So I know I haven’t written in like forever, but it’s time for me to tell you that me and Benji broke up. I totally thought that me and him would last - like I didn’t think that he’d mind that I had another boyfriend.

But whatever, I’m so over Benji and I am totally hearting Chris now. Nicole can KEEP Benji all to herself now.

My new boyfriend like OWNS MySpace so he can help me redo my page so that way if I wanted to really run for President, he’d make it so that the whole country can vote on my page instead of having to go to those polls. Those are probably like really far and out of the way for everyone. But whatever, the election is like next year so that’s plenty of time. I bet we’ll be married by then!!

I don’t normally like to get so serious - but Blackberry, I’m lonely. Like sure I have sex with any guy who gives me the *look* but I don’t have any girls to call to tell them about my sex or if it burns when I pee. LA is too full of jealous girls whose boobs are bigger than mine so I decided that I’m going to go to London to find my new best friend. I think that it’s in France so that means that we can shop there together and everything. Read More »

Yesterday at 2:53pm EST my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Sweetie” (it was my mom), “There’s been an earthquake”

My heart stopped.
“Where was it centered?”
“I don’t know”
“How big?”
“They’re saying it was in the 6’s and…”
“Where are you?”
“Driving home from …”
“How are the dogs?”

By now I was shrieking, I barely heard her empty assurances that they must be okay and that she would try to get a hold of someone nearby.

I hung up and rushed to my computer, certain that the worst had happened. Another major Quake…

When I was 8 the ‘94 Northridge Quake destroyed most of my known world. My family was homeless for 9 months and all of our parks were turned into National Guard relocation facilities. For a while I slept with my tennis shoes on—in case I had to climb out of my room the next morning.

It is impossible to describe the relief that washed over me when I finally got through to the LA Times website and saw that it was only a 5.8 (later lowered to a 5.4) with horizontal motion and centered in Chino Hills about 55 miles from my home in the San Fernando Valley. Read More »

I, an avid meat and ice cream-eater, have been eating vegan for the past week as a George Plimpton-esque adventure. Now, on my last day, I am literally counting down the hours until I am reunited with meat and dairy products again.

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal.

Lunch: I go with my family to Coast, the beach-side restaurant in the Shutter’s Hotel in Santa Monica. I look the menu over again and again, dreaming about all the food that I can’t eat. I want to order spaghetti until someone points out that a lot of spaghetti is made with eggs, which the waitress confirms. The waitress tells me that the only vegan item on the menu is a Portobello mushroom steak with barley rice. “Steak” is a major exaggeration - it is just a small, thin slice of Portobello - but the dish as a whole is delicious. Read More »

Welcome to day five of my week eating entirely vegan.

No joke, this morning I woke up in a panic because I thought I’d eaten a ham and cheese sandwich last night. I’m not sure if this is because the rules of vegan eating are so strict you can break them on accident, or if I was just really craving a ham and cheese sandwich.

Breakfast: Trusty ol’ venti soy latte from Starbucks. The server looked like Christian Bale. Suddenly I’m very happy to be eating (and drinking!) vegan this week.

Lunch: Beer!! I go with a friend to the On the Waterfront Café on the Venice Boardwalk, an outdoor beer garden, and I enjoy a tall glass of brew. Some beers and wines are made with some fish product called isinglass, but I read online that German beers are vegan-friendly, so I order a German beer. This is by far the best vegan meal I’ve had in a while.

Dinner: I end up at Real Food Daily, again. I am now completely addicted to their Supreme Burrito. I highly recommend it. My friend gets a club sandwich. He is a huge meat eater and hates health food, but even he admitted that it wasn’t bad.

Does anyone know of any other vegan restaurants in Los Angeles that I should try? Or some vegan friendly products?

[image from veganvice.blogspot.com]

I’m starting to get cranky.

Welcome to day 6 of my week-long vegan eating adventure.

Breakfast: Wheatabix cereal with soy milk.

Lunch: I drag a friend to California Vegan Restaurant on Sunset. I get a sweet and sour seitan (wheat gluten) dish with steamed brown rice. The sauce is tangy and tasty with pineapple, which I always love. But the seitan has a weird consistency and taste, it looks like a cross between tofu and chicken and it kind of creeps me out.

Dinner: I go with some friends to Famima!!, the Japanese convenience store, to get some cheap dinner. I spend twenty minutes looking at all their boxed dinners, studying ingredients, trying to figure out what I could eat. I end up just getting a fruit plate. I watch my friends eat their food and think of a new annoying thing about eating vegan: you can’t try your friends food. I’m someone who always steals other people’s food, so this is incredibly annoying. Read More »

My first night back in Los Angeles, after a year of living in New York, I ended up at a bar on Sunset called Coach & Horses. It was dark, dank, a jukebox kind of place. I started talking to a guy, a friend of a friend, about our jobs, favorite movies, favorite television shows. He worked in the writer’s room of a popular TV show, we were both addicted to “Top Chef,” and we agreed that the first four seasons of the “West Wing” were brilliant and far surpassed seasons five thru seven.

It was refreshing to talk to a guy who shared my interests and taste, because in New York it was hard to find someone I had anything in common with. I felt like I’d struck gold, and then I remembered: I wasn’t in New York anymore. This was Los Angeles, a city full of my kind of people.

It’s not just a myth that everyone in Los Angeles works in the entertainment industry in one capacity or another; you’re hard pressed to find someone with no industry connections. Everyone in LA seems to have a script they wrote tucked under their arm, and most would rather win an Oscar than a Nobel Peace Prize. Some might hate this, but I love it and talking to this guy at Coach & Horses felt incredibly good. Read More »

My favorite places to eat at in Los Angeles include In N’ Out for their double-double animal-style burgers and Bay Cities Italian Deli in Santa Monica for their “godmother” sandwich, a bread and meat monstrosity with cold cuts from every edible animal. I rarely eat at home because I can’t cook, and when I do, my go-to at-home meal is a ham and cheese sandwich. I’m telling you this to give you an idea of how hard it is going to be for me to eat like a vegan for week.

My vegan week isn’t due to some sudden desire to save animals that would otherwise end up on the tip of my fork. I’m not opposed to saving animals –– if a cute puppy were to cross the street in front of me, I wouldn’t run it over –– but this adventure is purely an experiment. I’m doing it just to see if I can.

In preparation for my weeklong meat, dairy, and gelatin-free adventure, I searched the Internet for vegan-eating rules and information. When I Google searched “veganism,” the pull-quote from Wikipedia read: “Vegans are the result of a conspiracy among the liberal elite to create a new race of inbred, herbivores.” I’m nervous already.

Sunday
12 AM: My vegan week officially begins. I am immediately hungry. I fix myself a bowl of oatmeal. Basically, I’m eating a bowl of mush for dinner. Not satisfied. Read More »

Last Sunday night I found myself at Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood. It was Memorial Day weekend, so the bar was packed. I’d come with friends, so I wasn’t looking to talk to any guys, but looking around I was surprised at how many cute, normal looking ones there were.

There were tons of adorable nerdy boys wearing glasses and semi-skinny jeans who looked like they’d just come to chill and have a good time with their friends. Yeah, there were a few desperate-looking ones in buttoned-down collared shirts and pressed slacks, but I just ignored them. I couldn’t understand why my friend S (identity protection) always complained to me about not being able to find datable girls in Los Angeles, there seemed to be plenty of cute guys. So I decided to put myself in his shoes, and I looked around for girls. It was an eye opener.

To start with, there were five guys to every girl, and for every normal-looking, attractive girl, there were ten über-slutty ones. I saw one majorly stacked blonde wearing a blue dress so low cut I could practically see the surgery scars on her nipples. Fake tans, platinum extensions, and cheap stilettos were everywhere. We weren’t in some swanky bar on Sunset, and these girls weren’t going to find their future investment banker husband here, this was Barney’s, a bar full of currently unemployed, future TV showrunners. I suddenly felt incredibly bad for S. Read More »

I am sad to announce that legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent passed away in Paris on Sunday at the age of 71. He is best known for redesigning “men’s clothes” for women through creations such as his infamous tux of 1966 and trademark elegant pantsuit. As one commentator put it, “Chanel gave women freedom” in the first half of the 20th century, and Saint Laurent “gave them power”.

In Other News,

Hilary Clinton emerged triumphant from Sunday’s primary in Puerto Rico yet it is doubtful that this will be enough to stop her downhill spiral. On Tuesday, the remaining 31 delegates will be decided as voters in Montana and South Dakota go to the polls for the Democratic Party’s final two primaries. Obama is approximately 50 delegates away from the 2,118 needed to secure the party’s nomination. Read More »

My on-the-road anxieties have been eased by this one important mantra. Call it zen, call it what you will, but there is something utterly freeing about the reality that life is sometimes beyond your control and that you just have to let things go.

An illustration: Back in December, I was on a plane from Bogotá to Quito. A very short distance certainly, but it was the longest journey from point A to point B I’ve ever endured.

In the end, it took me twenty four hours to fly the short 450 mile distance between the two cities. I grew a gray hair of worry that I wouldn’t be able to catch my connecting flight back to Los Angeles, but I certainly learned a great lesson that I now apply to all the impatient moments in my travel career. Read More »