing the blog this week is up, I have not described my Maine experience in detail. Instead here are some important stats and some pictures from one of the best the weekends I have ever had ever!
Family members at gathering:
Mom and Dad Savage, Tammy and Shaun, Catlyn (Brock’s niece) Donahue, Brock, and us. Or as Brock called it, “ Three couples, the ingénue, and the old maid”.
Total amount of Food/drink items consumed over the Thankgiving weekend by me alone:
Own body weight in Banana Cream Pie with whipped topping.
Husband’s body weight in corn bread and sausage stuffing.
40 kilograms turkey (with TGing meal and in sandwiches).
39 kilograms assorted pies (apple, apple crisp, strawberry rhubarb) a la mode.
1 whoopie pie (for the ignorant this is two slabs of rich, fudgey chocolate cake, with a thick layer of frosting holding them together).
65 kilograms of roasted pecans (eaten plain by shoving a handful at a time in to my gob, or on top of banana cream pie, on top of assorted pie and whoopie pie, and liberally sprinkled in the very small salad I force fed myself out of guilt).
Wine, bubbley, rum and hot water (I did not bother to record quantities because liquids are hard to keep track of).
Total hours dedicated to football viewing:
Zero.
PHOTOS!
The House on The Lake: Thanks to the fact that Deepak was in-charge of the camera, we have no pictures of the house we stayed in. But we do have pictures of some other houses that I have included to give you a feel for the place. We also have no pictures of the fireplace.
The Lake: We (thankfully) have some pictures of the lake from the Donahue deck.
Lake by sunset (ish).
L.L.Bean: This is a major shop in Maine. The boot in the photograph is their most famous product. While at L.L.Bean I purchased green rain boots, also known as ‘wellingtons’, ‘galoshes’ or, and in my opinion most charmingly, ‘shit kickers’. And that is our host, Shaun Donahue, being his normal self.
Dead Moose: To me a moose signifies majesty and mystique. Here he is, sadly robbed of both, in the hunting section at L.L. Bean.
Inbreeding: I was told there was a little brother-sister love going on in some parts of Maine, but putting up signs like this is just mean. (Brock and I go for a walk).
Sock Monkey: A Sock Monkey is a monkey made of socks. Tammy Craft Genius Donahue made TWO of them right in front of me, here is proof.
My own Sock Monkey: I got to keep the ‘trial monkey’ – and that’s him back in NY with the orphans!
