Further Adventures in Hair Removal

anyone who reads this knows that hair removal is one of my top discussion topics, hobbies and research subjects. get a group of friends together, add a few drinks, and hair removal talk is inevitable. to that ongoing conversation, i add my experience from yesterday.

as you can see in photos, i cut my hair very short about five months ago. while i do love having a look somewhere between pink, sally bowles and rod blagojevich, i am plagued by hairline growth in my neck/nape region. ben has gone at it with our clippers, and i've taken a razor to it while in the shower. but it leads to stubbly regrowth and a yucky five o'clock shadow.

when i last got my hair cut, crystal rose said "you should get that shit waxed!". surely she must be joking. i didn't think it possible. but yesterday while getting my eyebrows and mustache did, i asked ina, my waxing lady, what she thought.

"oh sure, honey. i have done for girls before. we try it. if you like it we keep doing." she said in her soothing russian accent.

so we did it. and it hurt but not TOO bad. and the results undeniably beat the pants off either
1. as-is hairy neck or
2. shaved stubble neck.


comic attempt at trying to photograph my non-hairy neck.


maybe if i hold the computer upside down...


this is the best it's going to be for showing purposes. i have on a headband so my herr looks janky anyhow.

San Fran Friends Tour April 29-May 3

thanks to all my san francisco hosts for a fabulous weekend!


Sarah, Nate and Vanessa at the VIP reception for Roger's event at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.


Roger's exhibit 'Jews on Vinyl' at the Contemporary Museum


Roger's exhibit: detail


Justin in the Longwillow's radical yellow 1973 Corolla. It might be a '71. Not sure but I do know it RULES.


Gio is CNE and Lynn's 5 year old son. Heavenly.


CNE ponders all the goodness that is Tsunami - Asian Tapas, Sushi and Divine Cocktails.


Rebecca and Justin Longwillow. Rebecca's smokin' hot hairdo .


Lynn makes a culinary dream come true by bringing me to Tommy's Joint for Brisket! Long ago I saw it on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network.


Sarah has her hands full at Nate's 40th Birthday party - Georgia 27 months, Hank 11 months.


Jeremy and Sara recently moved to Palo Alto after 15 years in Cambridge, Mass. Their son, Eytan, will be 2 in June. He calls me 'Carrot'. To die for.

seven visitors in thirteen days

the excitement! the "welcome prosecco"!! the building tour! these past two weeks have brought us visitors both domestic and international, planned and spontaneous- it's been so much fun catching up with old friends and getting to know newer friends better. meeting old friends' partners and babies, trying new restaurants and foods, and hooking our guests on a whole lotta reality tv.

visitors 1 & 2
olivia and louise
(no photo available)

o is one of my closest friends from college, we met in our first days at swells. her relocation to vancouver from santa barbara a couple of years ago has definitely cut down on our visits. whereas we used to pimp around every few months, it had been nearly a year since we'd gotten together. she came with her foxy dutch girlfriend louise.
trip highlights:
- the tastiest sushi in west hollywood after which
-olivia and louise learn that adam lambert rules and everybody else on american idol drools. ben figured out how to play youtube videos on our tv, so the ladies could watch his past performances. they are now lamb-fans/adamaniacs.

a fantastic but short stay, and i thank them for the trader joe's spread they left in their wake - sparkling sake, lobster rolls, and vegan cookies for our next pals...

visitors 3 & 4
alyssa and adrienne
(no photo available) (i am a loser)

next to natalie, alyssa's and my friendship is the "meet cute(st)". she tagged along when an old family friend came to see me during my first year at wellesley. since she also had a friend at wellesley, when joy came to see me, alyssa visited her friend. her friend would turn out to be CNE - in a coincidence-tornado, my dad once taught at their high school and my "uncle" stan was her biology teacher. neither alyssa nor i are still in touch with the girl who introduced us, but we've stayed friends for 15 years. alyssa and her ladyfriend, adrienne, were in san diego for a conference which they parlayed into a visit to la.
trip highlights:
- phenomenal dinner at vegan thai restaurant bulan
- ridiculous sighting of danny devito and rhea perlman at vegan restaurant in BFE (Tarzana),
-watching the ladies try to motivate to go out dancing but the pull of 'the biggest loser' on tivo was too strong. they went out the next night instead.

visitors 5 & 6
allison and kelly

unbelievable that we have not seen allison and kelly since their wedding in september 2006. but this weekend we made it happen. they drove out from vegas on a baby-meeting junket (they have several friends in la with babies). it was wonderful to spend time with them when none of the three of us was wearing a wedding dress.
trip highlights:
-learning what a raw diet is (they eat about 70% raw) and then lunching at Cru in silverlake. that place is BANANAS.
-cajoling allison into joining kelly and me in the photo booth at space 15 twenty, a new shopping and art venue in hollywood
-meeting eli patel fruchbom! son of rachna and dave fruchbom.
-re-igniting their passion for 'the biggest loser' - they do not have tivo in vegas so they had yet to experience tara's tenacity and the sleaziness that is ron.

space 15 twenty self timer on the chair sculpture

allison is the baby whisperer. seen here with eli.

visitor 7
olivia r.
(old photo below)
i first met olivia last february when we convened in scottsdale to celebrate emmy's birthday. this weekend she was in la on vacation with a friend, and we made dinner plans for sunday night. she was going to schlep to an airport hotel but we decided it would be a lot more fun if she checked in here instead. hers was the shortest visit of all, but that did not dampen our good time
trip highlights:
-spotting one drag queen and one tranny while enjoying wine-enhanced dinner with natalie at basix
-attempting to watch 'daisy of love' but deciding it's just too terrible - even for us!
-trying to diagnose strange water-rushy sound coming from the ceiling

trip lowlight:
-sewage line backup in underground garage just in time for olivia's arrival. p.u.!


millicent, emmy, olivia and me* atop the valley ho february 2008.
(emmy is the only person in this pic who has not spent the night in our apartment but we are working on changing that asap.)
* the coat i am wearing is featured in us weekly's 'who wore it best' this week! clearly i wore it better than rachel bilson and whitney port.

BONUS VISITORS!!
visitors 8, 9, & 10
kristin, christopher and teddy mcgraw

wow! kristin and christopher are old friends from my david e. kelley days who moved from la to denver about 5 years ago to open a pizza restaurant. their place is a raging success but they took the weekend off to bring their 21 month old son, teddy, to the beach. we zipped down to hermosa beach, where they were staying, for happy hour and teddy-meeting. he's simply gorgeous. what a special surprise that the mcgraws popped into town!


teddy knew the bar was BYOB (bring your own bike)


ben plays firetrucks with teddy and christopher

nothing compares 2 u

on March 28, the original sexy MF, his purple majesty, the one and only PRINCE gave LA a wonderful gift. announced less than a week before the shows, prince did what no artist has ever done - he played three concerts back-to-back at the new LA LIVE complex in downtown los angeles. the shows were like this:

7pm at Nokia Theater (about 7000 seats)
930pm at the Conga Room (about 1000 seats)
12am at Club Nokia (about 2300 seats)

of course all three shows sold out in minutes, and you had to be in-the-know to even know to get them. since i am not as in-the-know as some, it was monday morning on my way to work when i saw one of those giant tv billboards advertising the new trio of albums and the show. breaking the law to text natalie while driving, we decided of course that we WERE GOING to the show.

after several days of wicked wheeling and dealing on craigslist, we ended up with tickets in row U of the orchestra for the first show. (thankfully, the person who sold them to us was legit and the pdf of the tickets he sent us was not phony). an additional surprise was when my old friend dan posner and his wife julie were sitting in the seats right next to us!! crazy coincidence. i hadn't spoken to them for months.


natalie outside the theater. we were so thrilled to be there.


only other photo taken with my camera, as they confiscated it inside.

here's what he played, according to some fan site. the show was an INCREDIBLE dance party old school prince blow out!!!

Main Prince set:
Ol’ Skool Company (from his new album)
Crimson and Clover
1999
I Feel for You (now that he's a Jehovah's witness, he doesn't do the overtly super creamy sexy songs - in this one he changed
the lyric from "i'm physically attracted to you" to "i'm spiritually attracted to you"
Controversy
Shhh
If I Was Your Girlfriend (total highlight)
Kiss (the ultimate moment of the show for me)
Play That Funky Music
Little Wing (instrumental - Prince band only)
Come Together (beatles song)
Purple Rain

Prince Encores:
Let’s Go Crazy
The Bird
Jungle Love
The Glamorous Life (Sheila E. came out and did this one with him!)


this man is 5 feet tall, 50 years old and so sexy it's ridiculous.


this is a photo taken with my phone of the big screen. i had to stop shreiking and dancing to take this photo.

yeah...i ate those pulkes*!!

and those polkies**!! cj and kyle took a trip out from brooklyn to visit, they rented an amazing house in the hollywood hills with a couple of friends, and they introduced their 6 month old son, theo, to in-n-out burger, silverlake hipsters, and fred segal. it was a funtastic three days, if only i could persuade them to move here permanently...

here are some pics from their visit



the good thing about having exceedingly stylish parents is you can appreciate jonathan adler before you're 1 year old




*apparently 'pulkes', 'polkies' and even 'pulkas' is acceptable. according to the internets.
**if you are not lubes, or have not been introduced to the art of pulkes eating by lubes- pulkes are thighs, specifically baby thighs.

from the LA Galaxy program

we went to the opening game of the season for the LA Galaxy yesterday - this photo was in the program and i find it hilarious.

are kittens to blame for THIS too?

(thanks to emmy for turning me on to d-listed who turned me on to this molten hot lava tranny video mess)