Springfield, Los Angeles - Population: Me

I met the gang for dinner tonight at Versailles, which is AWESOME cuban food. So yummy! After stuffing my face (seriously, I grossed the people out at the table next to us with the sheer amount of food I shoveled), we decided do what every group of professional, hard working career minded 20-30 somethings does on a Monday night....

Go hang at the neighborhood 7-11! WOO! I know, you are so jealous of my ROCKSTAR lifestyle.

Of course, being Los Angeles, this was no ordinary 7-11. It was a Kwik-E-Mart from The Simpsons!


They did the full makeover! It was so awesome, they actually had a huge line, and a security guard - and a wait just to get in! The entire store was painted and transformed. Best marketing idea ever!

After the excitement of seeing the outside of the store transformed, we started looking around to see what else had changed.
Unfortunately, it was still cement-y Los Angeles. I thought I saw a racoon - but it was just a big rat.

I am kinda hoping they just keep the Simpsons theme year round. It made the whole place WAY more entertaining.
OK, I'm not one to start shizz, but Marge was totally checking this guy out. Poor Homer... after 18 years of public marriage!

The very beautiful and talented Angela turns ... 25... 19.... 17.... Fetus... tomorrow! ;)
You rock Ang! Happy Birthday!!! I'll meet you at the Kwik-E-Mart (or Azusa) anytime you want!

I bought two boxes of Krusty O's "The best cereal you could expect from a TV clown" but didn't buy any Buzz cola....
There were signs all over - it was awesome! Jules was like a kid in a candy store - which, we sorta were kids in a candy store...
"First Bank of Springfield - Misplacing decimal points since 194.5 - $2.50 Sign Reading Fee"
I am SO seeing this movie!

Stupid Ralph Wiggum stole my stupid juicy pop!
Poor Ang. Ever since she got off the medication, she goes after everyone's baby. Maggie was up there, and well, after we laughed and pointed at her for 10 minutes... we did the friendly thing and... we got bored and walked away.Squishee anyone?
LOVE the signs!
Apu was friendly as always. The great thing is, all the store employees were dressed in the Kwik-E-Mart uniforms! They even had a girl at the door saying "Thank you, come again."
After I chipped a tooth and took a bite of the donut, I realized I would have some 'splainin to do - my dentist THOUGHT he's heard it all. Vince is truly the brains of the operation.
Ang thought a kiss would get her a donut.
You see, Ang, you can't get *everything* you want with a kiss.
"You did NOT take the last two 72 Hour Dogs Homer. Seriously. This is getting old."
"ZOMG! I totally love you! You're the funny man on TV! The glowy box with the pretty pictures! LOVE LOVE LOVE you! Tee-hee, you're kinda shiny and plasticky - that reminds me of an actor I dated..."

After dinner and the Simpsons tour, I met up with Cameron for some frozen yogurt (Pinkberry, stupid liquid crack) and a nice walk out in the beautiful summer weather. I'm gonna do some crazed last minute packing and then I'm off to bed, work, and then HOME! WOO!

I promised more pics from Sunday, so here you go - the sad thing is, for the first time ever, I...
I...
Botched my one-handed group pic.
I know, it's a first, even for me - but I can safely blame it on foreign hardware. I am still ashamed. Trent's camera wasn't used to me, I wasn't used to it - big awkard mess. Ironically, I cut myself out of the photo. Dork.

See? Yeah, I know....
His version came out much better - I swear I shall redeem myself with my Canon SD800!
Great pic! It's always cool to meet smart, funny, intelligent, great people. Unfortch for Trent and Mike, we are none of the above, but hey.
I had to end with this - I think it's one of my alltime favorite pics. This picture is way funnier then anything I could possibly think to write. :) I think I'm gonna have to frame this one!

So as I get ready to head home, I realize I've been living in LA for less then a year, and how truly blessed I am to have such amazing, intelligent, funny and wonderful friends, a fantastic job that I actually look forward to going to (well except on Mondays), and a great action-packed fun life.
Happy 4th everyone! Cheers!

White Party 2007 - it's not what you think.

So it was another fantastic LA weekend. On Friday I had big plans to go out - however one thing led to another and my couch was calling, and my body answered. I crashed out and had a quiet evening and became one with the telly.
Saturday Kirst and I went to a White Party. (Jeff & Ben, please leave the racist-Darion jokes in the comments field, you know you want to)

It's just a party where everyone has to wear white. The great thing is, I told Mom about it on the phone, and there was a bit of silence followed by a very concerned "A WHITE party?". Bless her heart, I could just hear the 26 years of trying to teach me that everyone is equal and not to see race or color flashing before her eyes. LOL! I was like "No, Mom, it's just a party where everyone wears white." She sounded instantly relieved. LOL

There were some nice sunsets happening - of course the party took place on the roof, like all good Venice parties. Inside is so not cool.
Awww! We look almost angelic!
White! The guy in the plaid kinda cheaped out, I know.
The most popular guest at the party was a giant light up gnome... he was hilarious! Everyone was taking photos with it. By the end of the night, the things that poor lil gnome had seen.... I'm sure he's in rehab right now.
See, and here you thought I was kidding!
Ashley makes a guest starring appearance, and I give my best creepy Tom-Cruise-I-Am-Smiling-But-I-Will-F***-You-Up eyes. Seriously, I look like a freaking stalker.
Or a Scientologist.
Same diff.
Jarad & Kirsten posing for the papparazzi.
NO! This party is my blog territory, beeeeyotch!
Kidding - it's the birthday girl! Happy Birthday Anais'!!
We had our own band! WOO! See the lil gnome also doubled as a light for the music notes... you go lil gnomey!
"Want some bubbles? You know you do!"
"BUBBLE POWERS ACTIVATE"
I thought this was a totally cute photo of me, Kirst, and Jonathan until Kirst pointed out it looks like a creepy ass white power photo with all the light hair and blue eyes.
Thanks for ruining all my fun photos!
Who knew everyone had white pants?
I like this photo cuz the guy in the background looks like a creepy beach bum version of Santa. Hey, everyone has a holiday, right?
ZOMG CAKE! Everyone get a photo! AHHHHH!

"It's my cake, bitches! MINE! MINE!"
Just kidding, she actually shared.
Some.

Sunday Kirst and I met up with our new BFF's Trent & Mike to see Sicko at the Arclight (best theater ever!) and hang out for a bit.

WOW. Sicko was a roller coaster - funny, brilliant, sad, teary, depressing, sick, eye opening, laugh out loud outrageous... it's an incredible film. No matter your view of Michael Moore (he's barely in it), your view of politics/etc - you must see this film. It's an incredible look at how the USA deals with healthcare VS the majority of the rest of the world. There's several moments in the film where I was like :O :O :O. The whole audience was engaged and clapped at several times.... it's so poignant. Recommended!

After we had some dee-lish food at Bird's and chilled out for a bit - great times! Pics enroute!

It's back to work and then I'm off home to Oregon, YAEEEE! Goodbye concrete jungle, hello nature!

Just when you thought that was it....

More Buffy pics! The very lovely Rita posted some great pics on her Livejournal site. Check it out!
Truth be told, I'm a little jealous. I thought my Canon SD800IS was the shizz... and her pics are way better then mine. Camera envy is so unbecoming.

Buffy, Bloggers, and Joss - OH MY!

Talk about an insane week/month... sorry for the lack of recent posts! I was swamped this week with work and was at the Hollywood & Games conference, which was a lot of fun. I heard Clive Barker speak, and I'm 90% sure he was either very hung over or had a visit with his friend Mr. Nose Candy...

Had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's restaruant at the Hollywood & Highland center - deeee-licious! Michael Clarke Duncan was sitting across the room, dayumn he's a big guy! Seemed very nice but he was having dinner with his wife so I didn't want to interrupt. The place was filled with Hollywood types, always fun to see.

Last night was AMAZING! I went to The Buffy Sing Along at the LA Film Festival. Check out buffysings.com!
The line was crazy at the theater - it sold out weeks before, and there was a standby line of over a hundred rabid fans trying to get in. People in line were playing the Buffy board game... it was great!
Vince, Kirst and I in line. I love this photo.
6'3" BABY! LOL! It's all fun and games now, till you see the scary pictures later in the post...
The line keeps gooooooooooing!
And going!

Once inside, our host - who was an awesome guy - led the crowd through all of the interactive bits. You got a goody bag once inside with things like bubbles, a streamer popper, fangs, etc etc. At certain points in the musical the crowd would interact and it was PRICELESS!
During the Giles powerballad everyone had their cellphones and lighters out! :)
Vince said everything tastes better with fangs. I say everything tastes better with my friend Captain Morgan.
Click the pic to see all the hilarious stuff we did!
"Grrrr, ARGGH!"
Everyone blew bubbles at one point which was hilarious to see in the theater!
The SHOCK of the evening was when Joss Whedon - creator of Buffy - and Marti Noxon, Exec Producer of BTVS came out to talk to the crowd. It was very clear they were moved by the people's reactions and energy at the event. It was pretty incredible, I've never seen a crowd be so amped for something before. SO FUN!

So after the show I saw Tom Lenk (who played Andrew on the show) and Trent who runs the best blog ever (Pink is the New Blog) were there. They were both super cool and we got photos with them.

Kirst and Trent!
Me and Trent!
Me and Tom! Sweet Jesus, I look like a freaky man-giant.

So what a night! Too much excitement the last few days. Thanks again to Trent for linking my blog and tripling my lifetime visitors in the span of about 30 minutes. :P
Thanks to Kirsten for getting the Buffy tickets and thanks to Vince for not pretending he didn't know me when I sang so off-key nearby glass shattered.

I've been up to a ton of other crap with no time to blog - but real quick, Kathy Griffin was HILARIOUS at the Universal Amphitheater (Gibson) last Friday. She FILLED the place - 6,000 seats - and stayed on for 2 HOURS! She is SO funny, there was literally not a minute that went by where I wasn't laughing my ass off. She had some great new material, and the crowd was roaring. Standing ovations at the start and finish!

Blurry photos! WOO!
She did an awesome impression of Paris Hilton's giraffe-model walk, which she says she does constantly. So funny.
PACKED!

Which is also a good description of my life right now. Loving it, though! I fly home to Oregon next week to get some much needed R&R and spend some time in that stuff called "Nature". Basically, the opposite of LA life...
Cheeeeeeeeeeers!

LA ROCKS!

Gas driving to Hollywood: $15

Italian Panini’s with friends over dinner: $17

The Raveonettes tickets: $18.50

Pictures with The Raveonettes and Ryan Gosling: PRICELESS

I met up with Kirst & Jules tonight for The Raveonettes concert in Silver Lake/Echo Park (North Hollywood) and had a great time! It was a really fun evening. As we were walking to the restaruant I saw Sune and Sharon, the duo known as the Raveonettes! They were filming segments for a video of some kind. I waited in between takes and asked them for a photo and they were super nice! They then asked me if I was OK with being on their video and taped me getting a photo with them! LOL Too cool!

The normal photo... and the on video photo! LOL Thanks to Kirsten for being my official photographer!

We had a good dinner at a nearby Italian place and then got to the club. The opening bands sucked - the first one I nicknamed Red Hair Scratch and Vomit Face, as that's pretty much what they sounded like. The 2nd band was decent, but the mixing at the club sort of sucked.

Of course, we amused ourselves with my crazy Extendo-Arm and MySpace style photos.
JULES!
KIRST!

The Trifecta!JULES and KIRST!

Small place!
They put on a pretty good show even though the music sounded a little off at times - I blame the mixing in the back, though. Their vocals were fantastic.


So during one of the earlier bands I saw someone that looked super familiar.... it was Ryan Gosling! I waited till the end of the show as not to bother him/cause a mob scene, and asked him for a photo. He was super cool about it and friendly to everyone asking... Fun! Once again Kirsten provided Papparazzi service, and I must say she seems to have an unholy gift with the camera...
So, yeah, LA is pretty fun. :)